Resource Review: Honest History Magazine - A Native Story (issue #15)

 Honest History – A Native Story

Honest History bills itself as being simple, researched based history magazines for kids. It claims to be “honest” in how it tells history. They’re really more dishonest than anything. Most of what I’ve seen has been quite Eurocentric and people have reported inaccuracies and problems in some issues like the one about India. The most recent issue is called “A Native Story.” The previews for it made me cringe. I finally got ahold of a copy, so here is my full review.

A major issue throughout is that it uses monolithic language repeatedly. Phrases like “Native American culture,” “Indigenous culture,” “Native American way of life,” and the like, are used throughout. None of these things exist. There are Native American cultures, Native American ways of life, but none of those words should be singular like they are used in the magazine. By doing this the magazine repeatedly contradicts itself. It explains in a few places that there are hundreds of Native nations with their own cultures, but continuously uses monolithic language. So many people do not know that we are not all the same. I have students, children and adults alike, tell me all the time that they did not know there are different Native American cultures. It’s a common stereotype that we are all the same. Children reading this magazine won’t remember the random few sentences that indicate we are different nations and cultures. Instead they’ll remember the dominant, false narrative of a generic “Native American culture.” This magazine perpetuates harmful false ideas by using monolithic language through the whole issue.

Another constant problem is the use of past tense language when it should be present tense. Around 40% of adults in the US don’t know that we still exist. Past tense language about us where present tense should be used is everywhere – in textbooks, literature, movies, tv shows, pop culture….everywhere. The magazine perpetuates yet another harmful myth by using past tense language where present tense should be used. Children reading this will internalize the past tense language because it is used more than present tense and continue to think of us in the past only. I encounter this every time I teach k-12 students and even sometimes with adults.

Starting with the Letter for Young Historians at the beginning it immediately uses monolithic language here. It states that “Native American history” is in high demand. Two issues with this – 1. There is no such thing as Native American history. There are many Native American histories. And 2. We are not just people of history. It then switches to correct plural language saying “cultures” and “ways of life,” but then immediately jumps back to the monolithic language of “Native American culture.” It also says the illustrators depicted Native American “culture” from our own “histories.” Again, we aren't only history. This should be in the present tense. This letter also states that “…many of our ancestors treated the Native people with such disrespect.” First of all, who is “our”? The writers are immediately assuming the readers are all white “Americans.” Secondly, this issue is an ongoing issue. People still treat us with “disrespect” (read – racism, oppression, discrimination, misinformation) today. It is not just someone’s “ancestors” who did this, but modern day people. Lastly, it says “…we hope you enjoy the process of learning about a group that has earned our respect, appreciation, and gratitude.” The word “group” is never correct when talking about Native nations. We are sovereign nations, not “groups.” The word “tribe” is acceptable, but many Natives are moving away from that terminology. Regardless, “group” is never correct.

And now we can leave the first page of the magazine. This isn’t going well already.

Pages 6-7 are things “You Probably Didn’t Know…” The statistics here are inaccurate according to the 2020 census, which was available when this issue was written. There are about 6 million Natives in the US today, not 4.5 million. It states that the “Iroquois designed these types of beds” (referring to bunk beds), but it should say that they invented this. It would be better if they used the term Haudenosaunee instead of Iroquois, too. This page also claims we’ve only been here for 14,000 years (it states “12,000 BC” They’re still using BC and AD for dates instead of BCE and CE). Humans have been in the Americas for way longer. Current evidence indicates more than double that number, to around 30,000 years. Linguistic evidence indicates even longer. There is no reason to continue perpetuating that nonsense when science is finally catching up to what we’ve been saying about how long we’ve been here.

Page 9 is about a Yankton Dakota woman named Zitkala-Sa. It talks about her being brought to boarding schools but then claims she had “opportunities” that she was “given” at a boarding school. This is a horrible distortion of history. Boarding schools were extremely abusive and harmful institutions. Native children were not “given opportunities” at them. Even if they played sports or learned a trade or something, these institutions were nothing but harmful. Again we see monolithic language (“Native American culture”) on this page.

The word “culture” at the bottom of page 12 should be plural. This article, entitled “When Worlds Collide” is pretty decent until page 15. It starts to read very white savior-ish at this point with statements like “realizing they are important members of our communities” and “help them take back their culture and heritage.” (monoliths again!) This is not written from a Native perspective.

