A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike. I fought with my classmates on a daily basis. They wantedme to stay quiet when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers, for volunteers, for help. We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid. Most livedup to those expectations inside the classroom but subverted them on the outside. They struggled with basic reading in school but could remember how to singa few dozen powwow songs. They were monosyllabic in front of their non-Indian teachers but could tell complicated stories and jokes at the dinner table. Theysubmissively ducked their heads when confronted by a non-Indian adult but would slug it out with the Indian bully who was 10 years older. As Indian children,we were expected to fail in the non-Indian world. Those who failed were ceremonially accepted by other Indians and appropriately pitied by non-Indians.I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky. I read books late into the night, until I could barely keep my eyes open. I read books at recess, thenduring lunch, and in the few minutes left after I had finished my classroom assignments. I read books in the car when my family traveled to powwows orbasketball games. In shopping malls, I ran to the bookstores and read bits and pieces of as many books as I could. I read the books my father brought homefrom the pawnshops and secondhand. I read the books I borrowed from the library. I read the backs of cereal boxes. I read the newspaper. I read the bulletinsposted on the walls of the school, the clinic, the tribal offices, the post office. I read junk mail. I read auto-repair manuals. I read magazines. I read anythingthat had words and paragraphs. I read with equal parts joy and desperation. I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying tosave my life.Despite all the books I read, I am still surprised I became a writer. I was going to be a pediatrician. These days, I write novels, short stories, and poems. I visitschools and teach creative writing to Indian kids. In all my years in the reservation school system, I was never taught how to write poetry, short stories ornovels. I was certainly never taught that Indians wrote poetry, short stories and novels. Writing was something beyond Indians. I cannot recall a single timethat a guest teacher visited the reservation. There must have been visiting teachers. Who were they? Where are they now? Do they exist? I visit the schools asThe Joy of Reading and WritingSuperman and Me - latimes http://articles.latimes.com/print/1998/apr/19/books/bk-42979

My father, who is one of the few Indians who went to Catholic school on purpose, was an avid reader of westerns, spy thrillers, murder mysteries, gangsterepics, basketball player biographies and anything else he could find. He bought his books by the pound at Dutch's Pawn Shop, Goodwill, Salvation Army andValue Village. When he had extra money, he bought new novels at supermarkets, convenience stores and hospital gift shops. Our house was filled with books.They were stacked in crazy piles in the bathroom, bedrooms and living room. In a fit of unemployment-inspired creative energy, my father built a set ofbookshelves and soon filled them with a random assortment of books about the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, the Vietnam War and the entire 23-bookseries of the Apache westerns. My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well

Telling one’s truth, or testimonio, is a literary genre with a long history in indigenous and Latinx communities (González, Plata, García, Torres, & Urrieta, 2003; Pérez Huber, 2009). Testimoniando is a practice of counterstorying (Handsfield & Valente, 2016; El Ashmawi, Sanchez, & Carmona, 2018). It derives from a legacy of reflexive narratives of liberation used by people throughout the world (Reyes & Rodríguez, 2012). This type of storytelling entails a first-person account, draws on experiential knowledge, and articulates an urgent voicing of something to which one bears witness. Testimonios have the unique characteristic of being a political and conscienticized reflection that is typically spoken. The goal of a testimonio is collective. The narrator, or testimonialista, names oppression to appeal for actions against injustices such as genocide, racism, classism, linguicism, sexism, or any other type of structural marginalization. “The aim is to speak for justice against all crimes against humanity” (Reyes & Rodríguez, 2012, p. 527) and functions as resistance to state violence and oppression (González, et al., 2003). For example, studies in teacher education show that the consequences of marginalization and deficit perspectives about Latinx communities and immigrants become apparent to Latinx preservice teachers (Fránquiz, Salazar, & DeNicolo, 2011) who recount during professional development activities their too often negative literacy experiences in childhood. These future teachers agree that the practice of testimoniando, or counterstorying, provides affordances for Latinx and other students to bring their personal, familial, linguistic, and community knowledges to their stories and their learning (DeNicolo & González, 2015; Saavedra, 2011). These affordances matter. The stories enrich the self (testimonialista), raise consciousness of a social concern, and create a space for collective solutions.

Storytelling can also serve as a powerful conduit through which to explore and address issues beyond the classroom. Narrative offers opportunities for students to engage with important issues that affect their everyday experiences by taking risks, designing creative solutions, and envisioning their future selves (Dubeck, Moshier, & Boss, 2006; Ritchie, Tomas, & Tones, 2011). For example, research shows how students can engage in a variety of socioscientific issues (e.g., climate change) that affect their local community through storytelling (Beach & Smith, 2020; Smith et al., 2019).

As was stated, storytelling is changing. This includes the way it is shaped. More and more educators, in addition to telling stories in the classroom or having students share stories in the classroom, are employing digital storytelling in the classroom. Although there are many digital applications being used in the classroom, in order to be considered storytelling, story must be first, as Jason Ohler, author of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom (2006), states: “The problem for many students is their focus on the power of technology rather than the power of stories. Some students are engaging the medium at the expense of the message, producing a technical event rather than a story” (p. 46). Digital uses of narrative are becoming more accessible and expanding as we continue to employ digital learning in our classrooms. We advocate that with every new turn, story stays at the center of the change.

When storytelling is incorporated in educational contexts, one must not forget the storymaking that is involved in creating the story.

Humans have such a long history of using storytelling to connect to one another that it seems like an instinctual motivation and desire. “Insofar as we account for our own actions and for the human events that occur around us principally in terms of narrative, story, drama, it is conceivable that our sensitivity to narrative provides the major link between our own sense of self and our sense of others in the social world around us”