What also becomes self-evident is that living and being are distinctly different than writing something down for others to read. With regards to American Indian cultures or Native peoples, the cultural aspects of existence versus writing down something is a critical point to consider in the text one might read. Is the information correct regardless of the author’s identity? How does one know? When teachers teach lessons or require students to read, they select literature that was produced in the same fashion as other texts and are ultimately posing frames around culture(s) that were observed and attitudes witnessed for a reader to deliberate. Delivering information and discussing ideas is not bound by essentialized categories or identities. Creating texts requires a scholar to be versed in working with bodies of literature—other texts.

It brings to mind the clichéd statement, “history is written by the victors.” The cliché signifies that human beings have been in competition to control narratives of how to understand the world we live in, and why things have worked out to be the way they are now.

Knowing that American Indians, like other marginalized populations, struggle to see representations of their respective cultures in writings and lessons, what, then, is a pragmatic way to teach about Native peoples of North America? If someone personally asks me “What’s your ethnicity?,” I respond with I’m a Lakota. If I’m not wishing to engage for very long, I might respond with American Indian or a Native. I grew up with Lakota relatives talking about “being Indian, speaking Indian, acting like an Indian.” In terms of policies and the federal government, I am an American Indian legally, not a Native American. Native American seems to be a more recent turn that does not denote the legal relationship of “American Indian & Alaska Native” (AI/AN). The legal status of being in the category of an AI/AN is that it affords federally recognized tribes a different status than the more self-identified terminology of “Native American.” Ultimately, it comes down to a personal choice articulated by whomever is the receiver of the terminology. So, there isn’t truly a “correct” term beyond the context and space—First Nations or aboriginal are often used in Canada. Sincerity, and attempting to frame the issue for people, is part and parcel to teaching.

Identity is a never-ending journey to strive for a space of ontological satisfaction