Pages 16 and 17 are about “Welcome to My House,” but is only about Native homes of the past. It says nothing about the fact that we live in modern homes today. This is another false idea I encounter every time I teach people about us….that we don’t live modern lives. The top of page 17 says “Do you live in a house? An apartment? A townhome? A condominium? Like you and me, Indigenous Americans lived in all sorts of dwellings that they called home.” (emphasis mine.) Why would this ask modern kids about their modern homes, and then change exclusively to past tense language for us? This should say “Like you and me, Indigenous people live in all sorts of homes.” Then it could say something about homes in the past and show these images. The word “dwellings” is awkward here. How would kids in the US feel if someone wrote about them like this: “Like you and me, white American kids lived in all sorts of dwellings that they called home.” The descriptions of the types of homes are essentially correct, but still all past tense language. For Adobe homes, for example, it says “these houses were made of adobe and straw.” Well, these houses are still made and maintained that way today, so the past tense words are incorrect.

The ”Interview with a Chief Judge, Brooktynn Blood” from pages 18-22 is fine.

Page 24 is an activity page where kids can answer questions to figure out what Native nations are from their area, but it is worded in a ridiculous way. First of all, it says “group” again instead of the correct word “nation.” We.are.not.groups. Then it’s all past tense language – “At one time, it belonged to a specific group of Native American people.” This erases us from the present tense. Then it says you can use “clues” in your area to “help you guess which nation once called your property their home.” This is not okay. No one should be “guessing” this based on environmental “clues” as this suggests. The information is readily available from the nations that are still here whose land it is. Guessing could lead to misinformation and stereotyping. The question prompts then focus on plants and animals in the area, which also perpetuates stereotypes. Why not ask questions about how we have shaped the land around us, like mounds? Why not ask kids if there are any mounds or something nearby? We are not just part of the natural habitat. The last question “Are there Native people still living on the land? Why or why not?” Considering that 70-80% of us do not live on reservations, but all over the US today, the answer to that is “yes.” We still live all over the US. I get that this is leading toward issues of removal and relocation, but it makes it sound like we’re not still everywhere.

Page 27 starts a story called “The Legend of Geronimo.” I do not like this title. He was real, not a legend. I understand how they’re using the word “legend” here, but it still seems to mythologize us. The image on page 27 is a tipi. Some eastern Apache, like my nation, traditionally used tipis and wikiups, but most Apache did not use tipis. In some of Geronimo’s writing, he says “tepee,” but he also says “wigwam” at times, too. I do not know if the lived in tipis and wikiups, or just one or the other, but I feel like a wikiup should be pictured here instead just for broader representation beyond tipis. There are tipis and war bonnets on almost every page of this magazine, perpetuating generic ideas about us. Anyway, it says that Geronimo’s surrender in 1886 was the “final act in a 400 year war between Native Americans and foreign settlers.” It certainly was not. Did the massacre at Wounded Knee just not happen then? That was 1890. Beyond that, the Apache wars lasted until 1924 in the US and 1933 in Mexico. Geronimo’s surrender was no where near the “final act” of these wars. Into present times, we are still fighting for our lands, waters, and rights as Indigenous peoples. Sometimes this is in courts, other times it is still physical like at Standing Rock in 2016. It’s not even over now. There has never been a “final act” in this war.

It mentions his Apache name, but it spells it weirdly. It’s just an English way of spelling it, but I feel like it should be written the Apache way. Goyaałe was his name, but it spells it Goyahkla. Then it says the name means “one who yawns.” This is the most commonly said meaning of his name, but said with a slight change in tone (Apache is tonal) it means “intelligent” and “clever.” I have seen several sources from Apache people that indicate this is the correct meaning of his name, and it would make much more sense. The article says “Like other boys of his tribe, Goyahkla trained from a young age to run fast for long distances…carrying a stone in his mouth to prove to his elders that he breathed only through his nose.” I’ve seen a few sources that say stone, but our Apache teachings today say water. This was not just boys either, but girls as well. Apache boys and girls still train and run this way, with water in the mouth. As a Lipan Apache person, I’ve only been taught water. That’s not to say small stones were never used, but other sources about Geronimo say water as well. Did they even talk to any Apache people for this story? It continues and says that “raiding was a way of life.” This is only true after colonization. It was something our ancestors were pushed into due to circumstances. Pre-contact warfare did happen, but not in the same way. The story doesn’t explain the reason for the raiding.

Moving on from Goyaałe, there is a page of definitions next. The wording for some of them is odd. For “Turtle Island” it says “what some Indigenous cultures refer to as North America.” This wording implies we call the land “North America,” not “Turtle Island.” Another one I don’t like is the one for Reservation. It says it is “land that is reserved for a Tribe under agreement with the government.” Okay, what government? We have our own governments, so they should specify they mean the US government. And beyond that, it should include the fact that these were forced, not just “agreements.” They were established as prison camps under the department of war. The definition for Apache says “a collection of Native Americans in the southwestern United States.” No, we are not a “collection” of random Natives. We are multiple nations of related Athabaskan people. There are many Apache nations down here, not collections of people.

