My "Motto"

When I first dedicated myself to finishing what my great-grandfather started four generations before, someone suggested I use a "motto" or "catch phrase" on my FaceBook page to distinguish myself from other writers.

After reading multiple quotes and jotting down possibilities, I chose the phrase "History belongs to those who write it."

Why these words?

My early years were spent making foil shoe buckles for my "pilgrim" costume and turning soggy handprints into "turkey" paintings for our refrigerator door. Safely tucked behind the pantry curtain of my grandmother's kitchen (where she stored stacks of Readers' Digests and National Geographics), I read how the California Gold Rush led to our nation's westward expansion and Manifest Destiny was God's plan for our nation. I absorbed every detail of the art of George Catlin that filled the pages of my family's collection of American Heritage books. Detailed depictions of buffalo hunts and horse races across the prairie left me envying the Lakota and Comanche for their title as "the horse nations."

Over the years, I learned from textbooks and from teachers who referred to their own special editions of the textbooks. Later in my teaching career, I had an opportunity to see the text book adoption process for my state and began to understand that books on the same topic don't always tell the same story.

While researching for my first novel, I found countless stories of our nation's past. Knowing my grandfather's stories, I looked deeper into the archives of history and searched out native authors. Amazingly, I found unfamiliar, but intriguing, stories about the Indigenous people who already had cultures and communities on this continent when our nation's history began. Yet, there was noteworthy conflict between what I found and what I had been taught over the years.

Two distinct images that depict two distinctly different lives. The time is certainly different. Both are the truth, but I had to dig much deeper to find the second. It isn't a picture seen often in public school textbooks.

Parents, don't turn your back on your children's education. Don't take for granted they'll be taught what you want them to believe and value. But also, don't let them grow old thinking theirs is the only "side" of the story.