Texas county sidelines librarians, reclassifies book on abuse of Native Americans as "fiction"

A Texas county has mandated public libraries move a well-regarded children's book documenting the mistreatment of Native Americans in New England — Colonization and the Wampanoag Story — from the "non-fiction" section to "fiction." The decision was made after the government of Montgomery County, under pressure from right-wing activists, removed librarians from the process of reviewing children's books and replaced them with a "Citizens Review Committee." Colonization and the Wampanoag Story was "challenged" by an unknown person on September 10, 2024. The Committee responded by ordering that the book be moved to the fiction section of public libraries in Montgomery County by October 17, 2024, according to public records obtained by the Texas Freedom To Read Project shared with Popular Information.

The author of Colonization and the Wampanoag Story is Linda Coombs, a "historian from the Wampanoag Tribe." Coombs spent three decades working at the Wampanoag Indigenous Program, an initiative to preserve the history of the Wampanoag people. The book is published by Penguin Random House, which describes the book as "[t]he true story of the Indigenous Nations of the American Northeast, including the Wampanoag nation and others, and their history up to present day."

Colonization and the Wampanoag Story tells the real story of the brutalization of the Wampanoag people by European settlers. An excerpt:

https://popular.info/p/texas-county-sidelines-librarians