I remember being taught that it was just their desire to expand to the Pacific Ocean, they believed it was their god given destiny. Big focus on that. I don’t recall a lot of all of emphasis on how it impacted the natives.

I learned Christopher Columbus would chop the hands off of indians that didn’t follow orders, and we wiped out 95% plus of their population

But I went to school in California. Unfortunately, other states can teach their version of history

I was taught in Jersey and Florida during the 80’s and then 90"s, and manifest destiny was taught as a good thing. Anything resembling truth I got out schooling came from subversive teachers, not the official school curriculum. It wasn’t till I read Zinn and Lowen that I learned how badly I was lied to.

I was unequivocally taught that it happened, white colonists were responsible, and that it was genocide. It came up a few times over the years in age-appropriate lessons (they don’t go into detail when teaching third graders ofc) and every time the narrative was about the same.

HOWEVER our classes never dwelled on it much. It was taught with as much gravitas as any other random lesson, i.e. I was bombarded with a litany of names and dates to memorize for a standardized test which I promptly forgot in order to prepare for the next one, and the next one, and the next one…

My classes didn’t distinguish between the indigenous peoples and I never learned about the native tribes that belong to my area. My teachers taught only what colonizers did to them, not who they were and are. And crucially, I was taught that this was all history and not that it is an ongoing genocide. And that the colonizers of the past are, somehow, disconnected from our government of the present.

Also we never made a connection between the Nazis and the colonists, or talked about class and capitalism at all, really.

every year in elementary school we watched some movies about how the pilgrims and Indians were friends and every year I would get in trouble for screaming “AND THEN THEY MURDERED THEM ALL”. teachers would get mad and say that it was both sides fault. and then we hit middle school and got the full story, but teachers would both sides it. Also most of my peers one year believed that the genocide of the native Americans was good, needed to happen, and that they would do it again. then i went to a super libby highschool and learned even more.