Last November we did a mini-unit on Indigenous Peoples of North America (Canada and US) and we all learned SO much. I was so impressed with the resources that we used that I featured them in my Instastories and promised to share a blog post rounding them all up. And then Advent began, and then the New Year, and best laid plans and all that. But I have not forgotten about it and finally pulled together all the amazing books we’ve read over the last few years (many by First Nations authors/illustrators themselves), chapter books/read aloud options for the older set and some adult books (fiction/nonfiction) that I've been using to further close the gaps that I had in my own education. I did take a Native Peoples of the Pacific NW course in university but other than that and a recent trip to South Dakota, all my knowledge has been self-learned. And disclaimer to fellow parents/educators: I did not shy away from discussing residential schools, forced migration, etc but know your audience! Since the curriculum we used was Canadian, there was more discussion about residential schools and the recent tragic discovery of mass graves, as well as the reparations done by the Canadian government...I decided mine were old enough to hear most of this (ages 7-12 at the time) but I did use discretion around my youngest. With my older two I used it as a jumping off point to discuss topic such as what reparations and reconciliation look like from a US perspective. Spoiler alert: I have no answers to these questions, but it is amazing to engage your older kids on these topics because they have some strong feelings about injustice! We wrapped up our unit with Peacemaker as our read-aloud which was perfect.

While this list is by no means exhaustive, I hope that this is a good start for anyone look to augment their learning on indigenous peoples’ identity, history and culture. May we move forward in a posture of humble learning.
-Natalie d’Aubermont Thompson, Living by the Page

The curriculum I used organized First Nations by region so I’ll do that here as well. And again, it was a Canadian curriculum so not as focused on US SE or SW First Nations. We personally added a Lakota/Sioux ‘deep dive’ since we had spent a week in South Dakota prior to school starting.

In the chapter book section, the ones listed are ones that we have either read aloud together or ones that my kids have read independently. The adult fiction/nonfiction are ones I have read and recommend. Again, I hope to add to this as we continue our learning!

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