Around the world, Indigenous Peoples represent roughly 6.2% of the population spread across almost every continent and are responsible for protecting almost 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity. Millennia living and learning with land have produced many kinds of Indigenous traditional environmental and cultural knowledge (ITECK) that can benefit all people in their work to re-connect with land and live more sustainably. Introducing these knowledges to students, in the classroom or during place-based learning, not only raises awareness of these different ways of knowing but can positively impact Indigenous students.
As a student growing up in a small farming community in Minnesota, I didn’t look like the other students in my class, nor did I look like the teachers around me. I was often called out by teachers whenever the topic of ‘Native Americans’ came up in class and often ridiculed (by staff and students alike) for being different. While things have improved in many respects, the reality is that for most Indigenous students in North America in the public school system, they’re likely to complete their primary and secondary education without ever having a teacher who looks like them or shares the same cultural background or perspectives and they often still experience the same kinds of problematic tokenism and harassment that I did over 20 years ago.
More and more Indigenous people are pursuing degrees in education and helping to address this gap, but non-Indigenous teachers can also help by incorporating ITECK into their lessons and elevating Indigenous knowledges in–and out of–the classroom. The inclusion of Indigenous knowledges in lessons helps to destigmatize traditional knowledge, helps promote sustainable land stewardship and use practices, and acknowledges its value and contributions to the world of science.
This is not an easy thing to do! And the difficulty of doing it–and doing it in a culturally responsive way–is the biggest challenge to being more inclusive. After nearly seven years in formal and informal education advocating for the inclusion of Indigenous knowledges in every subject, I hope to be able to share some helpful suggestions to start you on your path towards elevating Indigenous knowledges in the work you do.
How to Get Started
Learn
Who are the Indigenous Peoples around you today, and who were they historically? The history of colonization globally has left few Indigenous communities untouched, and although its impacts vary greatly, some of its defining characteristics include the dispossession of traditional lands, forced assimilation through ‘education,’ the criminalization of traditional language, cultural practices, and religion, and vast population reduction as a result of disease exchange. However, Indigenous Peoples are still here–they are resilient, thriving, contemporary peoples with their own stories and knowledges to share. So, do some research about your local Indigenous communities through their sources: tribal websites, tribal museums, community authors, and speakers.
I encourage my students to utilize the Native Land Digital website to learn more about where Indigenous Peoples are and have been located and treaty history. Through this deep dive into your local Indigenous communities, you will hopefully be able to find some resources–even community members!–to draw on to be more inclusive.
Connect
Relationship building is central to working with Indigenous Peoples. The first step in this process can be attending community events open to the public, such as powwows, feasts, and other cultural celebrations. If you’re unsure how to do this respectfully, this resource can help! Introduce yourself to some folks and make connections to show you are committed to the inclusion you hope to foster. Reach out to community members who are already doing similar work and start a conversation about how you can collaborate to achieve similar goals. This step is often the hardest for people because it’s difficult to be vulnerable: we don’t want to offend people, so we hesitate even to start a conversation to avoid this. However, we can never move on to the collaboration if we don’t start the conversation.
Ask
It’s completely normal to feel uncomfortable incorporating Indigenous knowledges into your lessons if you are non-Indigenous. When done respectfully and with the input of community, you eventually get over this. But, in the meantime, lean on your relationships and ask community members who are knowledge holders to step into that place of sharing if they are comfortable doing so. Key to this is honoring that knowledge sharing appropriately through gifting and/or compensation: in many Indigenous communities in North America, a small gift of tobacco is a sign of respect and gratitude to a community member who has agreed to share knowledge. Other small gifts- homemade jelly or jam, a coffee mug, a book–are also appreciated. Whenever possible, consider monetary compensation to offset travel costs and the time the individual has given you and your students. Whether a gift or monetary compensation, it is appropriate to ask the individual if they have a specific request to ensure you meet their expectations.
Collaborate
Work with community members to incorporate Indigenous knowledges into your lessons in a culturally responsive and appropriate way. This can include having community members directly contribute to the writing of lessons or reviewing lessons after they have been written to ensure they are appropriate. Consider how these lessons can benefit not just your own students. Making lessons open-access and sharing with others:
- widely increases awareness
- improves representation for Indigenous students
- opens the door for other educators to be more inclusive in their own work, and
- increases the positive impact of elevating Indigenous knowledges.
In this step, always consider permissions: do you have permission from the knowledge holder to share what you are, in the way you are? Even when something is published, it’s a good idea to ask permission again to use that information differently than it was originally intended.
If you are working with PLT lessons as a base, I find that it’s particularly easy to adapt the 400 Acre Wood lesson from the PreK-8 Environmental Education Activity Guide (If You Were the Boss in the Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide) to reflect local fauna, especially those that are particularly important to the local Indigenous Peoples of your region, giving you the opportunity to bring in discussions of relationships with animals and Indigenous language use through the incorporation of traditional words for animals.
Return
Return the favor AND again and again!
What do you have to offer the community you now have a relationship with? How can you share your knowledge to benefit the goals of that community? How can you support the work that they are prioritizing?
Be there, return the favor, and do it again and again and again. This kind of work is not a one-off: relationship building is a lifelong process, a commitment to support, share, and care for one another. Encourage the growth and deepening of the relationships you have built in the community through continued conversations and collaboration in the years to come. Careers shift; people move. If you stay close enough to these communities you have been working with, consider how to continue that work and stay in relationships. And if it’s not possible, think about how you can foster the development of a relationship between a colleague and that community to continue the collaboration in your place.
I won’t pretend this work is easy, quick, or always successful. Communities don’t always say yes, relationships don’t always pan out, and these things always take longer than you hope they will (and often longer than the timeline a funder has given you to do it!). But, if you’ve decided this is meaningful to you, your students, and your community, missteps are part of the process; they help you learn along the way. I can promise that the first time you teach a culturally responsive lesson to your students and you see the smile and pride that radiates from the ‘one Native kid’ in the group, it will all be worth it.
Additional Resources
- Beyond Conservation: Working Respectfully with Indigenous People and Their Knowledge Systems
- Indigenous Knowledges and Perspectives on Climate Adaptation
- 7 Tips on Building Relationships with Indigenous Peoples
- How to Build Good Relations with Indigenous Peoples: An Interview Series (Part 1)
- Collaboration is Key to Indigenous Relationships
Editor’s Addition: Native American Heritage Month, Thanksgiving, and Year-Round Resources for Educators
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and Project Learning Tree (PLT) are committed to continuing our own education and establishing mutually respectful relationships with Indigenous Peoples (also known as reconciliation) through our work. We’re passionate about providing resources to create a better understanding of the importance of forests and the many communities that rely on forests for the spiritual, cultural, environmental, and economic benefits they bring. We’ve compiled a non-exhaustive list of resources for educators to help you get started or continue your personal and your students’ learning journeys. The best resources are those developed by Indigenous peoples, themselves. Other representations of Indigenous Peoples and/or the language used can be imperfect, so we encourage you to consider those a starting point to be researched and reflected upon.
