In September, an appointed citizens review committee for a library in Montgomery County, Texas recategorized a children’s book by Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) member Linda Coombs from nonfiction to fiction.Coombs was not surprised.”We’ve had 400 years of people telling us that we are fictional,” said Coombs.Coombs is known on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard as a Wampanoag elder, historian and author.”Colonization and the Wampanoag Story,” published in September 2023 for readers age 10 and older, tells the story of America’s earliest days from the perspective of the New England Indigenous Nations. Crown Books for Young Readers published the book, part of Penguin Random House.Following public complaints including a petition with 30,000 signatures and an open letter signed by 13 organizations, Montgomery County Commission retracted the decision on Oct. 22. The book was moved back to the children’s nonfiction section of the library.But Coombs continues to worry — about her book and other authors.”This recategorization told me that there are still people in this country who don’t want to grapple with how this country was actually founded,” she said.Steven Peters, co-owner of Smoke Sygnals, a Mashpee media company, started a petition in early October against the reclassification that has about 5,000 signatures to date and continues to gain followers.”We need to embrace history in its most honest and raw form,” said Peters, who is also the spokesman for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.Montgomery County Commission members did not return calls and emails seeking comment.What is the book about?Coombs’ book is part of a five-book series called “Race to the Truth,” according to Penguin Random House. The series was published in October 2023, and includes “This Land,” “Borderlands and the Mexican American Story,” “Exclusion and the Chinese American Story,” and “Slavery and the African American Story.”The book, said Coombs, is based on the true story of Eastern Woodland peoples from the Northeast, including the Wampanoag Nation. The story gives readers a peek into what Wampanoag traditional life was like pre-contact, Coombs said. The text focuses on Wampanoag territory being the first point of European contact and how settlement affected indigenous people of the region, she said.In the book, Coombs delves into the impact of The Doctrine of Discovery, a 15th-century legal and religious concept that gave Christian colonizers the right to invade and claim lands outside of Europe. The book expands into the age of exploration, including the Pilgrim settlement, and proceeds chronologically through settlement and colonization to the present day.”As far as I’m concerned, I just wrote down what happened,” said Coombs. “The truth of history should be told.”For Erica Tso Haidas, founder of Belonging Books in Hyannis, Coombs’ book is a nonfiction account of America’s earliest days with stories woven in that reflect the ways of Wampanoag life.The book was selected for the Library of Congress 2024 Great Reads for Kids for Massachusetts. It was a finalist in the middle-grade category for the New England Independent Booksellers Association book awards.Why did the Texas committee reclassify the book?Montgomery County Citizens Review Panel For Children, an appointed board, received a request for reconsideration on Sept. 10 and met to review the book on Oct. 3, according to Montgomery County Commissioner James Noack, according to USA Today. Noack presides over the precinct where the library is located.Per the policy that established the review panel, its meetings are held privately. However, which books the committee discusses is public information.In early October, Teresa Kenney, owner of Village Books in Woodlands, Texas, filed a public information request to obtain information about what books the committee had received reconsideration requests about since March. It was through this request that she learned of the committee’s decision to reclassify “Colonization and the Wampanoag Story.”Kenney said that, according to the information she received from her request, the library was instructed to move the book to the children’s fiction section by Oct. 10.Publishers and social justice groups fire backIn an open letter on Oct. 16, Penguin Random House along with organizations like Authors Guild, PEN America, American Indians in Children’s Literature, and Texas Freedom to Read Project, protested the reclassification, according to USA Today.Moving it to the fiction section communicated distrust of material that reflects the truths of American history. It diminishes the legitimacy of Coombs’s perspective as a member of the Wampanoag Tribe and Indigenous educators who recommend its use, read the letter.The restriction of the book, read the letter, also threatened the freedom to read and was a “naked ploy to censor history our children learn,” the letter stated.Coombs: Five decades of researchContent for the book was compiled through five decades of research including 30 years she spent as a historian with the Wampanoag Indigenous Program at what is now called Plimoth Patuxet Museums in Plymouth.The book also pulls from oral traditional history — stories, cultural knowledge, and historical accounts — that have been shared with Coombs verbally from Wampanoag and Eastern Woodland elders.The book is geared for seventh-graders, said Coombs, but can be read by children age 10 and up.Rachael Devaney writes about community and culture. Reach her at [email protected]. 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