Current 11th grade U.S. History textbooks are Eurocentric and tell a biased portrayal of the country's history. This study analyzed the four most frequently used history textbooks in the most 25 populated school districts across the State of California using a mixed-method design, to show the degree to which they are Eurocentric. The four…

This paper explores the American Girl book series and its relation to the history of American education and the school's role in the creation of the ideal American girl. Focused on the Kirsten Larson series of American Girl books, this paper explores how the settler grammars that characterize Kirsten's encounters with an "Indian girl"…

At a time when many individuals and institutions are reexamining their histories to better understand their tangled roots of racism and oppression, "Reckoning: Kalamazoo College Uncovers Its Racial and Colonial Past" tells the story of how American ideas about colonialism and race shaped Kalamazoo College, a progressive liberal arts…

This book explores tensions between "critical social justice" and what the author terms "white justice as fairness" in public commemoration of Minnesota's US-Dakota War of 1862. First, the book examines a regional "white public pedagogy" demanding "objectivity" and "balance" in…

This research study examined how students and I navigated learning and teaching about genocide and mass violence in the context of a semester-long high school comparative genocide and human rights elective course at DeWitt Junior-Senior High School in rural south-central Wisconsin. Specifically, the study examined how students individually and…

The purpose of this qualitative, single case study is to investigate how teacher-created curricula addresses key Native American events in early U.S. history and to determine if such curricula provided students with accurate representations of Native American content. To do this, we used discourse analysis to consider the meanings of words and…

On Christmas Day 1975, Marcia Marie Summers was born to Charlene Summers, a member and resident of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation in North Dakota. A few months later, a white couple from Indiana approached the young mother and offered to care for her infant while Summers attended school. Summers realized that the couple intended to permanently…

Although previous research has described analysis of history textbooks in terms of multicultural education, limited attention has been given to teacher only resources, such as the "wraparound features" of teachers' editions. The study highlighted in this article applies critical discourse analysis to explore the potential for teachers'…

In this essay, the author analyzes two theoretical perspectives--incorporation and abjection--that inform official knowledge generally and high school American history textbooks specifically. While contemporary textbooks increasingly depict the experiences of historically marginalized groups such as women, African Americans, Latinos, American…

The presumption of American's noble savage provides the foundation for the creation of one of the world's most recognizable stereotypes--the American Indian. The stereotype, lodged in the minds of most Americans as the Plains Indian warrior, contributed to decades of misunderstanding about leadership in traditional American Indian societies and…

Americans in the East were great fans of Black Hawk, whose popularity on tour overtook that of Andrew Jackson's parallel tour of the Northeast. Undoubtedly, then, Black Hawk was a celebrity. He remained popular even in 1837, when he attended Catlin's gallery opening in New York, which included his 1832 painting of Black Hawk. Black Hawk may also…

What is the value or perceived necessity--for an Indian or for a white man--of changing Northern Cheyenne history? How are a reader's conclusions affected by her perception of the race of the person altering that history? Why is it acceptable to sell but not tell American Indian history? An examination of the visual and discursive rhetoric of "The…

Conflictual relations between the owners of Foxwoods Casino and Resort, who are American Indians, and the white residents of Ledyard and nearby Preston and North Stonington townships in southeastern Connecticut are long-standing. They have flared up on numerous occasions and especially since 1982 when the Mashantucket Pequots considered building a…

This article examines the ways American Indian authors, particularly three contemporary Anishinaabeg writers, engaged with the question of Native American origins during the racially polarized project of "imagining" the nation of the United States throughout the 19th century. In this article, the author argues that American Indian…

Three of the most emotionally charged terms in this era are "race," "racism," and "White privilege." Definitions for these terms vary by individual experiences, beliefs, opinions, and perceptions. K-20 students are rarely exposed to a detailed coverage and critical analysis of the part of U.S. history that includes genocide, territorial…