Native American Heritage Month Education Resources

Challenge bias | Teach the truth | Celebrate resilience

6 min readNov 9, 2020

The following is a curated list of resources to support educators and families in teaching Native American heritage through a social justice lens.

Books & Reading Lists

Lesson Plans & Curriculum

IllumiNative: Native Education for All

Lesson Plans | Art | Curriculum/Unit

Designed for both in-classroom as well as remote learners, this project-based lesson plan asks: What is the impact on human lives and property, biodiversity, and air and water quality when we honor and restore land stewardship to Indigenous peoples?

Native Knowledge 360

Lesson Plans | Teaching Guides | Videos | Articles | Art

Native Knowledge 360° (NK360°) provides educators and students with new perspectives on Native American history and cultures. NK360° provides educational materials, virtual student programs, and teacher training that incorporate Native narratives, more comprehensive histories, and accurate information to enlighten and inform teaching and learning about Native America.

Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde

Lesson Plans | Videos | Curriculum/Unit

This curriculum was developed by the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in accordance with Oregon academic standards. A well-produced and thorough curriculum covering Social Studies, Math, and Language Arts.

Tribal History — Shared History Oregon Dept. of Ed.

Lesson Plans

The ODE partnered with representatives of the nine federally recognized tribal governments in Oregon to create Essential Understandings of Native Americans in Oregon and contracted with Education Northwest to create lesson plans (in grades 4th, 8th, and 10th).

Indian-Ed: Since Time Immemorial

Videos | Lesson Plans | Curriculum/Unit

Welcome to “Since Time Immemorial: Tribal Sovereignty in Washington State,” a ground-breaking curriculum initiative made possible through federal, state, and tribal funding. This project seeks to build lasting educational partnerships between school districts and their local tribes via elementary, middle, and high school curriculum on tribal sovereignty.

Lessons of Our Land

Lesson Plans

The Lessons of Our Land Curriculum enables Pre-K through grade 12 teachers to easily incorporate Native American stories, lessons and games about land, cultures, histories and languages into regular classroom instruction. There are more than 200 lessons available that are free and easy to use in the classroom

Montana Indian Education Classroom Resources

Lesson Plans

The OPI Indian Education for All (IEFA) Unit works with districts, tribes, and other entities to ensure all schools have the knowledge, tools and resources necessary to honor the IEFA requirement and integrate it into their teaching materials and methods

Teachings of Our Elders

Lesson Plans| Audio Recordings

This project allows students in schools to learn all of their usual academic subjects while gaining an understanding about the traditional ways and concepts identified as essential by Native American elders in North Dakota.

Honoring Tribal Legacies

Lesson Plans | Curriculum/Unit | Videos | Primary Sources

A digital collection of teaching resources for use in classrooms everywhere that honor a diverse and inclusive approach to social studies, STEM, language, and other subjects. These are original materials created by indigenous curriculum designers and some allies, too, made by and for this project.

Burke Museum Educators & Schools Page

Lesson Plans

Rooted in Burke research and collections, our programs emphasize the intersections of natural history and cultural heritage in Washington state and support 21st Century Skills. Burke education programs encourage empathy for diverse cultures and all life.

Teaching Tolerance

Lesson Plans, Videos, Curriculum/Unit, Articles, Teaching Guides

Teaching Tolerance’s mission is to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy. Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators who work with children from kindergarten through high school.

Zinn Education Project

Lesson Plans, Primary Sources

The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in classrooms across the country. For more than ten years, the Zinn Education Project has introduced students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula.

Primary Sources & Student Resources

Native Lands

Maps

An interactive map showing ancestral territories, as well as indicators for treaties and language. A useful tool for learning more about the Indigenous peoples with ties to the land you live on or are visiting.

PBS Circles of Stories

Circle of Stories uses documentary film, photography, artwork and music to honor and explore Native American storytelling.

Everyday Native

Photos | Poetry

This resource is meant to help heal racism by building bridges of understanding between non-Native and Native American youth. Everyday Native is one important step in becoming true neighbors. As we share our own stories, non-Native and Native, we learn the truths from our shared local and national histories. We acknowledge the difficulties of our shared past. Then we move forward together.

Treaties Explorer

Primary Sources

While treaties between Indigenous peoples and the United States affect virtually every area in the USA, there is as yet no official list of all the treaties. The US National Archives holds 374 of the treaties, where they are known as the Ratified Indian Treaties. Here you can view them for the first time with key historic works that provide context to the agreements made and the histories of our shared lands.

National Museum of the American Indian

Photos | Primary Sources | Art

A diverse and multifaceted cultural and educational enterprise, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is an active and visible component of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum complex.