Inside the fight to save Texas’ Native American studies course

From The Hechinger Report:

Savion Horn watched as “before” and “after” images appeared on a screen at the front of his classroom: black-and-white photos of boys and girls, much younger than him and his classmates, first with faces framed by long hair and traditional clothing, then with their locks cut, wearing high-necked dresses and stiff button-ups.

For Horn, then a senior at Grand Prairie High School near Dallas and a descendant of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, it was his first in-depth lesson on the boarding schools where the U.S. government sent hundreds of thousands of Native American children in the 19th and 20th centuries with the goal of assimilating them and eradicating Native culture.

​​“They weren’t allowed to speak their own language. They weren’t allowed to represent themselves with their music or art,” said Horn, who was exposed to the lesson last school year through the American Indian/Native Studies class offered at his high school. “It was very emotional to me, and it would be for anyone who actually wanted to take anything away from the class and learn.”

The American Indian/Native Studies course, or AINS, was piloted in the Grand Prairie school district in 2021 following years of work by Indigenous parents and educators around the state who drafted course materials from scratch. To build on the success of a Chicano/Mexican American studies class the state approved in 2015, the State Board of Education in 2018 called for the creation of other ethnic studies classes, including Native studies. Two years later, board members certified the AINS class as an “innovative course,” meaning it covered state-approved topics that fall outside of the required curriculum and other districts could adopt it.

But in 2025, when the class came up for its regular five-year renewal under the process for innovative courses, the political landscape in Texas had changed. Starting in 2021, the state had taken steps to limit instruction around issues of race, ethnicity and gender. That year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 3, which restricts instruction on “controversial issues” and says educators should approach those topics “objectively and in a manner free from political bias.” This past June, just a week before the committee met to discuss the course, the state passed SB 12, allowing parents to review and raise objections about K-12 educational materials and prohibiting policies, activities or programs that “reference race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.”

At the federal level, President Donald Trump has issued executive orders calling for the end of DEI practices in public K-12 schools and colleges. And leadership of the Texas education board had changed too, leading to more scrutiny of course content.

Groups including the Ethnic Studies Network of Texas, an organization devoted to advancing diverse representation in schools curricula, and Native-led nonprofits like the Society of Native Nations lobbied for the course’s survival. Four Native nations from across Texas and Oklahoma also endorsed AINS, saying the class offered students the opportunity to understand a more complete, accurate picture of tribal histories than is typically taught in K-12 classrooms.

At the Texas education board’s June hearing, most members were supportive of the class and sympathetic to the frustrations of course organizers with the prolonged renewal process. Some board members, though, expressed concern about the course, arguing that its discussion of the role of Catholic churches in the mistreatment of students at boarding schools might shame Christian students. Another representative questioned the purpose of land acknowledgements recognizing Indigenous people as an area’s original residents, suggesting that some land was traded or given to settlers or was unclaimed and that it wasn’t always clear to whom it belonged.

After two days of debate, the board voted 9-5 in favor of renewing the course. With a compromise to remove a passage in a reading about George Washington that the board objected to, the course will continue to operate as an innovative class for another five years. At a time when DEI is under attack around the country, supporters of the Native studies class view their success as giving hope to others who want to see similar classes created or preserved in other states.

“I cannot underscore enough how important of a win this is,” said Sarah B. Shear, an associate professor of social studies and multicultural education at the University of Washington-Bothell, whose research has found that content on Native Americans in most K-12 social studies curriculum often leaves out information on modern contributions of Indigenous people.

In part because of research like hers, a few other states and districts have taken similar steps to expand Native studies. In 2015, lawmakers in Washington state passed a mandate that every school district teach tribal history, culture and government, becoming the second state to approve a Native Education for All law, after Montana in 1999. In 2025, California expanded history lessons about the Gold Rush and Spanish colonial periods to include more Native perspectives. And in Arizona, students must encounter at least two social studies courses — one in grade school, another in high school — that include the history of Native Americans in their state.

In Texas, educators, parents and tribal members around the state came together over Zoom at the height of the pandemic to develop the course, which covers lessons relating to geography, arts and culture and the contemporary achievements of Indigenous peoples around Texas and the country. The content includes sections about pivotal Supreme Court cases on tribal affairs, boarding schools and Stephen F. Austin’s Indian extermination policies in addition to topics like mascots and Indigenous scholarship in research.

The course’s creators — 22 people from Indigenous and non-Indigenous backgrounds — held trainings on its content and teaching strategies for educators interested in adopting the class. Lanette Aguero, the Grand Prairie district’s social studies coordinator, was among them. She attended an ethnic studies conference at Texas Christian University in 2019, which led her to want to bring the class to her district.

While the Native American population in the 27,000-student district is quite small — only about 120 identified as Native American in 2023-24, the most recent year for which data is available — the population of Native Americans in the larger Dallas area is significant. Twelve students in Grand Prairie signed up for the class its first year, 2021, and by 2024 the class had grown to 48 students. In 2024, two other districts, Robstown and Crowley, adopted the course as well.

As one of the first teachers of the American Indian/Native Studies class, Kimberly Rafalski, who is non-Native and a longtime social studies instructor in the Grand Prairie district, said she often felt like she learned alongside her students. Together, they walked through precontact histories and the ongoing stories of Indigenous peoples that are typically left out of traditional textbooks.

