Tribes, North Dakota partner to update 30-year-old textbooks on Native history
Updated tribal textbooks detailing the history and culture of the five Native nations that share land with North Dakota will soon be available at public schools across the state. (Mary Steurer/North Dakota 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.
Recent grad sees a gap in educational quality for tribal students
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.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Geographic
10 hours ago
- National Geographic
Can Africa's great nomadic people save their way of life?
'If rainy season comes and we have grass and water, I'm happy,' says Fulani herder Alhajji Soh, 25, pictured in the rural community of Déali, Senegal, where rainfall has decreased dramatically. 'Some years we don't have grass and water … at those times I'm unhappy.' Photographs by Robin Hammond Near the southern edge of the Sahara desert, millions of people in some 20 West and Central African countries share a way of life. Year after year, they take part in the ancient practice of nomadic pastoralism, herding livestock across increasingly hot, arid lands of the Sahel region in search of fresh grasslands and accessible water as the seasons change. From the western coast of Senegal to the eastern shorelines of Sudan, herders follow different migratory routes that can cover hundreds of miles. Most of these pastoralists share another important distinction: They are Fulani, an Indigenous people who have a broad cultural identity shaped by such traditional journeys. These groups are vast and varied, and many are traveling in new directions. The Fulani, a predominantly Muslim collection of Indigenous communities spread across nearly two dozen Central and West African countries, are connected by pastoral traditions that stretch back centuries. In northern Cameroon, teenagers (from left) Fadimatou Moussa, Hawaou Hamadou, and Amin Moussa belong to the Mbororo people and take part in annual migrations. Ousmanou Hamadou, 67, and Hamadou Adamou, 51, tend to their goats, sheep, donkeys, and cattle in Cameroon. In fact, the majority of these predominantly Muslim people today are no longer herders. In recent generations many took up farming or settled in towns and cities to follow different prospects to provide for themselves and their families. In Guinea, the Fulani who migrated to the Fouta Djallon mountainous region now grow crops and allow their livestock to roam free. In Sierra Leone, many Fulani have become entrepreneurs who wield influence over the direction of trade and politics. In Nigeria, where the population has grown dramatically, Fulani herders now face increased competition for land and resources. Here, pastoralists lead their cattle through arid lands during the dry season, which in recent years has lasted longer due to climate change. Because Fulani herders are often in transition, they have historically encountered issues accessing and managing the lands they've traversed for generations. Yet despite Fulani people being minorities in almost all the countries where they have settled, several strong leaders have emerged. In recent decades, at least five Fulani presidents have served in African nations. Across the Chad Basin—a landlocked region that includes parts of Chad, Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon—conflict orchestrated by the jihadist group Boko Haram has disrupted the livelihoods of many Fulani, displacing communities of herders and farmers that have been forced to settle in camps like this one called Taal. Violence accompanying territorial disputes is just one of the many challenges that confront the Fulani. After fleeing violence in Burkina Faso, Jajo Jallo, 49, and his family became refugees in Ghana. Adam Gaya, nine, along with his donkey named Bako, is shown in the village of Fadouk in Niger. On the most basic level, 'Fulani' has become an umbrella term that encompasses many different groups of people, explains Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a Fulani Mbororo woman and a knowledge holder among her community. She compares those groups to branches on the Fulani tree. 'In West Africa, you have Futa Toro [and] Fouta Djallon,' says Ibrahim, who is a National Geographic Explorer and president of the Peul Indigenous Women and Peoples Association of Chad. 'And then in our area of Central Africa we have some Mbororo'—which is her own branch of peoples. Within the branches there are many different communities. But the majority still feel a strong connection to the land, she says, and their ancestral way of life. At the same time, those who carry on the traditional practice encounter new threats from climate change and regional disputes along their pathways, including occasional aggression from landowners. Some of the more recent conflict may be fueled by an unfounded assertion among some governments and non-Fulani communities that the Fulani are disproportionately joining jihadist groups. The reality is that herders heavily contribute to the region's economy and have a long history of peaceful trade with farmers and business owners. For years, these Mbororo people typically migrated between Nigeria and Cameroon, but as the land they traversed has fallen into private ownership, their traditional routes have become dangerous. Now they travel only within Cameroon where some swaths of open grassland still offer a welcoming corridor. Their journey continues to be an arduous one as temperatures soar in the region. While Fulani may live off the land, they also help replenish it. As these pastoralists travel, Ibrahim points out, their livestock leave behind manure that enriches the soil with nutrients, creating more fertile land. They also trim trees along their routes, strengthening branches that encourage growth and protect against brush fires. Pastoralism is the most adapted livelihood to the Sahel ecosystem, Ibrahim says. (Meet the woman who is inspiring a new future for Africa's nomadic herders.) To gain deeper insight into these often misunderstood communities, photographer and National Geographic Explorer Robin Hammond chronicled their travels over a six-year period. In this story, he shares rare images that speak to their vibrancy and to the enduring hardships they face. 'Fulani culture is amazing and unique, but it's important not to romanticize it,' says Hammond. 'Many herders are just struggling to survive.' A version of this story appears in the July 2025 issue of National Geographic magazine. An Explorer since 2019 and Barcelona-based photographer, Robin Hammond documented the traditions and challenges of nomadic Fulani people in communities across Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, and elsewhere. The nonprofit National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, funded Explorer Robin Hammond's work. Learn more about the Society's support of Explorers. Alexa McMahon is a senior features manager at National Geographic magazine.
