Native American Heritage Month: Understanding the Past for a Better Future

Halloween is officially behind us and Thanksgiving is less than four weeks away. Odds are that if you have little ones, they are learning about Pilgrims and making turkeys by tracing their hands on construction paper. But what about the rest of this story? Does their curriculum include accounts of the vibrant Indigenous society that already existed in North America when the first European settlers arrived? If you have older children, do they learn how Indigenous people were pushed violently from their lands?

November is National Native American Heritage Month. The goals of this month are to pay tribute to the contributions of Indigenous and Alaskan Native people as well as educate people on the challenges Indigenous people have faced historically and face currently.