By: Mary Steurer (ND Monitor)
Revised textbooks on the five Native American tribes that share land with North Dakota will be ready in time for next school year.
For about three decades, the books went without updates due to a lack of funding, said Lucy Fredericks, director of Indian and multicultural education for the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction.
In 2023, the agency began work on editing the books with the help of federal grant money.
The revision process was a joint effort among the Department of Public Instruction, the five tribes, higher education institutions across the state and other educational and cultural organizations.
“We wouldn’t be able to get it done without our partnerships,” Fredericks said at a Thursday night reception at United Tribes Technical College celebrating the books’ completion.
The Indigenous Education Coalition — a group that included some of the series’ original authors — and Sacred Pipe Resource Center took the lead on revising the text, according to a project timeline provided by the Department of Public Instruction. They fielded input from tribal colleges, tribal education and historic preservation offices as well as other groups. Updates included incorporating more recent historical events into the textbooks.
“Really, at the heart of this is Indigenous peoples telling their own stories,” said Sashay Schettler, assistant director for Indian and multicultural education at the Department of Public Instruction.
The six-part series includes one introductory textbook and books focusing on each of the five tribes — including an all-new book on the history and culture of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate.
The state initially held off on including Sisseton-Wahpeton since its administrative center is in South Dakota. The idea was that South Dakota could produce a textbook of its own, but that never happened.
So the Department of Public Instruction during the revision process reached out to the tribe to see if it wanted to join the North Dakota textbook series.
Nick Asbury, website content specialist for the agency, said he anticipated it taking at least a couple years to write the book from scratch. The tribe managed to write it in 90 days so it could release alongside the other updated editions, he said.
“I have never seen anything like that,” Asbury said. “It was amazing to see.”
Though the series is written for a K-12 audience, higher ed institutions rely on them for information, too.
The ebooks will be available for free online this summer, according to the Department of Public Instruction. Print editions will be rolled out to schools this fall and also will be available for purchase.
The original editions of the textbooks are available for free on most ebook platforms.
The agency hopes to revise the books every three to five years going forward.
Under a law adopted by the state Legislature in 2021, North Dakota K-12 schools are required to teach Native history.
State survey data collected in 2023 indicates schools may be struggling to meet that requirement. The survey found that 75% of teachers and 89% of administrators were aware of the legislation. Additionally, 57% of teachers and 67% of administrators said they were aware of tribal history resources published by the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction.
The project was made possible in part because of federal grant funding. Superintendent of Public Instruction Kirsten Baesler noted during the event that the future of some of the Department of Public Instruction’s federal grants remains uncertain.
The agency hopes the new books will become a staple for North Dakota history classes.
“These books today provide a comprehensive and rich resource of material that our educators can use in teaching Native American culture, history and traditions in our state,” Baesler said.
