Chapter 7: Teaching Truth: Social Justice for California Native Students

Native educators throughout California are faced with many challenges in advocating for change in curriculum, combatting stereotypes, correcting misconceptions, challenging romanticism, and keeping Native youth engaged in an educational system that typically marginalizes their histories, cultures, and contemporary issues. These educators and colleagues are motivated by a sense of social justice and an inherent desire to make the experience of Native youth better than the one they had endured. As these educators become parents a sense of urgency rises to the surface. There is pressure to make your child’s world a better place.

My [Nicole Lim] daughter is currently a high school freshman. Since she was in preschool, I have worried about the impact that fairytales, cartoons, children’s storybooks, and elementary and upper school curricula would have on her psyche. It seemed overwhelming, as if there was too much to combat and counteract. She was surrounded not just by Hollywood images but by the misconceptions of her peers and teachers alike. She would continually have to speak up to, correct, and educate those around her. She would be labeled as overly sensitive or aggressive and would have to get used to her classmates reacting with sighs and eye rolls. How could I raise a confident Native leader in a world that continued to minimize, question, and negate her identity? Needless to say, I worried about the toll these repeated negative interactions would take on her. I was all too familiar with the circumstances and the anxieties they had caused me when I was in her same situation. I found that the wheels of justice turn slow, but she had her hands on the wheel. When she was in the 7th grade, she wrote the following editorial for her English teacher.