Indigenous History Month!
June is Canada's Indigenous History month. June is a challenging month in education because of so many things, like report cards, end of year, concerts, and hot weather. It doesn't always feel like the best time to include something new at the very end of the year so I thought I would do a few blog posts about some resources you can look at and use within the K-12 system.
I am going to start with history because that's what the month is about and we have spend a whole lot of years in education not learning about Indigenous people. Here are some great resources that I thought would be amazing in your classrooms.
This Place: 150 Years Retold
This is an amazing graphic novel about the history of this land retold from an Indigenous perspective. It also has a teacher's guide you can get that helps you ask amazing questions about the work and dig deeper into the stories of Indigenous people. What I love the most about this book is that it has a podcast that tells the stories of each chapter and then talks to the author of each chapter and why/how they wrote it. This is excellent for grades 9-12.
Book by Angeline Boulley
I am loving this new book by Angeline Boulley. It is brilliant and I would use it in grades 8-12 to unpack and talk about some important issues that Indigenous people face today. It is a story told through the eyes of a biracial Indigenous youth. She seeks to find her nations cultural items that have been stolen from her community and now being sold on auction sites as well as museums and Universities. It is a story about the power of finding your stolen history. It also connects with fundamental questions about who owns cultural property and MMIWG. It is an amazing book and I highly recommend using it as a novel study.
Reports
For learning more about the reports on Indigenous education in Canada, I use this jigsaw lesson to help understand how long Indigenous people have been fighting for a better education and what they have been asking for. I would use this in grades 9-12.
Books for further learning for you as an educator and person who lives on this land.
These are just a few things that I think would be helpful for your classroom. I will post more during the month of June. You can check out videos, books, and website links on my webpage as well. Carolynroberts.net