Some days were more difficult than others, she said. She recalled leaving school in tears after discussing the history of boarding schools, the image of her own young children in her mind. But throughout the year, Rafalski said, the class grew close through reflection and celebrations of Indigenous perseverance through art.

“There’s a lot of things in this class. They’re hard topics to teach,” Rafalski said. “There’s no sensationalizing any of it.” But, she added, “we’re not going to do trauma. Every time we learn about something difficult, we do something that shows resilience.”

In 2018, when the state education board called for the adoption of ethnic studies classes, most members supported the idea of expanded instruction, but they had differing views on whether that content should be included in separate courses or integrated into existing ones. Supporters of the ethnic studies classes referenced research suggesting that student performance improved by including representation in their textbooks, while others worried a class specializing in specific ethnic groups could be divisive. Ultimately, Texas approved a Mexican American studies course that year, marking the first high school ethnic studies class greenlit in the state and the first K-12 Mexican American Studies course to be approved by a state board of education. The Native studies class was approved three years later, followed by an Asian American studies class in 2024.

Students seemed to like the class: Some 97 percent of the 63 students who responded to a Texas Education Agency survey on the course said they felt “more positive about Native American/Indigenous culture than before taking the class.” One student said the course “helped me by not being afraid of who I am as a Native American.”

Walter Dougherty, a 10-year-old from Conroe Independent School District near Houston who testified in favor of the course, said at the hearing that before AINS, his classes focused more on ancient civilizations than today’s Native Americans.

“People talk about us like we’re gone, but we’re not. I’m right here,” Dougherty said. “My brother and I are Cherokee kids growing up in Texas, and we want people to know our culture and history. … When I learn about my Cherokee family, I feel proud. I feel like I can do anything.”

“I can’t imagine if my son were to never understand about his ancestors,” said Cheyenne Rendon (Diné and Apache), the senior policy officer for the Society of Native Nations and a lifelong Texan who grew up attending San Antonio schools. AINS, she said, “gives me hope that we’re not going to be erased.”

During discussions about reauthorizing the American Indian/Native Studies course, the question of whether it ran afoul of Texas’s latest anti-DEI policies came up repeatedly.

At the hearing, Orlando Lara, cofounder of the Ethnic Studies Network of Texas, defended the course’s legality, noting that the federal Department of Education said in an April 2025 letter that “American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian history is not classified as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or critical race theory (CRT).” Under this direction, Native Americans represent distinct political identities as members of sovereign tribal nations, nonspecific to racial or ethnic classifiers.

But board members continued to press Lara over the technical definitions of race and ethnicity as they questioned how to interpret the latest state legislation.

Because of a lack of guidance from the Texas Education Agency on the “controversial issues” legislation in 2021, Lara said later, “for a long time, a lot of districts didn’t know what would get them in trouble with the law.” To counter this, he said, the Ethnic Studies Network is “trying to get out there that there’s no reason to fear teaching the class.”

There were other objections to the course too. State school board member Julie Pickren, R-Pearland, said materials used in the class depicted “President George Washington as a terrorist” and lessons about boarding schools were “accusing our Christian missions and churches of kidnapping and sending kids to reeducation camps.”

Pickren did not respond to interview requests. Her comments about George Washington appeared to refer to an online resource from academic publisher ABC-Clio, which described his 1779 campaign against Iroquois villages siding with the British in which he instructed the army “to rush on with the war-whoop and fixed bayonet” because nothing would “disconcert and terrify the Indians more than this.”

Audrey Young, a Republican school board member who represents the Houston area, shared similar concerns. She argued that 2024 curriculum standards requiring “suitable” educational materials to promote patriotism, lawful activity and other values should apply to innovative courses like the AINS class. “Currently, the suitability standards aren’t required” for innovative courses, Young wrote in an email. “But I do believe that if courses are being taught to students, then they should have to follow ALL the laws.”

Pickren and Young were among the five board members who voted against the class, but another nine members voted in favor. Those supporters noted that the AINS course materials had undergone a series of reviews and further deliberation was unnecessary.

“It is Texas history,” Gustavo Reveles, a Democrat who represents El Paso and other predominantly Hispanic border communities and who voted for the course, said in an interview. “A child can see themselves represented, can see themselves as members of this very amazing state and country, not just because of George Washington, not just because of Abraham Lincoln, but because of his people that look like him and talk like him.”

While supporters of the class celebrated the board’s approval, it’s only one step. They are now trying to get the course standards approved as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, which would leave it less vulnerable during review and renewal conversations. As it stands, the class faces another board vote in 2030 at the end of its current five-year innovative course period. Course organizers are also trying to encourage more districts and educators to adopt the class.

After graduating from the Grand Prairie school district last spring, Horn joined his family on the road as he took his place in the family business as traveling circus organizers.

He said the class became a way for him to connect with his culture and family as a descendant of the Potawatomi Nation. Now, he said, he hopes to get involved with his local Native communities and participate in the Texas powwow trail, a Native-run cultural celebration that takes place in several Texas cities each year.

“I appreciate being a part of a community, especially this one,” Horn said. “I know where I’m from, and it means a lot to me.”

Kaiya Little is a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma who has written about a variety of topics highlighting the environment and Indigenous identities in Texas.

This story about Native American history was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.