Chicano Studies

Foundational

Fairytales and the

Lies They Tell On

Books, Children and

Truth by Oriel

María Siu, PhD

August 24, 2022 · Last Real Indians

Only four books survived

There used to be a time in occupied America

when only whites were allowed to write, read, and

publish books. In fact, when Europeans started

occupying the continent in 1492, one of the first

things they did was burn the thousands of existing

books Indigenous people had written in an

attempt to destroy peoples' existing relationship

with books and their contained knowledges.

According to those initial colonizers, destroying

the written ensured we lost access to writing, to

our ways of thinking, and to centuries-old

acquired knowledges on mathematics, medicine,

astronomy, maps, history, plant science, poetry,

literatures, and even tax-records. Only four books

survived the first 100 years of the occupation, in

h i i Thi

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the entire continent. This was a process

Europeans paired with genocide of Indigenous

populations, bringing the then existing

population of Abya Yala (termed "America" by

the colonizers) from an approximate 100 million

people in 1492, to 2 million by 1592, a fact we

hardly ever get to learn at schools or universities.

One of four surviving books of the Americas | Mexico Maya Codex made

between 1021 and 1154 A.D.

Later, through a series of anti-literacy laws that

made it illegal for enslaved and free people of

color to read or write, -and through the systemic

exclusion of Indigenous, Black, Brown and later

Asian lives from spaces of learning and knowledge

production (as well as reproduction)-, Eurocentric

frameworks of thought and white supremacy

ensured themselves long lasting life in books

published and circulated in the Americas -all types

of books.  With some exceptions, from the 1500s to

the 1960s, whites, and more specifically, white

males, wrote an abundance of racist and sexist

science books, geography books, philosophy,

medical journals, scholastic magazines, the first

world encyclopedias, novels, short stories, plays,

nursery rhymes, and school textbooks, setting the

foundations and theoretical frameworks for the

academic disciplines that structure our school and

university curricula to this day: the Humanities,

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the Social Sciences, and the Sciences.

Masked as objective, "universal" disciplines, these

areas of study are actually grounded in white

supremacist and patriarchal thought, frameworks,

and content.

Guiding the excessive production of books by

white males during those first 450 years of white

settler colonialism in the Americas, was the very

concept of race. Invented by whites post 1492 to

justify genocide against Indigenous populations,

the taking of lands, the systemic oppression of

Indigenous knowledge-worlds, and later to give

logic to slavery and other forms of oppressions

against people of color, the made-up concept of

race is based on the idea that there is one

superior race that can possess, write, study, think

of the world, and thus control it, and four other

"inferior" races who, "lacking the intellectual" or

"civilizatory" "capacities" of whites, can only be

owned, studied, be written about, be thought of,

and thus, be controlled.

Frantz Fanon described the ensuing system of

racism as a hierarchy that can best be understood

along the line of the human. Placed above the

line, are those classified as fully human. Below it,

are those classified as sub-human, or non-human.

Whereas the humanity of those considered fully

human is always granted and recognized, that of

the sub-human is not. Instead, their humanity is

continuously negated, questioned, and/or

diminished. 

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From Crania Americana, 1839. Samuel Morton's research was used to

maintain the status quo in the United States,

which directly meant sustaining the system of slavery and racialized

hierarchy.

During the 1800s and early 1900s, these so called

"men of letters," as these white pseudo-scholars

called themselves, even went around the world

measuring people of color's skulls and brains with

the intent of proving that whites had larger skulls,

and thus a higher intellectual capacity than any of

the other so called four "races." Their

publications were used to justify not just

continued land theft in Turtle Island (North

America), but also further genocide and

oppression of Indigenous populations worldwide

as the United States invaded and colonized

territories in the Caribbean, Latin America, and

Asia in the late 1800s and first half of the 1900s,

meanwhile internally continuing genocidal

policies against First Nations of Turtle Island

through massacres and the American Indian

Boarding school system existing all the way into

the 1970s, a system which is well known to have

been studied and revered by Adolf Hitler.

