Consider showing a short film in class to connect environmental problems such as climate change, pollution, and waste are important to indigenous peoples all across the Americas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ply14OGxq5Q Connecting climate change, climate (in)justice, and Indigenous sovereignty in the United States through the movement for decolonization at Standing Rock. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHYM79bKG3g Shorter video covering some of the same topics.

https://youtu.be/cyqYN90PPjE The history of how colonialism impacted the environment across Turtle Island and how the struggle against decolonization and land back connects to the environmental movement.

ISTEAM also has many wonderful classroom resources that you can use to incorporate Indigenous cultures into your classroom. You can try this activity here.

Other resources include:

http://indigenouseducationtools.org/briefs

https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/media/4200/new-content-elaborations-for-the-australian-curriculum-science-f-10.pdf

EduTalks: Megan Bang & Living Sustainable Futures? Changing How We Learn Now

When teaching environmental science, environmental degradation, and climate change take the opportunity to outline how Indigenous peoples across the Americas, or Turtle Island, have historically been the stewards of the land and water while connecting that to their present-day struggles.

How We Go Home shares contemporary Indigenous stories in the long and ongoing fight to protect Native land and life. In myriad ways, each narrator’s life has been shaped by loss, injustice, and resilience—and by the struggle of how to share space with settler nations whose essential aim is to take all that is Indigenous.

This book features a collection of first-person oral histories that have been collected by Sara Sinclair. The book can be found here along with a curriculum guide for how to integrate common core standards for language arts. Lessons focus on identity, healthcare, resources & resistance, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This has several comprehensive lesson plans with other resources to pair with the readings in this book.

New discoveries are coming out every day, but they only confirm what Indigenous people in the Americas have been saying for a long time; people have been on this land for thousands of more years than what was once originally believed by historians and archeologists. These recently found fossilized footprints prove that humans have been here for longer than 30,000 years and the story of populating the Americas via a land bridge is quickly changing to a story of populating the Americas by traveling in boats along the coastline. Teaching a more accurate history of how these lands were populated affirms the knowledge held by Indigenous peoples and highlights the early technological advancements that tend to go overlooked in many history classrooms.

Teachers in this subject have the opportunity to utilize any of the previous sources provided. You can also take advantage of the robust number of resources provided on the Zinn Education Project:

• The People vs. Columbus

• Lincoln's Mass Execution

• Alcatraz is not an Island

• 'Don't Take Our Voices Away'

• Role Play on Keystone XL

The Anti-Defamation League also has a lesson plan on Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples' Day that you could use.

Learning for Justice provides a certificate to teachers who complete this on-demand webinar about some of the important events throughout history that often get left out.

When planning an art lesson around Indigenous art or culture, it is important to be careful to avoid the appropriation of cultural and religious symbols and imagery. Here is a brief explanation of how to respectfully bring Indigenous art into the classroom.

Teach about the importance of images of water, land, and stopping the black snake to protest art and encourage students to try to make their own images around these themes.

In your class, you should challenge the notion that Indigenous peoples globally have not and do not use math in their every day lives, both historically and presently. In order for students to see themselves represented, they need to know that you see that they bring an important perspective to your classroom.

• United States

• Canada

• South America

• Australia

You can consider incorporating some of Canada's standards for incorporating Indigenous knowledge and perspectives across the grade levels since there is no such standard that exists here in the US.

Use Dia de la Raza as an opportunity to talk about movements for decolonization throughout Latin America. This is an important article that highlights how different countries have begun to move away from Dia de la Raza to highlight and celebrate the contributions of Indigenous peoples to their nations as well as reflect on the history of oppression that governments have enacted upon them. You could use this article as a reading for your advanced classes, or pull some of the terms to teach and discuss in some of the earlier classes.

Spanish is the dominant language throughout many Latin American countries, but students should also learn that the region is very diverse linguistically. Show them this map when teaching about the different languages that are spoken throughout Latin America.

Learn about the growing movements for plurinationalism throughout the region and then teach that to your students. You could take a particular focus on teaching about Bolivia, Peru, or Venezuela as Indigenous people in these nations make large strides towards plurinationalism.

Schools for Chiapas provides a series of lesson plans for teaching about Indigenous peoples in Chiapas, Mexico. Some important plans that you can use cover the Zapatistas.