The next article starting on page 36 is about powwows. The origin story of powwows written here is strange. There are several origin stories of powwows, but this tells only one and it isn’t a common one. It should include the most common stories about the origin of powwows. I would say this isn’t really the origin of them. If at all, it may be a small part of it, but certainly not entirely where they come from. Then it says “Long before Europeans arrived, powwows were exclusive.” Well, powwows didn’t happen back then. They’re modern. They have older traditions built into them, but they are not ancient traditions. We have always had ceremonies and other events, social and religious, but they were not “powwows.” The image on this page, page 37, has absolutely nothing to do with powwows. It is a strange choice of image for this topic really. It serves no purpose on this page. It think it’s sort of crass to include with a positive topic like powwows. The image is a painting of a famous photograph that was taken outside of a boarding school. Families had set up tipis outside of a boarding school to try to be near their children, but were barred from being able to actually see them. I see no reason for this image to be associated with this article.

The article also uses monolithic language throughout, like “American Indian lifestyle.” It calls our regalia a “dancer’s outfit.” It is not an “outfit,” it is regalia. At the very least, it could be called “traditional dance clothing” or something, but not “outfit.” The article reads like it was not written by a Native person. It does not use first person language and is inaccurate in terminology and history.

On page 40 we come to an article about Indian Boarding Schools. I will preface this with the fact that I know it was written by Indigenous people who are descended from survivors. I still feel like this article does a disservice to the topic, and maybe even harm. I don’t know if that is a result of non-Indigenous editors, or if the writers were told to tone it down, or what, but it is unfortunately not a good article.

On the first page it talks about why the government did this, but it says absolutely nothing about forced assimilation, racism, white supremacy, or any of the other issues that can absolutely be explained to children. It simply frames it as “Native American families and communities were not teaching their children the same way that others were.” Hold up. Who is “others?” This frames it as if white/US-ian is “normal” and the default. This also frames it as if it is Native people who are at fault for the situation. It says that the government “began noticing” this in the 1800s. I’m pretty sure the US government and people have always noticed this…it was sort of a big appeal to settlers who defected from their own communities to live with Natives. Then it says that the government simply thought that Native kids should “learn English, read classic novels, and train how to be farmers.” This is extreme minimization and erasure. These schools were created because US-ians literally thought Natives were evil and Native children should have the Native beaten out of them. They believed that our cultures themselves would send us to hell and we must be forced to live in a “civilized” way. It was based on racism and white supremacy…not a desire for us to read classic books. Beyond that, many Native nations were already farmers and were the ones that taught Europeans how to farm (and in non-harmful ways). It goes on to say that “the government thought they were not doing a good job at taking care of their children.” Okay yes, but again…because of racism. Racism needs to be explained to young children. Full stop. It should not be danced around like this. And the reasoning went way beyond this as well. It was about trying to make Native kids not native anymore. The slogan was literally “Kill the Indian in him, save the man.” Let’s look at Richard Pratt’s full quote that became this slogan: “A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” It was a tactic of genocide through forced assimilation (look up the definition of genocide if you don’t understand this). This magazine is framing it as simply “different education.” It even calls the boarding schools “special schools.” This makes it sound positive. It’s gross.

Next it says students went home each summer. This was most often not true. The forced assimilation would be undone if they went home each summer. Most kids were kept away for years on end and were not allowed to return home. Many did not return home until they were adults. Beyond that…many simply never returned home. They were killed. Most children would be forced into labor over the summer either at the “schools” or through a “rent-an-Indian” program where white families could “borrow” a child for the summer and were treated as slave labor. So no…most of the children could not “come home for the summer when school was not in session” as the magazine claims. It says that “children would have to travel many days on a train to get there” as if it was voluntary. Again, this is framing it as the fault of Natives. This was kidnapping. Children were forcibly removed from their homes, sometimes at gunpoint, sometimes put in tiny handcuffs, and carted away while everyone screamed and cried. It was trauma, not just travel.

When describing the conditions at the boarding schools, the article is incredibly mild to the point of being dishonest. It says the kids were “punished” for speaking their languages. Children reading this who don’t know of the horrors in these institutions might assume that means they were spanked or given a time out or something. They were beaten, starved, tortured, isolated for days, washed in kerosine. They were not “punished,” they were abused. Children can be told this. I teach this to upper elementary kids regularly. I teach it in a way that is honest, but digestible for them. I get complimented by parents for handling it with sensitivity and care while not sacrificing the truth. There are books and other resources out there that do this for children as well. There is no reason to water it down so much that the truth of it is almost eliminated.

At the very end it says “some students died while away at boarding school” with absolutely no context anywhere in the article as to why this would happen. The article makes it sound like they were at actual schools where they were taught nice things and sometimes punished for speaking their language. Why would kids die if that were the case? Children were murdered in these places. They didn’t just “die.” Framing it in the passive voice takes the responsibility for their deaths off of the responsible parties.