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“School Begins” Puck Magazine, January 25, 1899 | Depiction of Spanish

American War as U.S. establishes itself as new imperial force in the

Americas directly taking over Spanish ex-colonies| Image also depicts

U.S. educational policies of the time, a period in which children of color

were seen as less than human, animalized as non-intellectual beings, and

were clearly excluded from spaces of learning. In the image, children of

color appear either as complete outsiders, as beings who lack intellectual

capacities, or as white peoples' servants, manifesting the dominant

thought of the time.

The 1886 textbook Children’s Stories of American Progress condemned

slavery as immoral

but also portrayed Africans as inferior to Europeans. The myth of

discovery is also inscribed in this passage. Library of Congress

White males wrote a lot during those first 450

years of occupied America, all the while

illegalizing and/or limiting the capacities of

Indigenous people and people of color to write

and publish.

As a result, the representation of white

patriarchal histories, stories, knowledges,

experiences, perspectives and imaginaries became

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centered in books produced in the Americas, while

Indigenous and people of color's experiences,

histories, stories, knowledges, perspectives, and

imaginaries became decentered, when not entirely

omitted, or as it has also been the case, distorted.

The realm of children's literature and school

textbooks have been no exception to the

expressions, manifestations and developments of

white supremacist patriarchy in the United States.

A Child's Garden of Verses

Written by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Charles

Robinson

published by London J. Lane in 1909

I l i ill i ?

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Inclusion or illusion?

The U.S. Civil Rights moment allowed for more

voices of color to start entering the realm of the

published word, resulting, however, in slow

change. In 2020, for example, a New York Times

study found that between 1950 and 2018, 95% of

all the authors published by major editorial

houses like Penguin Random House and Simon

and Schuster were white. In the world of

children's literature, more specifically, according

to the Cooperative Children's Book Center's data,

between 1985 and 2014, children’s books by

African American authors or illustrators did not

surpass 3.5 percent of annual publications. Much

sparser even, were children's books by and about

Indigenous people, Asian-Americans, Chicanos,

Caribbean Americans, and U.S. Central

Americans, despite the majority of children older

than one born in the U.S., already being children

of color. And as of 2020, U.S. editorial boards,

which decide what gets published, and what does

not, were still over 75% white.

 Quite fortunately, however, during the last five

years a small yet substantial change has been

underway in the world of children's literature. As

we near 2023, children whose histories have been

historically omitted from books and educational

institutions in occupied America can finally see

themselves, and their experiences, in the books

they read. Insistent Indigenous authors, writers of

color, and other marginalized voices, have as of

lately been putting themselves on the line,

creating and publishing inspiring stories that

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deviate away from invisibilizing and perpetuating

stereotypical representations of children of color

and LGBTQ children in spite of the publishing

industry's many obstructions, the racism, and the

patriarchy.

Thus, LGBTQ, Indigenous, Black, refugee, and

all children of color in Turtle Island today can

find characters that look like them in stories that

best speak to theirs. It is a small change because

we are worlds away from fully shattering the 530

years of white supremacy embedded in both the

U.S. book publishing industry and the K-12

public school curricula, with whiteness and

Eurocentric worldviews still being the default in

children's books', textbook imaginaries, curricula

and teaching approaches. Yet it is a significant

change because at least now, you and I, -as a

parent, educator, or as a reader- can find books

by Indigenous authors, writers of color and other

historically marginalized voices in most children's

sections of our public libraries, bookstores, and/or

required school reading lists. 100 years ago, this

was unimaginable. 60 years ago, this was still not

the case. Even 10 years ago, this was not the

norm. 

This inclusion, however, becomes but a mere

illusion when we cannot accompany these

added voices and books with sustained

spaces where children and young ones can

critically and truthfully talk and learn about

the very issues and experiences these books

and voices bring to the fore.

