Everything you wanted to know about Indians and were afraid to ask

What does the research say?

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask by Ojibwe author and scholar, Dr. Anton Treuer, answers reader-submitted questions in a direct, conversational format rather than a chronological narrative. The book’s chapters fill gaps that curriculum research has identified as chronic and widespread.

~ Its Terminology chapter addresses a basic definitional gap — most students cannot distinguish “Indian,” “Native American,” and “Indigenous,” or explain why usage varies by community and context.

~ Its History chapter counters a pattern documented in a 50-state review of K–12 standards, in which Indigenous content is overwhelmingly confined to a pre-1900 context and treated as settled rather than contested (Shear, et al., 2015). Treuer instead treats colonization, the doctrine of discovery, and historical trauma as through-lines connecting past to present.

~ Its Education chapter addresses academic achievement, under- and misrepresentation in the curriculum, and the importance for Indigenous students to see themselves accurately reflected.

Because each question stands on its own, the book functions as a reference text as much as a book read cover to cover, letting a teacher or student enter at whichever gap in their existing curriculum is most pressing.

Why is it important?

These gaps matter differently depending on who is sitting in the classroom. Culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogy scholarship holds that learning is anchored most effectively when content connects to a student’s existing cultural identity, rather than asking students to set that identity aside to access the curriculum (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Gay, 2010; Paris, 2012). For Indigenous students, accurate representation is a precondition for engagement, not an enrichment activity: curriculum offering self-relevant, present-day representations — rather than the flattened, historical stereotypes most textbooks default to — is linked to stronger school belonging (Covarrubias & Fryberg, 2015), while inaccurate, “frozen in time” portrayals measurably depress students’ sense of possibility for their own futures (Leavitt, Covarrubias, Fryberg, & Perez, 2015). Given how wide the achievement and opportunity gaps for Native students already are, accurate reflection is one of the more direct levers available for narrowing them. For non-Indigenous students, the value runs differently: seeing historical events represented through multiple perspectives fosters intercultural understanding, intellectual perspective taking and arriving at both a more accurate and complex truth. Treuer’s book serves both functions — a mirror for Indigenous students, a window for everyone else — in one accessible text.

What are the implications for education?

For curriculum specialists, instructional designers and teachers, the book’s FAQ structure lowers the barrier to entry: a teacher does not need existing expertise in Native history to introduce a unit on terminology, sovereignty, or the doctrine of discovery, because Treuer has already anticipated the questions non-Native readers are hesitant to ask. This makes the text well suited to professional learning as much as classroom instruction, since the standards-gap research places most of the burden for correcting misinformation on individual teachers with little institutional support (Shear et al., 2015). Used alongside the accompanying lesson plans on terminology, the history of Christopher Columbus, pre-1492 Indigenous history, sovereignty and treaties, genocide, and Manifest Destiny, the book can serve as a single anchor text that grounds multiple units in a shared, accurate framework rather than asking students to reconcile a dozen disconnected sources.

Accompanying lesson plans

1. Using Appropriate Indian Terminology
2. Real History of  Christopher Columbus
3. History of Indigenous People before 1493
4. Sovereignty and Treaties
5. Genocide of Indigenous People
6. Manifest Destiny and the Role of Christian Missionaries in the Eradication of Indigenous People

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