For years, I worked as a member of the Indian Education staff at Tulsa Public Schools, fighting to get Native American history woven into the curriculum — not as a footnote, but as a foundation.

The bureaucracy shifted constantly. Goals were set. Then set aside. Then forgotten. Every time progress was made, a new administration would reset the clock. And then the district attempted a hostile takeover of the Indian Education department, sidelining the very people working to tell the truth about this land and its first peoples.

The system wasn't going to do it.

So I did.

The Compendium is the outcome of that fight — a resource born not from a committee or a curriculum board, but from years of lived experience, community advocacy, and the refusal to let Indigenous history be erased one budget cycle at a time.

This collection exists because our children deserve to see themselves in their education. And because sometimes, when the institution fails, you build your own.