Native American students, educators have high hopes for bill mandating their history be taught in Illinois schools
As someone who identifies as Navajo and Choctaw, Nizhoni Ward said her own experiences with what’s taught in Illinois public schools about her ancestry included the classic story of “Columbus sailing the ocean blue” and a first-grade play about the Indians and pilgrims sitting down for a “happy feast after a successful harvest.”
“I was actually asked to play an Indian in that play about Thanksgiving,” Ward said. “I was born on a Navajo reservation in Arizona and I was brought up traditionally, surrounded by my culture. But then growing up here (in Illinois), it was really hard explaining myself to people who didn’t know anything about Native Americans.”
The story of what actually happened at the first Thanksgiving and the relationship between settlers and Native Americans is more complicated than what’s generally taught at the grade school level.
Ward, a freshman at the University of Arizona, said there is a lot to unlearn about Native history, and she’s hopeful a bill sitting on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk awaiting his approval will help students across Illinois understand the Native American community while righting history’s wrongs.
House Bill 1633, spearheaded by state Rep. Maurice West of Rockford and supported by several others, aims to make it a requirement for Illinois schools to teach a unit of Native American history.
