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Sometimes, the road to hell is paved with multicultural intentions.

Which appears to be the case with a book that was one of two titles on the summer reading list for seventh-graders at Kernodle Middle School.

"The Education of Little Tree" sounds, on its face, like an attempt at inclusiveness — the 1976 bestseller told "the true story" of an orphan raised as a Cherokee by his grandparents in Depression-era Appalachia.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a whopper of a literary hoax. Not only was author "Forrest Carter" neither an orphan nor a Cherokee. His real name was Asa "Ace" Carter, a white supremacist, KKK leader and, most famously, the writer credited with penning Alabama Gov. George Wallace's "Segregation Forever!" speech.

"We've gone beyond a slap in the face," said parent Jennifer Revels, a Lumbee whose son's summer reading list included the book. "This is not about political correctness. This book is a lie."

Kernodle's principal, Charles Burns, said teachers chose the title from a National Middle School Association list. Burns was unaware of the furor over the book and said the goal of the reading was a standard lesson in content and grammar, and there was no consideration of the source.

"I think you're reading too much into it," said Burns, who called the reading suggested, not required. "If there's anything inappropriate in it that is pointed out to us, we have no problem removing it."

Although the back story of the book remains well-known in literary and Indian circles, where it has been dubbed "Little Fraud," the casual reader would today have no clue to its bizarre lineage. The current edition has dropped the words "A true story" from the cover, and the book has moved from the "biography" shelf to "young adult/fiction."

Still, the reissued edition by the University of New Mexico Press makes no mention of the hoax in its foreward or cover notes, and after selling a million copies, the book in 1991 won a coveted ABBY, the American Booksellers Book of the Year. That's the same award "Cold Mountain" received in 1997, as a book that dealers "most enjoy recommending."

At the Friendly Center Barnes & Noble, where Carter's book is kept in stock, community relations manager Becky Carignan said several county schools have used it in recent years, though Kernodle is currently the only one posting "Little Tree" on its list. Meanwhile, a customer service clerk enthusiastically recommended it as "a great little book."

That was the initial consensus when the book appeared in 1976, a post-"Billy Jack" title that spontaneously kindled a huge following, with "Little Tree" clubs sprouting up.

"It was a hot book," said Steve Sumerford, who was a branch librarian and is today assistant director of the Greensboro Library. "People were coming into the library talking about the book, saying you really needed to read the book to understand Native American culture. It was only later that people said, 'Whoa!'"

To be more precise, it was a Barbara Walters TV interview, in which Carter was promoting a Clint Eastwood movie based on his other best-seller, "The Outlaw Josey Wales."

Viewers in Alabama recognized him as Asa Carter, arch segregationist and radio commentator. Alabama journalist Wayne Greenhaw wrote an exposé in the New York Times, and years after Carter's death, his widow later told Publishers Weekly that "Forrest Carter" was an imposter.

And not just any imposter, but a founder of the Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy. The group, which wore gray robes instead of white, was responsible for attacking Nat King Cole onstage during a 1956 Birmingham concert, and implicated in the abduction and castration of a black handyman in 1957.

How Carter's book could withstand such high-profile scandal and still be included on national reading lists — and be adapted in 1997 into a movie co-starring Oneida actor Graham Greene — is something of a puzzle.

On the one hand, the book is an entertaining, vivid romp through mountain moonshine country, and a deftly written coming-of-age story.

On the other hand, Cherokee historians found significant inaccuracies in Carter's use of the tribe's words and customs. Many have also pointed to the short shrift the book pays to the cruelties of "Indian boarding schools," and see portions of the book as patronizing tributes to the mystique of the "noble savage."

So here's a question: Can a book that is so patently a fraud still be worth making an assignment (or suggestion) that students read it? It depends on the goal.

"Is the goal in teaching 'Education of Little Tree' to teach about Native American culture?" observed Karen Weyler, associate head of English at UNCG and an early American literature scholar. "Or, is it to put something on the syllabus about Indians so that the class looks inclusive and multicultural?"

Longtime Indian educator Rosa Winfree said many teachers have assigned the book over the years without researching it, or considering authentic Native American alternatives.

"They try to be inclusive, but this is the worst book in the world they could choose," said Winfree, retired from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system. "This is not the way to go about it. If you don't know something, ask someone who does."

At Kernodle, principal Burns said the national middle school approved reading list was "so extensive that there is no way of reviewing everything that's on that list."

But in an age when Google puts information at teachers' fingertips, observed a veteran Lumbee leader, such facts are readily available.

"Ignorance is less and less of an excuse," said the Guilford Native American Association founder, Ruth Revels. She is Kernodle parent Jennifer Revels' mother, and is the widow of former Greensboro City Councilman Lonnie Revels.

"I'm 71. I'm tired. Every time we go forward, we regress again. Would you assign 'Little Black Sambo' for black children to read? Imagine."

Interestingly, the second of the two titles on the school's seventh-grade list, "Touching Spirit Bear," is also an adolescent tale with a Native American element, written by a non-Indian. The difference? Award-winning children's writer Ben Mikaelsen makes no claim to be Indian, or to be telling a true story.

"We're not saying you have to be Indian to tell our story," said Jennifer Revels, who along with an Indian parent advisory committee planned to meet this week with school officials at Kernodle.

"But when someone pretends to be Indian and writes about things that were so painful in our daily lives, that's very damaging to keeping our history truthful and honest."

In a broader sense, resistance to having Indian culture thus appropriated has been a constant.

Hollywood, with a few notable exceptions, continues to portray the Native American story through the eyes of white characters. Movies such as "Windtalkers," "Dances With Wolves" and "Little Big Man" no longer used the grease-painted braves of John Wayne movies, but in their own New Agey, pseudo-Indian way, were just as inauthentic.

In contrast to the ease with which native culture is usurped — by everyone from fraudulent "folklorists" to "hobbyists" who hold fake powwows — it has taken the tribe that comprises half of North Carolina's Native Americans, the 55,000-member Lumbee Nation, 100 years to approach federal recognition.

And in the state with the largest Indian population in the eastern U.S., they are not there yet.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 336-373-7334 or lahearn@news-record.com