The U.S. history of Native American Boarding Schools — The Indigenous Foundation

Knowing who the authors are, I don’t understand why the article in the magazine is so whitewashed. Did Honest History make them write it this way? Was it edited beyond recognition? Do they really think this was the way it was? I don’t know, but I can’t reconcile how bad this article is with who it was written by.

The next page is a “thinking” activity with questions about the boarding schools. The first one says “What do you think it would be like to live at an Indian boarding school?” How can kids imagine or contextualize this if they were not told how horrific these “schools” really were? This is completely inappropriate to ask, especially considering the article doesn’t actually tell what they were like. The rest of the questions can’t really be answered based on the article either. Without being told the actual truth about Indian boarding schools, kids cannot possibly answer questions like “How do you think boarding schools affected Native American culture?” (More monoliths!) This was grossly mishandled.

Page 48 starts an article entitled “Horse Nation: The Horse in Indigenous Culture.” Can we spot the problem here? That’s right! More monolithic language! The entire article is written in past tense language when it should be almost entirely written in the present tense. Aside from things that are direct statements about a point in history only, the rest of the information is still current and relevant. Some examples: 

“For many Native peoples, horses were not seen as animals, but as relatives.” This should say “For many Native peoples, horses are not seen as animals, but as relatives.”

“…their owners honored them in return. Many horses wore beautiful masks and blankets….”

 This should say “…their owners honor them in return. Many horses wear beautiful masks and blankets…” because these practices are still done today.

This issue is present throughout the entire article. It ends with a brief paragraph about how horses are “still” revered. Then it says “their costumes are as elaborate as the ones their riders were.” Well, Native people do not wear “costumes” and neither do the horses. We wear regalia and so do the horses.

 This is also obviously not written in the first person voice from a Native perspective.

The next article about Code Talkers is actually good. It even points out that Native children were forced not to speak their languages, but the military wanted them to. This was clearly written in first person voice from a Native perspective.

Toward the end we find “A Timeline of Native History” on pages 60 and 61. It’s horrible. It doesn’t even start until 4500 “BC.” It says “4500 BC: The earliest evidence of homes in North America date from this period.” WHAT?! Even though the magazine initially states that we’ve supposedly been here 14,000 years (hint – we’ve been here for way longer), they now say there is no evidence of homes before 6500 years ago??? That makes absolutely no sense and does not line up with the myriad of archeological sites that date back even beyond 14,000 years ago. Whole towns/villages have been excavated that date back 10,000 years before that 4500 “BC” mark. This is absolutely absurd.

The next date says “2600 BC: People began living in permanent villages in Florida.” WHAT?!? AGAIN?!? These dates are ridiculous. So the sites in Florida that are 8000+ years old just don’t exist? And stated that way it makes it sound like this is the first permanent settlement in the Americas. It makes no sense to point something out in Florida from 2600 BCE and not places that are way older throughout North America.

It then immediately jumps to European contact. First the “Vikings” and then Columbus. The rest of the dates involve Europeans. I get that they’re trying to fit a lot of history into a 2 page timeline, but the whole thing is focused on European interactions and things Euro-Americans did to us. It includes dying of European diseases, the US creating reservations, Native nations fighting Euro-Americans repeatedly, US citizenship, up to Deb Haaland becoming the first Native to serve as a cabinet secretary. One date says “1978: Native Americans are allowed to freely practice their religion.” First, let’s deal with the monolith. That should say “religions” plural. Beyond that, we were allowed to freely practice our spiritual traditions well before that, before Euro-Americans killed us for it. And in 1978 the US did not allow us anything, they stopped preventing us from doing so. It should say “1978: Native Americans finally forced the US to stop preventing them from freely practicing their religions.” The wording of everything on this timeline is Eurocentric. 

And that’s it. There are random puzzles, coloring pages, and whatnot throughout the magazine, so I skipped all of those.

Some overall takeaways:

•       This mentions reservations several times, but never actually explains them. It never uses words that indicate forced confinement.
•        Even though the list of authors includes several Native people, including professors and people with PhDs, most of the magazine reads from Euro-American perspectives. It is mostly not written from Native perspectives.
•        There are pictures of tipis and warbonnets on almost every other page. This perpetuates monolithic singular culture and other stereotypes.
•         The front picture depicts us in the past only and uses plains imagery, which is what everyone pictures when they think of Natives. They could have highlighted something or someone contemporary or something from a different cultural region. Instead they continued the Plains Indians of the past imagery and mythology. The painting is nice and not inaccurate, but it was a poor choice.

I tried to give Honest History the benefit of the doubt even thought I know some of their past issues have been problematic, but they continued to be problematic with this one. Overall, I would say this issue does more harm than good and I do not recommend it.