Growing up, Tudor and her family had been called “Prairie N—.” School teachers called her family “stupid” when her sister attempted to correct false information about American Indians being taught from the textbook. Even after she became a curriculum consultant and Indigenous educator, teaching both young students and other teachers about American Indians, Tudor says she’s been asked if she lives in a tipi or if she uses electricity.
For the past four years, Tudor has been working with a committee of educators, professors, and members of 14 different Native Nations to develop the American Indian/Native Studies Ethnic Studies elective course for Texas’ public high school students.
“The American Indian Native studies course that we’ve developed is heavily focused on modern Indigenous people, both in Texas and beyond because we do still exist,” Tudor said. “We are contemporary people, are we still have our cultures and our languages and our traditions, and those still influence and inform who we are as people today. It’s important to understand that this isn’t just about history. When people only learn about our histories, they have no modern context to connect us to.”
Since the State Board of Education (SBOE) initiated the process in 2018, the course standards have received input from members of 24 Native Nations, and they’ve been piloted by Grand Prand Prairie ISD for the past three years. In August 2022, the course standards were to be adopted into the TEKS, but the process was derailed when a conservative backlash also forced the SBOE to delay updating the state’s social studies curriculum until 2025. The SBOE’s committee on instruction sent it to the full board in September, and this past November, SBOE members scheduled its first reading in January, on track for the course to be offered in the 2024-25 school year. But just days before the State Board of Education was to have its first reading during its meeting scheduled for this week, SBOE Chairman Aaron Kinsey, newly appointed by Governor Greg Abbott, pulled the item from the agenda.
Other SBOE members told the Texas Observer they’re concerned that approval of the course, which requires at least three board meetings and a public comment period, will not be completed in time to offer it to Texas students the next school year or that the process may be stalled indefinitely. Kinsey told members he needed more time to review the course and did not want “drama or controversy” at his first meeting as the board’s chair.