Making Crash Course Native American History

In U.S. schools, Native American History tends to be a very small portion of the curriculum. As one Navajo/Hopi student wrote in 2019, “[...] of the U.S. history books used in my classroom, there are 307 pages and only 10 pages talk about Natives.”

Not only that, but curricula tend to present Indigenous peoples “as a long since forgotten episode in the country’s development,” according to analyses like this one.

But, here’s the thing: Native American history is present and ongoing. And neither U.S. history, nor the history of the present, is complete without it. So, our greatest hope for this series is that it will help fill an important gap — a gap that for too long has been stuffed with stereotypes, half-truths, and misinformation.

With leadership from a diverse team of Native experts, Navajo comedian Che Jim as our host, plus Native artists, and more, this series will share countless perspectives and thousands of years of context about a history that Native people are still writing to this day.