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When Celestina Castillo filled out the ethnicity forms at her children’s school, she’d always check Latino and Native American. After all, the family is proud of both its heritages.

But because of a loophole in the state’s data collection system, checking Latino or Hispanic meant that her children’s Native American identity was not counted at all, and they would not receive the extra services they’re entitled to. When Castillo learned of this, she stopped checking the Latino box altogether

According to the arcane way California counts its 5.8 million students, students who say they are Hispanic and Native American get counted as solely Hispanic. Native American students who also identify as another race, such as Black, white or Asian, are counted as “two or more races,” not Native American.

The problem affects all multiracial students, but it’s especially pronounced among Native Americans because the majority are multiracial. It’s resulted in an undercount of Native American students by as much as 90%, advocates said.

“If someone is Black, or Asian, or white, they’re counted that way,” said Castillo, a director of a college learning center who lives in Los Angeles. “Why does it not count if someone is Native American? That’s not OK. It feels like erasure.”

More services, fewer stereotypes

Last year California schools said they had 24,822 Native American students, but the actual number may be as high as 156,000, according to an Assembly report on a new measure, , that seeks to fix the problem. If those students were identified, they’d be entitled to cultural services and other programs that could help them succeed in school.

A more accurate count could also change the public perception of Native Americans generally, according to Assemblymember James Ramos, the San Bernardino Democrat who authored the bill. Instead of being thought of as rare or even extinct, the public could see that Native Americans are everywhere, Ramos said.

“We’ll start to see the true picture of Native Americans in California,” said Ramos, a member of the Serrano/Cahuilla tribe. “Native American students should be able to stand up in the classroom and say who they are and be proud of it.”

Changes in the U.S. Census

There’s a long history of the government marginalizing Native Americans in California, particularly in schools. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, not long after , the federal government forced thousands of Native American children in California into , where they were forced to speak English and abandon their cultures.

Things started to change in 1970 when the U.S. Census Bureau started improving the way it counted Native Americans. Now, Native Americans can write in their tribal affiliation or list themselves as multiracial, and still be counted as Native American. Although Native Americans are more than any other ethnic group, the census changes resulted in a tenfold increase in the official number of Native Americans in the U.S. In 1960, Native Americans only made up .3% of the population. In 2020 they were almost 3%.

The improved census data also revealed that California has more Native Americans than any other state. More than 760,000 people in California identify as Native American, with most living in urban areas like Los Angeles.

Ramos’ bill would allow Native American students to write in the name of their tribe on school forms and identify as Native American plus another race, if applicable. The hope is to give a more comprehensive, more nuanced view of California’s Native American student population, allowing them to get extra services regardless of their biracial identity. So far, the bill has no opposition.

‘We’re in the modern world, too’

Shannon Rivers, who works on education issues for the Los Angeles-based California Native Vote Project, said an accurate count of Native Americans is essential to dispel stereotypes and bring public awareness to issues affecting Native American communities.

“In the eyes of many Americans, there’s still this image of Native American people from the past, from the 1800s,” said Rivers, who is a member of the Akimel Oʼodham tribe in Arizona. “That history is important, but we’re in the modern world, too. We’re doctors, lawyers, scientists, artists, educators.”

He’s hopeful that Ramos’ bill will improve conditions generally for Native American students in California schools. With more accurate student counts, schools could get more to provide extra services, such as tutoring, to Native American children. More schools could host events and curriculum centered on Native American history and culture.

When Ramos was growing up in San Bernardino, he remembers staring at the ethnicity form at school and not knowing what bubble to fill. His mother was Native American but she was labeled “white” on her birth certificate. His father, also Native American, was labeled “Hispanic.”

“Were we white or Latino? I didn’t know. We had to accept whatever the school told us we were,” Ramos said. “I’d go home and ask, ‘Are we Caucasian?’ That started a whole other conversation. It was confusing.”

Castillo, a descendent of the Tohono O’odham tribe in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, said that as a child, she thought everyone was Native American. But when she started school she realized that very few people identified as she did, and worse, it was stigmatized.

Years later, she saw her own children singled out as oddities. One day her son, who had long hair, was dressed for a Native American dance and another child pointed and said, “Look, mom, it’s an Indian!”

“My son felt like a dinosaur or a unicorn, like we didn’t exist,” Castillo said.

By leaving the ethnicity question blank on school forms, Castillo knew it meant her children would not receive extra services they’re entitled to, either at the charter school they attend or through Los Angeles Unified.

