By: Chief Nyah Akerele
How many African’s and Indigenous individuals can recall our colonial education offering a true perspective on how this country, the United States of America, was founded? How many of us can remember the books we were read as children that offered affirmations of who we were as African or Indigenous people? Who were our childhood heroes or heroines? Who did we aspire to grow up and emulate? What were the causes we adopted so early in life as “noble”, “honorable”, or “brave”? What types of behavior did we view as “criminal”? What types of stores did we find comical? To what did we cling that paralleled to our indigenous cultures? What did we see in the media and read in our children’s books that made us love being us?
Many of us that were born in the late 70s and 80s make up the millennial generation and grew up with Disney, Nickelodeon, Dr. Sues, Marvel superheroes and so forth. Very few of those characters, if any, were African or Indigenous and even if they were, the narrative was skewed to such a degree that it made the oppressor look like the hero, such as in the Disney version of Pocahontas.
Continue reading “The Significance of Colonized Children’s Stories”
