The present study was carried out in the context of the recent (2012) introduction of Kreol in the primary school curriculum in Mauritius. The time-tabling of Kreol as an optional subject offered at the same time as the other existing ancestral languages, institutionalised Kreol as an ancestral language, despite its status as a national language. The aim of the study was to investigate the ways in which the Standard 1 Kreol textbook reveals or reflects the ancestral identity that it has been institutionally assigned. In order to do so, a comparative perspective was adopted: the Standard 1 Kreol textbook was compared with the Standard 1 Hindi and Urdu textbooks, given that Hindi and Urdu are long established ancestral languages. A social semiotic analysis of the textbooks indicates that each textbook mediates ethno-religious discourses in varying ways and to varying degrees. It is argued that while changes in language policies and curricula open up ‘implementational and ideological spaces’ (Hornberger, N.H. 2002. “Multilingual Language Policies and the Continua of Biliteracy: An Ecological Approach.” Language Policy 1: 27–51), textbooks can be seen as one such space within which identities are maintained, (re)defined or resisted. As an ‘implementational and ideological space’, the textbook is historically, socio-culturally and politically embedded, shaped and constrained.