“That angered me,” Castillo said. “I’m hoping that this bill will help make Native students visible to local and state education policy makers.”

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“We’re not extinct,” the young student ventured, nervous about contradicting the lesson, but feeling she had to speak up. “I’m a Narragansett.”

No response came from her teacher or classmates, recalls the Chariho Regional School District alum, who graduated in 1986.

“It just didn’t matter,” she told �鶹��Ʒ. “You were insignificant.”

Now, decades later, Baker has two children in the same school system who have navigated similar experiences of hurt and invisibility. Sometimes, the racism has been overt, like when a classmate muttered the N-word at her daughter in middle school. But more often, it comes in the form of quiet erasure and inaccurate tropes.

“In history class, it’s mostly the history of the colonizers,” said her daughter Nittaunis Baker, 19, who graduated from Chariho High School in spring 2021 and now attends the University of Rhode Island. 

“We didn’t really talk about Native people that much,” she told �鶹��Ʒ.

Even now, as the topic of how to teach U.S. history in schools is receiving an unprecedented level of public attention, Indigenous parents say the debates still largely exclude lessons on Native people. 

“It’s [been] very Black/white centric,” said Samantha Cullen-Fry, a member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe who has two young children in the West Warwick School District. She agrees that highlighting the Black experience is important, especially in wake of the police murder of George Floyd. But efforts to diversify K-12 curricula are incomplete, she says, if they fail to accurately teach about Native people. 

When English colonists first came to New England in the 17th century, the Narragansett people had been living in the region for some 30,000 years — making the vast majority of North American history, chronologically speaking, Indigenous history. In the following centuries, Native people have continued to live in the region.

“There is no United States history, there is no Rhode Island history, without Indigenous history,” the West Warwick mother told �鶹��Ʒ.

Across the country, fights over critical race theory have elevated conversations over social studies curricula to the central stage in many . CRT is not an ideology, but rather a scholarly framework that views racism and inequality as ingrained in law and society. Still, in Oklahoma, a bill to restrict its teaching led to the removal of classic books such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Raisin in the Sun from reading lists, according to a recent ACLU lawsuit. In Texas, the crackdown prompted a school administrator to . 

The Ocean State has emerged as a hotbed for the controversy. Over the summer, a South Kingstown mother made national headlines for filing more than investigating if the district taught terms like “systemic racism,” “white privilege” or the “1619 Project.” Education writer Erika Sanzi, a former Rhode Island teacher and school board member, has become and other curricular changes her group, Parents Defending Education, see as divisive.

And although Rhode Island was not one of the to enact laws restricting teaching on race and gender, a bill to do so was introduced by state legislators in spring 2021, though it failed to pass.

Its author, Rep. Patricia Morgan, did not respond to questions from �鶹��Ʒ asking whether topics such as the , which took place just miles outside the Chariho school system’s present day boundaries, would be among the “” that the bill sought to ban. In the event, 1,000 English colonial soldiers, joined by about 150 Pequot and Mohegan soldiers, attacked and burned a Narragansett stronghold, killing hundreds, including women and children. In late October, the Rhode Island Historical Society transferred the 5-acre South Kingstown site back to the Narragansett Indian Tribe, nearly three and half centuries after the deadly event.

In Chariho schools, where more than 9 in 10 students are white, alumni of the district who are Indigenous and graduated in recent decades have recounted experiences of being by their counselors. In nearby Narragansett Regional School District, Cullen-Fry had to spend a post-grad year doing unnecessary pre-college work, she said, because her counselor did not send in her paperwork, assuming she couldn’t afford higher education. The experience, she learned later at a high school reunion, was shared by numerous peers of color.

Chariho Assistant Superintendent Michael Comella said he was not aware of Indigenous students having had issues with the district’s college counselors in the past, but mentioned that the school system is working with local Narragansett leaders to improve school policy and providing professional development sessions on equity and inclusion for teachers. He said teachers typically cover the Great Swamp Massacre in fifth grade during lessons on King Philip’s War. 

“The district remains committed to ensur[ing] that we account for all important information and history as it relates to our tribal community,” he wrote in an email to �鶹��Ʒ.

Though there is much more work to do, the elder Baker appreciates that the Chariho district has made some efforts to better serve its Native students. The high school has a on staff and, recently, has begun engaging in conversations with Indigenous parents about further improvements.

