Thankful lessons of harvest, culture
Some schools offer insight about Indigenous identity
For many elementary school students, this time of year is filled with lessons about Thanksgiving, often it includes arts and crafts or plays about the pilgrims. That’s not the case for students at Salt River Elementary and Puente de Hozho.
These students aren’t getting lessons on the pilgrims, they’re getting lessons that give insight into and strengthen their identity as Indigenous people, focusing on fall harvest traditions and the importance of giving thanks.
Teaching the myth of Thanksgiving is not required in the Arizona state standards for history and social studies. It depends on whether the teachers choose to include it in their lesson plans or the schools’ curriculum includes it.
In the state curriculum, Thanksgiving only shows up in the kindergarten and first-grade history standards alongside other key holidays that could be potentially taught in class.
Sarah Shear, assistant professor of social studies and multicultural education at the University of Washington-Bothell, and colleagues led a 2015 study on history curriculums for K-12 students across the United States. They found that 87% of schools teach students about Indigenous people before 1900, but rarely after, perpetuating the falsehood that Indigenous people don’t exist in modern times.
“Arizona is not unlike a majority of the states, or all of the states, where Thanksgiving is included in a list of U.S. holidays with no additional contexts. It’s entirely up to the teacher, district and how they interpret that, if at all,” Shear said. “It’s important to teach it in critical ways to challenge how the story of Thanksgiving has been constructed.”
Lessons on being thankful
Salt River Elementary is a Bureau of Indian Education school located on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and 100% of the student body is Native. Salt River Elementary incorporates cultural and traditional learning within their curriculum. During November, many teachers increase those lessons for Native American Heritage Month.
“We have a different narrative than the general public has of Thanksgiving, there are also families that don’t celebrate Thanksgiving,” Clarice Garcia, a fifth-grade teacher, said. “We only talk about being thankful and being with family.”
In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, Garcia said she tries to talk about the positive and negative impacts explorers had on Indigenous people, allowing her students to form their own opinion.
“Even though we had these terrible things happen to us, are we still here?”
Garcia asked her students, each of them telling her yes. “Yes, we are.”
“Even though our past isn’t so pretty, we’re here and we’re still going strong,” she added. “The only way that happens is if we know who we are.”
On a recent day, Garcia led her students through a lesson about Native identity, with a worksheet all the students filled out with their parents or guardian. The worksheet asked:
1 What Native tribe or tribes are you? What other cultures do you represent?
2 Where are you or your family (ancestors) from? This could be a town, city, village or community.
3 What is something your tribe/cul
ture is known for?
4 How would you describe the traditional clothing of your tribe?
5 What is a custom or tradition that people of your tribe might participate in?
As she discussed the worksheet, Garcia answered each question for herself. Garcia is Tohono O’odham and she shared pictures that represented her as a Tohono O’odham woman as well as the traditions from her community.
“It’s not a culture class, it’s who you are,” Garcia said to the class.
One of Garcia’s students, 10-year-old Sherrie Thomas is from Salt River. She said she was excited to do the worksheet because she gets to ask her family about where she is from.
“It’s important to me,” she said. “If this project never came up, we’d never ask our parents.”
Other teachers also spend this time focusing on fall harvest and culture. Ipa Dutchover and Hilary Richards, language and culture specialists at Salt River Elementary, lead their students through lessons surrounding Piipaash and O’Odham culture.
“The idea, the thought of Thanksgiving, is not so far off from what we as Native Americans do anyway,” Dutchover said. “We take time out, we pause when we have a harvest.”
Rather than teaching about the pilgrims, Dutchover said he teaches his students the importance of giving thanks and family introductions in the O’Odham language.
“This is a time we usually come together with our families,” he said.
He said he tries to incorporate O’Odham traditional teachings into the everyday life of his students because those lessons are new to them most of the time. Using traditional teachings instills a sense of pride in the students.
“This is why we do certain things. This is why we don’t do this. This is where we come from as a people. This is our origin story,” Dutchover explained.
The story behind Thanksgiving is not part of Richards’ lesson plan either, but she does teach her students to be thankful.
She said she’ll have the kids draw a tree, using fall colors on the leaves to indicate what the student is thankful for.
“We all know the genocide that happened,” Richards said. “I’d rather shift it (to) something more positive and having them be proud of who they are.”
Celebrating Native heritage all year
Puente de Hózhó is a K-5 dual-language immersion school in Flagstaff with two language programs, Spanish/English and Navajo/English. The Navajo program is a one-way immersion program, said Dr. Robert Kelty, the school’s principal. Nearly 30% of the student body is Native.
Students in kindergarten are taught 100% in Navajo during their Navajo language class and get English language instruction in their arts and humanities classes, Kelly said. In first grade, the students spend 80% of their day in Navajo and 20% in English. For second to fifth-grade, students move to split days where 50% is Navajo and 50% is in English, Kelly said.
Native American heritage is not celebrated just once a month, it’s celebrated all year, Kelly said.
During the fall, afterschool activities are increased to honor the contributions and traditions that the school’s Native American families bring.
When it comes to Thanksgiving, Hernandez said the school offers multiple perspectives because they want students to think critically about the fact that what they may have been hearing is not the only story.
“It’s not my job as a teacher to tell them what’s right or wrong. It’s not my job to place a value on each of those stories, it’s my job to facilitate a space in which students can ask difficult questions and not be afraid to ask difficult questions,” she added.
Hernandez said students did come into class in November, questioning the narrative of Thanksgiving, which was perfectly acceptable.
“They’re in a space where that is perfectly acceptable to question that,” she said.
Navajo program teacher Victoria Tomas talks to her fourth- and fifthgrade students about the traditions celebrated within the community this time of year and the importance of the harvest.
Tomas said she focuses her lessons on how learning is integral to this part of year, with families gathering to tell stories, share meals as well as the surplus gathered during the harvest.
She described it as “the seasonal philosophy of learning.” This allows her students to understand what sharing means as well as cooperation among a community.
Tomas said they discuss the concept of Thanksgiving and talk about the cultural perspectives of different mindsets.
“We talk about how meals are served and shared in the home,” she added. “That’s how we negotiate that in the classroom, along with language and culture values of community.”
Tomas’ classroom is filled with posters and signs like any other elementary school teacher, but hers are all in Navajo. Tomas said being able to teach her students about Navajo culture, traditions and history means a lot to her.
“It’s important for our kids, and I take to heart about what I do here every day,” she said. “It’s important for them to know who they are, their selfidentity.”
Teaching about Thanksgiving
If teachers don’t teach about Thanksgiving, Shear said the students are going to learn about the narrative somewhere else and “it runs the very dangerous risk that it’s going to be the continued perpetuation of the problematic story.”
Traditionally, especially in elementary education, Shear said Indigenous
people are often included in the curriculum in November, but it’s usually an arts and crafts lesson.
“It perpetuates a very romanticized, very limited story of who indigenous peoples are,” Shear said. “We’re seeing nationally still really woefully, harmful lessons around Thanksgiving.”
“If you’re not actively working to counter the myth or the construction of Thanksgiving you’re actually supporting the continuation of the problematic narrative,” she added.