Lesson Plan
Grades 6-8
Grades 9-10
Grades 11-12

A Living Curriculum of In My Blood It Runs Making Connections

Making Connections

Indigenous epistemologies and pedagogies view learning as a process situated in community and in relation to our environment which includes Land, waters, the sky, plants, etc. Making connections means that we take into account our landscapes of learning to take the time to listen, observe, pay attention, reflect, and use our voice.

In these lessons learning communities will engage in:

  • Reciprocity, Relationality, Responsibility, and Respect
  • How to center and learn with Aboriginal Knowledges and Indigenous Education
  • Thinking critically about how schools from western society are a part of settler colonialism, and how to un-learn certain assumptions of what is a “good” and “bad” student.
  • (Re)Storying conversations about traditional and ancestral homelands, unearthing stories about whose Lands they are on now as guests, and the responsibility one has to the Land in which we are guests on.

Sources

About the author:

Pablo Montes

Pablo Montes is a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin in the Cultural Studies in Education Program. He is the son of migrant workers from Guanajuato, Mexico, the ancestral territories of the Chichimeca Guamares and P'urhepecha. He currently serves as the Youth Director for the Indigenous Cultures Institute with the Coahuiltecan community in the Lands of Yana Wana (spirit waters of central Texas). Additionally, through a generous grant by the University of Texas at Austin’s Green Fund, he is working with co-author Judith Landeros and other Indigenous people to create a Land Based Education Curriculum. His interests include the intersection of queer settler colonialism, Indigeneity, and Land education.

Pablo Montes

Judith Landeros

Judith Landeros is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin studying Cultural Studies in Education with a focus on Indigenous girlhood, traditional healing knowledge, and schooling. Her family is from Michoacán and Jalisco, the ancestral territories of the P’urhepecha and Chichimeca. She is a former bilingual early childhood teacher and advocates for the inclusion of Critical Indigenous Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Land as pedagogy within teacher preparation education programs.

Judith Landeros