Here from Indian Country Today, and an excerpt:
Four books dealing with Native history that were supposed to be introduced during the spring semester have been taken off the elementary-school curriculum in Juneau in the wake of concerns about their accuracy and sensitivity.
The books, published by McGraw-Hill Education, were removed after a number of people in the community said the volumes’ fictional depiction of events such as boarding schools and the Trail of Tears did not do the tragedies justice, and in fact distorted them. The materials were scheduled to be part of a weeklong unit in the fourth-grade language arts curriculum, Alaska Dispatch News said.
While copies of the four books—The Visit;Our Teacher, the Hero, andContinuing On, by Terry Miller Shannon, plusHistory Detectives, by Sandy McKay—will remain at the district office for perusal, they will be accompanied by a seven-page critique by Paul Berg, a curriculum developer and cultural specialist at the Goldbelt Heritage Foundation. His report played a major role in the 7–2 vote by a school-district committee to remove the materials.
Even as a new curriculum is developed in collaboration with Goldbelt and the Sealaska Heritage Institute to fill the void, Juneau Schools Superintendent Mark Miller said this affords a unique opportunity to interact with people who actually lived the events. At his December 4 press conference announcing the decision, he was accompanied by three Native elders who had attended boarding schools,Alaska Public Radio station KTOOreported.
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