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Classroom discussions explicitly pertaining to

racism, the history of white supremacy, settler

colonialism, and heteropatriarchy, continue to be

as contested and politicized as ever, with book

challenges and bans rising at unprecedented levels

throughout the United States in the last year

alone, and at least 137 state bills currently

pushing for the explicit prohibition of classroom

discussion on sexual orientation, gender identity,

history, and race at both the K-12 and college

levels. Teachers and educators throughout Turtle

Island are losing their jobs for leading

conversations on these topics, some are being

threatened with fines, others are choosing self-

censorship, while others are left with no other

choice but to teach in fear.

But the settler nation has also necessitated

the invention, inscription, and continued

dissemination of certain fairytales in order

to negate, hide, and distort its actual history.

Such fairytales make up the core of the history

and social studies curricula of most K-12

classrooms in the U.S, guiding learners and

educators away from critical conversations on

white supremacy, race, gender constructs, and

patriarchy. These fairytales are so cemented in

students' imaginaries by the time they graduate

high school, that any motivation to question,

think outside of them, or even minimally disrupt

them becomes simply inconceivable. The

fairytales go like this:

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"Columbus discovered America"

"We are a nation of immigrants"

"Racism is a fixed problem of the past"

"July 4th marks the birth of our nation"

"Thanksgiving"

Integral to these fictitious tales is a veneration of

white settler colonialism, genocide, and

patriarchy. And yet they get taught to our

children as truths, the textbook conglomerates

continue publishing them as history, and we are

even required to celebrate each one of them

through annual holidays and dedicated monthly

school curricula.

The "Columbus discovered America" fairytale

ensures all pre-existing life, societies, knowledges,

histories, ways of being, existing, and thinking prior to

the European occupation of AbyaYala are rendered

unimportant to students who learn about the history of

the Americas. Under the Discovery myth, Indigenous

populations are not just "backwards", "submissive,"

"savage", and/or "prehistoric," they are also made to be

"nomadic," implying Indigenous people had no

civilization, no history, and therefore no future. But one

cannot discover what already knew itself as existing.

And the 100 million Indigenous people who lived in

Abya Yala at the time of the 1492 European invasion

surely knew they existed. Yet the "Columbus discovered

America" fairytale is among the first ones taught to

children, often during the Pre-Kindergarten years. It has

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been taught to my own daughter, for example, during

her Pre-K, Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Grades. She

is about to enter 4th grade and has been schooled in

both Los Angeles and now Central America.

 The Columbus discovery myth is certainly a continental

myth. With its dissemination, children are taught to

glorify white settler colonialism while diminishing the

achievements and knowledges of societies that had been

here for thousands of years prior to the arrival of

Columbus, rendering them invisible. With its

dissemination, this October/November standard lesson

also cements colonizers' perspectives as universal,

"objective" truths, serving to altogether avoid

conversation on genocide, Indigenous resistances,

Indigenous world-knowledges, and their severed futures.

The Discovery myth also feeds straight into yet another

myth, that of "Thanksgiving." Both lies render

settlers who committed atrocious acts of genocide and

stole lands as "heroic" "explorers" or "fortunate, well-

meaning individuals" who "befriended" "nomadic,"

"savages," or "worse than heathen" "Indians." These, in

turn, "helped" them get "through a tough winter" in the

"New World." Thus, the fact of genocide and the fact of

land theft are entirely obliterated by these fairytales.

The "We are a nation of immigrants" fairytale is

a grounding lie in America’s classrooms.  Inserted

throughout the K-12 social studies and history

curriculum, it downright erases the fact of genocide of

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Indigenous populations, European land theft of a

continent they then labeled "America", and the

enslavement of millions of African peoples whom were

forcibly brought into stolen lands. Neither Africans nor

Indigenous peoples "immigrated" into the "nation."

 This grounding lie is also connected to the July 4th

myth, which erases the actual foundations of the settler

nation, placing it in 1776, as opposed to placing it at

its actual birth date: genocide, land theft, and the

enslavement of those whom were forced to literally build

the nation beginning 1492.

