Department of Public Instruction to release updated tribal curriculum guides by fall 2024

When the guides, a set of four books, were published from 1997 to 2002, the Department of Public Instruction sent out the first edition to all the North Dakota tribal colleges, and several high schools in the state. The complete set includes volumes on the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, or the MHA Nation, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Spirit Lake Tribe and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. The books contain timelines, pictures, demographics and the history of each tribe. The original version ran from 80 to 180 pages each.

When Nick Asbury, a website content specialist at DPI, was in eighth grade, he recalls the guides being shiny new books at the time. “They only had one copy per teacher, so I was never allowed to touch it,” said Asbury. “I wasn’t allowed to hold any of the books because we knew they weren’t going to be reprinted or available again.”

Some school districts in the state told Asbury that teachers shuffle and exchange their copies across schools to teach a complete set. This time around, DPI wants to print enough copies for a classroom of students, rather than just teachers. Around 25 copies of each book will be ordered for every middle school in the state.

In addition, the department is working with the University of North Dakota and North Dakota State University Press to digitize and create hard copies of the guides. The plan is to make the books widely available for schools to purchase from NDSU Press. DPI will also make these guides accessible and free to students by uploading the latest edition to academic databases, such as UND’s Scholarly Commons.

The updated version will add 30 pages to the books with more contemporary, modern information for each of the four tribal curriculum guides. The books will examine the oil development in the MHA Nation, Standing Rock’s role in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2016 and other current affairs, said Lucy Fredericks, the director of Indian and Multicultural Education in North Dakota.

When Fredericks joined the Department of Education in 2012, one of the first things she wanted to do was update these guidebooks. Due to a lack of funding and bad timing, the project had to wait until this year. “I knew the information in there [the guides] was good information but it was more history and they needed to be updated because since the 1990s so much has gone on within each of the tribal nations,” Fredericks said.

About 10% of North Dakota’s 119,000 students are American Indian, making them the largest enrolled minority population, according to ND Insights. The largest school district is Bismarck Public Schools, with 29 schools serving nearly 14,000 students according to a report by the Public School Review. Based on the report, 7% or 1,014 students in the district are Native.

Fredericks brought the idea of updating the guides back to the table with Asbury in May and they collaborated with the Indigenous Education Coalition to begin working on them. With the assistance of ESSER III funds, money given to states to support students on a wide scale, DPI was finally able to finance the project.

Cheryl Kary, the Executive Director of Sacred Pipe Resource Center, worked on the first edition of the Standing Rock guide from the 1990s and is back as a committee member to assist with the new sets. She said if used correctly, they are one of the best sources of information that teachers can have that is not just approved and accurate, but most reflective of local tribes.

“Being able to update the guides really gives teachers the opportunity to be informed about how they talk about tribes and how they incorporate things that students need to see as a reflection of themselves as well,” Kary said.

For DPI it’s essential to let the Indigenous Education Coalition lead the project since the committee has experience finding and creating resources about the state’s Native communities. “We didn’t want it coming from us [Department of Public Instruction],” said Asbury. “It’s not our history and it’s not our culture. We are a state agency.”

The Indigenous Education Coalition committee is working hard to incorporate input from North Dakota’s tribes. Kary said the committee has organizational meetings and gets feedback from the state’s Indigenous communities. She is familiar with the process after working on the guides in the past, and is now going through a similar process to make sure there is community involvement and feedback from each of the tribes.

“This is kind of the process: work with tribes, go have eyes on it –– they are the ones who get to say what goes in the guides and what should be talked about,” said Kary. “That’s why it’s important for these guides to be updated. I think they work as resources, but they worked for only a very limited run.”

Asbury said the department won’t adjust the content the Indigenous Education Coalition includes, except the legal page, and plans to insert margin notes as an additional resource. According to Fredericks, the work DPI is doing isn’t considered curriculum, but is creating educational resources for students.

“At the state level, we do not develop curriculum,” said Fredericks. “We leave that up to the local school level, but we provide resources that could be used along with developing curriculum or implementing in the classroom.”

In each school district in North Dakota, these guides could be used differently. Fredericks said the guides are compliant with North Dakota SB 2304 and can be used as a framework for the Native American Studies courses required under the state law. It all depends on how educators apply these resources on the state’s tribes into the curriculum.

Depending on funding, DPI plans to update these guides every five to seven years, rather than every 25. Asbury said even if there isn’t money available to continue printing hard copies of the books, they’ll update the digitized versions to keep it free and accessible for students.

“This isn’t just an obligation to North Dakota eighth graders, but everybody, which is why we need to update this information now and moving forward,” Asbury said.