“This isn’t about bashing the Chariho school district,” she said. “This is about recognizing that there are issues that have affected past and present generations of Indigenous students who have attended this school system and they need to be addressed on behalf of present and future generations.”

Chariho has formed an that has been meeting since the fall of 2020 in pursuit of more equitable school policies, practices and curricula. Some residents, such as the Bakers, say that the changes are sorely needed, but others staunchly oppose them.

“I do not support, at this point, the anti-racism task force,” audience member Jim Sullivan said during public comment at a Nov. 9 . “I am concerned about their bringing racism into the Chariho system.”

“We are not domestic terrorists,” he added, referencing escalating tensions nationwide at board meetings that recently prompted the National School Boards Association to send a letter to the White House requesting increased support and security.

The pushback does not phase endawnis Spears, who recently joined the Chariho School Committee after a member’s resignation. Spears, who does not capitalize her first name, is a member of the Navajo Nation, with ties also to the Chocktaw, Chickasaw and Ojibwe people. Diverse perspectives, she believes, are necessary to the development of all children.

“I want to ensure that teachers have everything they need to prepare their students — all of their students — to be able to navigate citizenship in the United States,” she told �鶹��Ʒ. “That includes Indigenous histories.”

“The lack of nuance around Indigenous histories also is a form of erasure,” she added. “It continues the process of erasing Native people from this landscape.”

Statewide, Lorén Spears, executive director of the Tomaquag Museum for Indigenous history, culture and arts in Exeter, Rhode Island and related to endawnis Spears by marriage, believes officials must work to better represent the state’s Native students.

“I think it’s been very teacher-by-teacher, the improvement, rather than the system of education improving,” she said on a of the Boston Globe’s Rhode Island Report podcast. “I would like to see, you know, the Department of Education really take an active role in ensuring that the history is inclusive and includes Native people.”

State social studies standards do not stipulate that schools teach specific aspects of Native history or culture, said the Rhode Island Department of Education, instead leaving those decisions up to districts.

“If materials [that districts] use presently from a publisher do not adequately address Indigenous representation, [the state education department] would strongly encourage school leaders to develop materials they can use to meet the standards,” Communications Director Victor Morente wrote in an email to �鶹��Ʒ.

Accurately representing Native Rhode Islanders means addressing certain truths that may be difficult, said the younger Baker. But covering those facts in schools, rather than mythologized narratives of harmony between colonists and Native people, doesn’t mean placing blame on any students, she said.

“The establishment of this country was pretty much the murder of a lot of Indigenous people, including my ancestors,” she said. “I don’t think that [white] kids should feel ashamed because it’s not really them. It’s their ancestors.”

It’s only shameful when students shy away from those histories, she believes. “If they refuse to acknowledge that that happened, then you kind of become complicit in not recognizing the struggles that [Indigenous] people went through.”

In school, the only time she remembers a lesson on Indigenous people was a brief mention in fifth grade around Thanksgiving. She doesn’t recall any lessons on the Great Swamp Massacre. Additionally, in high school, outside of class, she had a teacher who held a reading group focused on Native sciences, which discussed a book written by a member of the Potawatomi Nation. She enjoyed the experience, and wishes there could be official courses devoted to such topics. 

“Even having a class just on the history of Indigenous peoples, like how they have classes on ancient Greek and Roman things, that would be really cool,” said the college freshman, who is studying marine biology. She receives free tuition at URI thanks to her status as a member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe.

Teachers can cater Indigenous history and culture to learners of any age, said Cullen-Fry, who works as an educator at the Tomaquag Museum. For example, many classes visit the museum in November, Native American Heritage Month. She corrects the youngsters’ misconceptions about Thanksgiving, teaching them that it’s traditional in many Indigenous cultures to celebrate 13 Thanksgivings, one for each of the year’s moon cycles.

States such as Oregon have moved in recent years to require that schools teach , and to bring tribal educators .

But until such shifts, large and small, are incorporated into Rhode Island schools, the Baker family will celebrate progress on a more personal level.

When Nittaunis walked across the graduation stage in May 2021, she was adorned with tribal jewelry and ornamentation, passed down from her ancestors. Her mother, after so many of her own personal experiences of feeling that her Indigenous identity was erased by the world around her, wanted people to know: Another Indigenous child just graduated from Chariho High School.

The proud message was simple.

“Society doesn’t think that we’re here,” the elder Baker said. “We are here.”