The "Racism is a fixed problem of the past"

fairytale is presented every school year through dedicated

Civil Rights Era lesson plans mostly centered on the

achievements of select Black individuals, "heroes,"

"heroines," and specific moments from 1954 to 1968 -

Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King Jr.,

Rosa Parks, the Montgomery bus boycott, sit-ins, and

nonviolent black protests. The fairytale selectively omits

other moments, organizations, and figures such as

Malcolm X's, as well as the transcendental

contributions of Natives, Asian-Americans, Puerto

Ricans, Chicanos, white women and men to the period.

Furthermore, the fairytale not only presents an existing

and deeply rooted structural problem as a solved

situation, "a thing of the past," but it also presents the

"solved" problem of racism in a limiting Black and

white binary, which overlooks the ongoing systemic

relationships of white supremacy to the varying

communities of color inhabiting Turtle Island,

Indigenous communities, white communities, and the

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land we stand on. From this fairytale, children learn

that the U.S. "once made a horrible mistake against the

Black community but solved it, first by freeing enslaved

people, and then by allowing them to vote and ride a

bus" - thus fully negating foundational genocide, land

occupation, and the enduring operations of white

supremacy.

 Insisting on teaching the fairytales are the same

people who oppose teaching the history of white

settler colonialism, race, and gender in the

classrooms because the former is antithetical to

the latter, and vice versa. 

Opponents of teaching these subjects fear that

conversation on these topics admonish all white

people for being oppressors. They further claim

that by avoiding these topics, we "protect" young

ones from "harm," "exposure," "indoctrination,"

"divisiveness," and even avoid them the

"discomfort" of "collective guilt" for the wrongs of

the past. The claims could not be further away

from what actually happens when we have these

conversations with students.

 

“I've been lied to all this time!”

“I never knew this!”

As educator of Ethnic Studies who has mostly

taught first and second year white college

students 18 to 22 years of age in U.S. classrooms,

I have had the opportunity to witness first-hand

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the results of 12 years of such claimed

"protection."

“I've been lied to all this time!” and “I never

knew this!” are usually white college students’

first reactions to the material and discussions they

engage in the Ethnic Studies classrooms, a space

where white students usually have a first

opportunity to discuss white settler colonialism,

race, patriarchy, and the convergence of these

systems in molding our society's power structures.

Most white students feel cheated, lied to, and/or

troubled for not having been exposed to these

essential conversations and pieces of information

earlier. "Protected" is not a word they use to

describe the experience. Neither is "admonished,"

"divided," "indoctrinated" or "exposed."  Guilty

sometimes - guilty for not having known earlier, a

fault not of their own. Yet as we go on to unpack

and understand how white privilege, white

supremacy and patriarchy are, indeed, not faults

of their own, nor their generations', rather well-

designed and entrenched systems we are

conditioned into upholding since the time we are

born, choosing to disrupt these then becomes a

newfound purpose for many students. And the

kinds of questions students begin to formulate

after, unsettle the fairytaled narratives taught to

them since the moment they first entered a

classroom as children.

For white students, engaging in these critical and

informed discussions while breaking away from

lies, is liberatory. It allows them the avenues,

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vocabularies, tools, and critical thinking skills

needed to be able to question officialized

narratives, disrupt engineered silences, and

understand how power works, benefits us, or

obstruct us. These lessons help them make more

unbiased choices in their present and future lives,

-the outcomes of this being truly endless.

For students of color, Indigenous students and

other historically marginalized students, being

able to openly and safely speak about issues that

directly affect their livelihoods and shape their

experiences is life-affirming. For one, they feel

included in their daily environment and

curriculum, helping strengthen their sense of

belonging in a space that was clearly not designed

for them. And second, these conversations in the

classroom help validate them, their histories, their

families', their experiences and their lives, often

resulting in an assuring sense of self and

community.  Simply put, truthful conversations

make students of color, Indigenous students, and

marginalized students feel seen.  

