In the past few years, arguments have raged in school board meetings and legislatures over what history we should teach our youth. Much of this discussion has surrounded Black history. And, as with many political debates, Native Americans have been noticeably absent in arguments for reforming social studies programs.

This comes down to a national ignorance as to what has happened to Native Americans since European colonization. American history courses in K-12 education generally cover only specific parts of Native American history rather than the full history, meaning most Americans gain little context for the current conditions of Native peoples.

The latest example comes from conservative backlash against another Ben and Jerry’s social initiative. This Independence Day, the ice cream company highlighted protests from the same day in 2020 in support of Indigenous Americans. The protests blocked the path to Mount Rushmore for hours to prevent then-President Donald Trump from speaking there.

That protest was part of a greater “Land Back” movement by Indigenous tribes across the continent who are demanding their ancestral land be returned to them. To many Americans, this seems like another form of reparations for issues from centuries ago. 

Steeped in the same contempt as the conversation around reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans, much of the backlash claims these issues are so far removed from the modern day that they cannot be indicative of a group’s current conditions.

Some contrarians like South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem claimed Ben and Jerry’s didn’t understand American history. Others took a more aggressive approach, such as Ashley Sinclair who, in a tweet, simply said: “It wasn’t stolen. It was conquered. Winners win.”

Barring the fact that we should not be justifying the slaughter of thousands in the modern day, this point doesn’t apply to Mount Rushmore in the slightest.

The Black Hills, where Mount Rushmore is located, were originally granted to the Great Sioux Nation, a group of several Indigenous tribes, in the 1868 Treaty of Ft. Laramie. But, when gold was discovered in those sacred hills, the U.S. government began mining and eventually redrew the maps without Indigenous consent in 1877. 

The Black Hills is only one example. The treaties signed with Native tribes were trite and convoluted, with multiple treaties often contradicting each other. It wasn’t until 1920 — nearly 50 years after the United States decided to stop signing treaties —  that Native tribes could sue for contract violations in the U.S. court system.

Nearly a century after the U.S. violated the Treaty of Fort Laramie, the Supreme Court said of the violation, “A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.”

Treaty violations are not the only shameful aspects of American dealings with Native tribes. Much of the land that makes up Native reservations is not held by the members of the tribes on the reservations.

The Dawes Act in 1887 allotted a limited amount of land to Native families, who were only granted four years to establish their claims. If a family didn’t prove they could claim land soon enough, they missed out entirely, ceding their land to the federal government, which in turn sold the land to white settlers. 

The federal government held any unsold land in trust, meaning no commercial or residential interests, Native or non-Native, could be built on that land. Because of this, most land on reservations is white-owned while Native-owned lands have become massive food and banking deserts. 

To this day, most land on reservations is undeveloped. This leads to skyrocketing unemployment, such as on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which has the second lowest life expectancy in the Western Hemisphere and a staggering 80% unemployment rate.

Native culture also goes unprotected by the federal government, such as the religious use of peyote or marijuana in Native American churches. Meanwhile, evangelical Christians can legally discriminate against queer people in business.

Most of these topics are absent in public education. Even at NC State, the Native American History minor is in limbo.

The avoidance of an intrinsic part of American history has led to some of the most egregious forms of systematic discrimination in the Western world, on par with South African apartheid and the Jim Crow South. 

It’s time our public education at every level begins teaching the full story of Native American tribes. Only then can we address the entirely American-made crises these people face and form a better United States for every citizen rather than a select few.