[Music] 0:21 amy parents would say I was a 0:23 natural-born storyteller they would say 0:25 storytelling is in my DNA when they pick 0:29 me up at preschool the preschool teacher 0:31 would come over to them and say Shh 0:34 come here look at this an era would be with a 0:37 gaggle of kids around me in a big circle 0:39 reading them a story from a book that 0:41 was upside down 0:42 who knows God knows what I was telling 0:44 those poor children when I got older I 0:47 loved to read I would read books and 0:50 books and books at grade 1 and 2 I was 0:53 breezing through these books we called 0:54 them readers in that day and these were 0:57 books like Jack and Jill three little 0:59 kittens later on it was Charlotte's Web 1:01 Anna Green Gables and I recently started 1:05 thinking about that and noticed that 1:06 there was a pattern among those books 1:08 that I was reading when I was in 1:10 elementary school so as I do I put the 1:13 question out the Twitterverse and asked 1:15 them what did you read when you were in 1:17 elementary school 1:18 what were the books that you read and 1:20 all 500 of them who knew that was a the 1:23 most popular tweet I've ever done in my 1:25 life about books all 500 of them had the 1:29 same kind of books that I read all books 1:32 written by white people 1:35 none diverse and definitely none 1:37 indigenous the story that was being told 1:40 about myself and my childhood was that 1:43 we weren't here in fact we were erased 1:46 from every single institution that 1:49 existed we were erased from school we 1:51 erased from news 1:53 we were erased from business we were 1:54 erased from the law and even in films 1:56 there were the indigenous people who 2:00 were played by Italians painted in brown 2:04
skin running around playing an archetype 2:06 of indigenous people living in the past 2:09 frozen in time I was really excited 2:11 2:15 about 2:15 Highschool not because i'm a big student 2:19 nerd whatever but because I was excited 2:22 to learn more about my people I was like 2:25 okay there's history there's social 2:26 studies there's got to be more about my 2:29 people in these books that will make me 2:30 proud when I turn the pages so I opened 2:34 up the social studies book went to the 2:36 one page on indigenous people and there 2:39 at the bottom of the page was one 2:40 paragraph with one solitary picture this 2:44 is out of an entire subject of social 2:46 studies and history combined and the 2:50 picture was black and white and Indian 2:53 in a loincloth standing beside a canoe 2:56 and the paragraph was explaining