Studies also show that students who have the

opportunity to speak about white supremacy,

race, and gender, specifically in the Ethnic or

Gender Studies classroom, become more engaged

students, resulting in better grades, higher

graduation and retention rates, a better school

experience for historically marginalized student

populations, and enhanced analytical and critical

thinking skills for all.

Against silence

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Against silence

The foundational fairytales of the settler nation

may be pretty stories, but they are also lies. And

as such, they will continue negatively impacting

young ones, harvesting harm, and offering us a

false sense of self, nation, and land.

As a mother to a Black/Indigenous/Chinese child

of the Americas, at stake is always my daughter's

sense of value, belonging, and her sense of power. 

If I am not consistent with counteracting the

fairytales, she loses the opportunity to know the

knowledge-worlds of her ancestors, the incredible

stories of enduring resistances that allow her to be

here today, her infinite potential to be as much a

creator of history, as she is a learner, and the

realities of the land she and her peers walk on.

Knowing history, learning about the ugly of the

past, and offering her the tools to connect past

with present, empowers her in ways the school

curriculum does not. Knowing the past saves her

from a sense of unimportance in our world.

Because for children of color, for Indigenous

children, the curriculum and its many lies can

easily equate to damaging invisibility.

For the past two years, while on book tour, I have

also had the opportunity to engage thousands of

children at schools, libraries, and virtual

classrooms on the very topics of white settler

colonialism, they Discovery myth, and racism.

What I have found is that yes, indeed, children

are perfectly capable of engaging topics

pertaining to the past and involving

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pertaining to the past and involving

violence. They are used to it, anyway. The Civil

War, chattel slavery, World War I and II, and the

Holocaust, to name but a few examples, are just

some of the already required conversations and

lessons of the K-12 core curriculum. And so are

celebrations that involve not just the past, but also

a commemoration of violence -Veterans Day,

Memorial Day.

Why, then, continuing censorship of 1492 in the

K-12 curriculum? Why ban critical discussions on

race and the role of patriarchy in informing and

shaping ideology in the Americas? Why prohibit

conversation on the systemic realities of white

supremacy and its continued negation of

genocide? Why make systemic land theft invisible

in textbooks? And why insist on fake narratives

while impeding educators from engaging honest

ones?

Truth is, an inevitable sense of awareness and

justice forms in the mind of children when they

are presented with truthful histories, narratives

and stories. These stories then inf luence the way

children see themselves, how they make decisions,

and how they interact with life around them, and

with the land.

Our happily ever after, then, will only begin to

occur when we can allow children, and ourselves,

the right to know. In the meantime, banning

children from these conversations will only

continue fattening the fairies' dust-pouches,

vanishing all possibility of restorative

conversations and dangerously moving farther

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conversations, and dangerously moving farther

and farther away from the possibility of justice,

for all.

photo: via twitter @Zelliemani

By Oriel María Siu, PhD

Oriel María Siu, PhD, is a scholar, writer and

educator of Náhuat-Pipil and Chinese descent

born and raised in Honduras, Central America.

She is the author of the award-winning children's

book series, Rebeldita the Fearless, a series that

disrupts the fairytaled narratives of the

foundation story of the Americas and empowers

children to become active agents of change

through the power of our stories. Christopher the

Ogre Cologre, It's Over! and Rebeldita the Fearless in

Ogreland, have been recognized as "absolute musts

for the classrooms," "literary wonders" and

"pioneering" by organizations like the LA Times,

Rethinking Schools, Truthout.Org, and others. A

strong proponent of Ethnic Studies in every K-12

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A B O U T C O N T A C T O U R P A R T N E R S

N E X T

Towards Healing a Message from

Chief Arvol Looking Horse

and college classroom, Dr. Siu's books are helping

educators battle institutionalized racism in the K-

12 curricula all over occupied America.  For

more about the author, visit 

http://www.orielmariasiu.com/.

©Last Real Indians 2020

The New Indigenous Millennium

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