Native American Heritage Month
Here are recommended teaching resources for Native American Heritage Month (November) and all year long.
Winona LaDuke on Remaking the Economy
Winona LaDuke gave the keynote speech at September's Indigenous Peoples’ Day Virtual Teach-In: Food and Water Justice, organized by Teaching for Change and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). LaDuke spoke about the times that we are living in and the opportunity to protect our world and future generations through relocalization and adapting pre-petroleum indigenous seeds.
"What you want in the time of COVID, in the time of crisis, is to figure out how we’re going to survive. This is really a small snapshot of what the future in a climate change challenged world will be… We’re going to learn what relocalization is about — Omaa akiing — how to be here on our land. Here on the land to which the people belong... We have this history that we are making of rematriation, the return of our seeds and the return of our traditional foods to our communities, and within that, and the transition to small scale, renewable energy, is really the security for our future."
Resources for Teaching about Indigenous Peoples
Pipeline Protests: Putting Climate Civil Disobedience into the Curriculum
This lesson by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca is built around the new documentary film, Necessity: Oil, Water, and Climate Resistance, which details the story of multiple cohorts of climate activists: Indigenous leaders in the Climate Justice Movement, valve turners using civil disobedience to stop the flow of oil, and the legal team that uses the “necessity defense” in the courts. Access the film and lesson at the Zinn Education Project website.
American Indians Booklist
Lessons from the Zinn Education Project
Explore the NMAI Native Knowledge 360° Portal
Indigenous Peoples of Central America
The Pipils of El Salvador
The Pipil are the indigenous people of El Salvador. They resisted Spanish colonialism and faced brutal repression in the 1932 massacre because the government believed the Pipils were the backbone of the rural rebellion.
The Maya of Guatemala
We offer a selection of films highlighting the struggles of Indigenous peoples in Guatemala, including 500 Years: Life in Resistance, Sipakapa Not Sold, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, When the Mountains Tremble, and more.