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 in the Native American studies course, 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 high school 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 Texas board of education had in 2018 called for the creation of other ethnic studies classes, including Native American studies courses. 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 Native American studies 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.”

Read the full article about saving a Texas Native American studies course by Kaiya Little at The Hechinger Report.