Epoch Times
12 hours ago
- Epoch Times
Explosions, Fires on Singapore-flagged Cargo Ship in Indian Ocean
KOCHI, India—Multiple explosions and fires erupted on a cargo ship bound for India's financial capital, Mumbai, on Monday, causing 40 containers to fall into the Arabian Sea and forcing several crew members to jump overboard to escape the flames, officials said. The Singapore-flagged WAN HAI 503 met with an accident about 90 miles off the coast of the southern Indian state of Kerala, said Shekhar Kuriakose, secretary of the state's disaster management authority.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
Real reasons people do not have the number of children they want revealed in new report
Millions of people are prevented from having the number of children they want by a toxic mix of economic barriers and sexism, a new UN report has warned. Factors such as the high cost of parenthood, job insecurity, expensive housing, concerns over the state of the world and the lack of a suitable partner stop people having the families they want, rather than any desire not to have children, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), said. While right-wing governments, including the US and Hungary, are increasingly blaming falling fertility rates on a rejection of parenthood, the UNFPA's 2025 State of World Population report found most people wanted children. Dr Natalia Kanem, executive director of UNFPA, said: 'The issue is lack of choice, not desire, with major consequences for individuals and societies. That is the real fertility crisis, and the answer lies in responding to what people say they need: paid family leave, affordable fertility care and supportive partners.' A poll for the report carried out by YouGov in 14 countries found almost a fifth of people said they did not have the size of family they desired, with one in nine believing they would have fewer children than they wanted and 7% that they would have more. The leading barrier to having children was money, with 39% of people saying financial constraints had either led to them having fewer children than desired or were likely to do so. Women were nearly twice as likely as men to say that an unequal division of domestic labour was a factor, while both men and women said fears about the future, including around climate change and conflict, had meant they limited their family size. 'Many countries are grappling with ageing and shrinking populations, labour shortages, and rising healthcare and pension costs. These are real concerns, yet they are leading some to the wrong conclusions,' said Kanem. 'Rather than promoting women's workforce participation, which is actually shown to improve economic productivity, amid population ageing there seems to be a growing insistence that women and young people have more children. Related: The truth behind Indian extremists' anti-Muslim 'great replacement theory' 'In some cases, it may be the neighbour next door urging you to get married before it's too late. In others, it may be the government putting up advertisements that basically say the same thing. And in some instances, it is countries imposing restrictions on the availability of contraceptives and other services.' However, neither coercive policies aimed at increasing births (such as restrictions on abortion and contraception), nor financial incentives such as US proposals for a $5,000 'baby bonus' paid to new mothers, nor efforts to tackle decreasing fertility rates appear to have much long-term impact and could backfire, the report warns. Lack of access to safe terminations led to unsafe abortions, a leading cause of maternal death and of infections that caused infertility, Kanem said. 'We also see that when people feel their reproductive choices are being steered, when policies are even just perceived as being too coercive, people react and they are less likely to have children. 'Clearly,' she added, 'the answer lies not in limiting choice or selecting who gets to exercise choice; the answer is to expand real choice to all people.'
