Growing up in Charlestown, Rhode Island, Chrystal Baker remembers reading a textbook in history class that said the Narragansett Indigenous people, who have lived in southern New England for tens of thousands of years, were extinct.

“We’re not extinct,” the young student ventured, nervous about contradicting the lesson, but feeling she had to speak up. “I’m a Narragansett.”

Sign up here for The 74’s daily newsletter. Donate here to support The 74's independent journalism.

No response came from her teacher or classmates, recalls the Chariho Regional School District alum, who graduated in 1986.

“It just didn’t matter,” she told The 74. “You were insignificant.”

Now, decades later, Baker has two children in the same school system who have navigated similar experiences of hurt and invisibility. Sometimes, the racism has been overt, like when a classmate muttered the N-word at her daughter in middle school. But more often, it comes in the form of quiet erasure and inaccurate tropes.

“In history class, it’s mostly the history of the colonizers,” said her daughter Nittaunis Baker, 19, who graduated from Chariho High School in spring 2021 and now attends the University of Rhode Island.

“We didn’t really talk about Native people that much,” she told The 74.

Even now, as the topic of how to teach U.S. history in schools is receiving an unprecedented level of public attention, Indigenous parents say the debates still largely exclude lessons on Native people.

Read the full article about native people and the history debate by Asher Lehrer-Small at The 74.