I grew up reading about the frontier spirit of rugged individual homesteaders who followed their manifest destiny, tamed the wilderness and settled the country by grit, determination and hard work. Most Americans can trace their roots back to folks like these, and this view traditionally defines what it means to be an American.

But I’ve learned a few things on my way here, so it’s time for some myth busting. First, the “untamed wilderness” was already occupied by Native Americans who built homes, farmed and lived off the land. Second, the settlers received serious government assistance in the form of the US military clearing the Native Americans off the land and giving it to them. Third, the homesteaders almost immediately ruined the environment by removing the topsoil, causing the dust bowl and mass migration to California. And finally, I only see little huge corporate agribusiness here now, not individual farms.

The park is impressive, with both a state of the art Heritage Center and an Education Center. The film and museum are “award-winning”, and much of the focus appears to be on teaching kids to be proud of their homesteading ancestry. Much of the money was donated by the local fossil fuel utility, so I’m not surprised that environmental issues such as the tallgrass prairie devastation, the dust bowl and the changing climate are not the focus. But what angered me was a slight-of-hand trick employed to tell the homesteading story.

The film & exhibits make it abundantly clear that the Native Americans once lived on the land before the homesteaders settled, and the unfair history is presented in a way that kids can’t leave without learning some basic facts. However, at the beginning of the film Native Americans are described as not believing in land ownership, in the middle they say all they want is for everyone to respect the land, and at the end one Native American speaks of how he loves his reservation. And the egalitarian aspects of the Homestead Act are used to justify it: blacks could homestead (although slavery held them back at the beginning), women also benefited, and European immigrants homesteaded.

I believe it’s wrong to lie to our kids, especially to make them feel better about something that was wrong to do. The Native Americans did own the land. And the homesteaders knew it, because the newspaper ads that urged them to go west clearly said “Indian Territory Open to Homesteaders” and “Grand Rush for the Indian Territory”. They knew it, because some moved into sod pit-dwellings built by Native Americans. They knew it when they copied Native American burn techniques to encourage new growth to feed cattle. And they knew it when they grew corn in the same fields as the Native Americans. What the Natives didn’t have were written real estate deeds or the ability to defeat the US military.

It’s simply dishonest to suggest that it was OK to take the land due to lack of ownership rights. It’s also wrong to imply that it was OK to take the land since it was under-utilized. Imagine someone comes into your home and tells you that they bought your land on the dark web using Bitcoin. Then they explain that it’s all legal in the new digital world and that you have to move out now since you don’t have a hexadecimal key to participate in the secret auction online. When you protest, they force you to leave with high tech weapons. Finally, to justify their actions, they say that they can house more people and grow more food on your lot. You would correctly say that you had been robbed, and you would correctly say that the explanation doesn’t justify the crime.

Frankly, in the 21st century, to be repeating old lies that the Native Americans wanted homesteaders to take their land because they would better use it is offensive. The US military forced the Native Americans off the land at gunpoint, by slaughtering bison, and by encouraging white settlers to move in. The homesteaders used the land in the same way as the Natives, farming, ranching, hunting and fishing. In some ways they were more advanced, and in other ways, such as topsoil removal, they were more destructive. It is also devious to try to defend the racist policy of Native American removal by saying that it benefited blacks, women and immigrants. Would you teach your son that it’s OK to beat up and steal another child’s lunch as long as he shared a little of it with other kids who were hungry?