Texas education board member: Native Studies curriculum teaches 'Christian missionaries kidnapped Indian children'
The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) has voted to renew the approval of an ethnic studies course, which one member claims teaches students that Christian missionaries abducted American Indian children.
In a 9-5 vote, the SBOE voted on June 27 to approve the American Indian/Native Studies course for state credit. Advocates for the curriculum have long argued the course should be made an elective in grade schools alongside existing curriculum.
The course is aimed at helping students with “understanding issues and events from American Indian/Native perspectives” and is to “be presented in a manner in which each Native Nation studied is given the same independence and sovereignty as a foreign nation,” according to the Texas Education Agency. Students are also taught to “identify cultural exchanges over time between American Indian/Native peoples and other ethnic communities due to shared histories, such as enslavement, escape, mutual aid, and the sharing of food and music.”
As part of the curriculum, students are expected to “explain the importance of each individual's spirit within American Indian/Native concepts of ‘all my relations’ and compare what the curriculum describes as “egalitarian American Indian/Native concepts” to the “Euro-Western hierarchical concepts that values humans above other life forms.”
While Republican opponents of the curriculum had shared concerns that the course could violate Texas law prohibiting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in schools, Orlando Lara of Ethnic Studies Network of Texas made the distinction between tribal identity and ethnicity. “Tribal identity is not the same as an ethnic group,” Lara told the board. “… American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian history is not classified as ‘[DEI].”
Republican SBOE member Julie Pickren called the vote a “sad day” for Texans, saying the curriculum teaches that “George Washington was a terrorist leader” and that “Christian missionaries kidnapped Indian children and sent them to re-education camps to become Americans and Christians.”
Pickren further lamented that the SBOE “suspended board rules” to take the vote, adding that the curriculum was never distributed for public comment. Board members only had three days to review the 138-page application, which she said was a violation of the board’s rules.
“I'm not sure of the rationale behind approving the vote as I was opposing the course because it contained factual errors, never was available for public review and comment, and potentially violated Texas laws 77 times,” she told The Christian Post. “The potential violations of the law were included in our Board documents for [SBOE] to review, but were never made public.”
Pickren, a conservative Christian who spoke at CPAC in 2022 and has appeared on Fox News and Voice of America, says the ethnic studies course is “offensive to anyone who loves America, loves God, or has an appreciation for a robust teaching of Native American history.”
She believes the curriculum, as approved by SBOE, is “indoctrination, under the name of ethnic studies, to train children to resent the Founding Fathers, resent the birth of America, and resent Christians.”
“It's sad that on the eve of celebrating America's 250th Anniversary, Texas SBOE voted for a course that teaches children to resent the greatest country in the world,” she asserted.
The 15-member SBOE is responsible for taking up revisions to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for social studies about every 10 years, and is tasked with setting statewide standards for over 5.5 million public school students in Texas.
The TEKS have been a source of controversy in recent months.
The SBOE takes up revisions to the TEKS for social studies about every decade. The curriculum sets the standards for how the state’s 5.5 million public school students of all grades learn the subject.
