Supporting
Non-Native Educators with
Since Time Immemorial:
The Hummingbird Story
by Jenni Conrad
Summary: Based on research partnering with three Coast Salish nations, I offer five considerations to support K-12 non-Native educators who (like me) seek to build reciprocal relationships and strengthen their teaching with Indigenous nations and knowledges through the Since Time Immemorial curriculum. I explain common pitfalls and promising approaches to enact non-Native educators’ responsibilities to accurately and respectfully teach Native histories, cultures, and sovereignty.
Experiential learning outdoors first showed me how education could be transformative: huge gifts for my parenting, teaching, and living. But witnessing a program for Indigenous youth shook this easy positivity. When students shared their experiences of a forest tour, I immediately recognized my OEE colleagues and myself in their non-Indigenous guide. A wave of shame held up a mirror, offering an important truth.
During the tour, the students found a hummingbird lying on the trail. They were discussing what to do when their guide strode over, accidentally stepping on the hummingbird. Hearing the crunch of her bones, he looked down, then tossed her body into the brush. “It’ll decompose,” he shrugged, before moving everyone quickly to the next activity. Young students sharing this story shed tears, and spoke of losing sleep. They decided to construct a beautiful offering to the hummingbird at our site.
This story continues to teach me – when I’m willing to feel it and find myself in it. Even in open spaces, educators can shut down Native students’ ways of knowing and being in seconds, continuing colonial patterns. Such disregard and ignorance of Indigenous systems of relationship are common for non-Indigenous people, and structured into U.S. schooling systems. I had likely done so, too, even without physical harm. Being part of transformative experiential education demands grappling with what I’ve been taught about relationships with the natural world (more-than-humans) and local Indigenous peoples. This goes beyond much-needed anti-racism and equity work, which often positions Native peoples as racial minorities, rather than members of political nations. Developing and sustaining reciprocal relationships requires seeing ourselves as accountable partners with Indigenous peoples and more-than-humans, wherever we go. The extractive and distant relationships that I first learned let me off the hook: expectations that ended with my trip, not impacting my teaching or other roles.
In the last five years, with three Coast Salish nations and many Indigenous educators, I’ve been fortunate to research, teach, and learn with over 150 pre- and in-service K-12 educators implementing Since Time Immemorial (STI) in Washington. Our research identified multiple types of learning necessary for non-Native teachers to implement meaningfully, or in alignment with its principles: see resources below. From that experience, I share five foundational lessons for teaching this living curriculum.
1. Expand your interpretive power
Accurately understanding and exploring (rather than judging or ignoring) students’ thinking in cultural context is a foundation for excellent teaching- especially when students’ cultures and ways of knowing differ from their educators’. Tulalip psychologist Stephanie Fryberg and her colleagues describe this ability as interpretive power. Many Native teaching traditions also expect this of teachers: to develop caring relationships that acknowledge a power imbalance in order to responsibly engage with students’ ideas and experiences. Yet classroom teachers often struggle to attend to the substance of students’ thinking, instead focusing on their accuracy or procedural sequence.
Likewise, the forest guide did not notice, or ask about students’ thinking, or consider what their actions illustrated about cultural ways of knowing different from his own. Unlike the guide, students engaged with the hummingbird as a fellow subject, seeking reciprocity. To walk away from this bird in distress would be unethical: inconsistent with their relational responsibilities. In contrast, the guide’s actions defined the hummingbird as a compostable object, and students’ ideas as irrelevant to his teaching agenda. Paying attention to students’ reactions and body language might have offered important interpretive cues. He might have recognized the need to build deeper relationships in order to better interpret students’ ideas, or named the harm done and apologized. But to really understand his students’ ideas and aims of reciprocity, the guide also needed insight into his own cultural lens.
For non-Native educators, identifying and admitting limitations to our interpretive power can be a catalyst for deeper learning with Native knowledges and communities – and can support better STI teaching. For example, one science teacher who first struggled with STI teaching learned to change his approach. In one lesson, he illustrated how female salmon use a powerful kick to build a wall of large gravel, so small-sized gravel fall atop their eggs for protection. “It’s amazing that evolutionarily, the fish were able to learn to do this,” he noted. A Native student added, “Weren’t they always able to do that, though?” The teacher affirmed later that he recognized this “always” as a reference to ancestral knowledges, that salmon had been kicking gravel since time immemorial. “Yes,” he responded, “but not all of them did it in a way where their eggs survived: the right kind of kick. Those that did it wrong did not pass on their genes. So the ones that did, survived.” The student nodded. This teacher’s ability to respond in the moment and affirm the students’ traditional knowledge relied on his interpretive power: understanding both dominant science and local Native knowledges about salmon.
2. Seek out multiple types of learning and initiate reciprocal relationships
Educators developed this awareness and interpretive power through ongoing, non-required, informal learning with Native communities, as participants and listeners. Local Indigenous resources (e.g. local tribal websites, newspapers, stories, and museums) and public community events (e.g. powwows, salmon ceremonies, cultural workshops) were important resources. Through them, educators developed lasting, authentic personal interests with Indigenous knowledges, from language to plant medicine to weaving. In the process, they built relationships with local Native knowledge holders in multiple spheres of activity, including youth, elders, community members beyond their teaching settings, and district and state colleagues in Native education. This range of perspectives and connections was important, rather than relying on a few individuals. Gregarious or introverted, educators built relationships by continuing to engage. While forming these relationships, teachers sought additional learning and help with STI teaching through gifts. Gifts reflected the person and scope of the request, from a high-quality chocolate bar to a handmade basket. This approach steered away from patterns of non-Native taking, laying a path for reciprocity in ongoing words and actions.
By contrast, educators who taught STI less consistently or meaningfully struggled to accurately assess their interpretive power, and took minimal initiative for learning beyond formal spheres. While all educators saw a learning stance as important with STI, applying such humility to one’s knowledge (teaching content) seemed particularly challenging. Fearful of mistakes, these educators tended to teach only what was “safe” or officially approved. While well-intentioned, such habits continued distant or transactional relationships, and patterns of waiting. The forest guide might have held this perception of distance from Native communities, too.
3. Develop subject-based connections
Goals matter for learning and teaching. From my botanist grandfather to forest ecology field studies, I had learned to “appreciate” the natural world from a scientific distance, like the forest guide, and to see Native knowledges as mostly romantic or irrelevant relics. Wherever I traveled, this ethic separated me from “resources” in “the wild” – and “endangered” or “historic” Indigenous peoples. I valued their existence and my knowledge about them when it appeared relevant, but did not recognize ongoing responsibilities that honored their terms when returning home.
Rather than pursuing such goals of expertise – knowledge about Native people and more-than-humans consistent with object-based relationships – strong STI implementers focused on seeking reciprocity with Native people and lands. This ongoing subject-based relational learning supported meaningful teaching. For example, one teacher explained how local Native elders’ plant teachings guided her approach: “I’ve noticed that when I talk about [plants] now, I talk about them as if they have a spirit. Not just that, ‘Oh, it’s a tree. It grows from a seed, and blah, blah, blah.’ I’m actually like, ‘Mother Cedar and how she cares for us.’ Or when we go out and harvest, how we have to give something back because we’re taking something out.” This attention to giving applied to her human relationships, and supported students’ subject-based learning, too.
If the forest guide had made time for students to share their knowledge instead of consistently prioritizing his own, different forms of relationship with the hummingbird and each other could have been made visible. And recognizing the hummingbird’s legitimacy as a relative also requires shedding “lessons” ingrained in many of us by schools.
4. Recognize deficit views and colonial logics
Most K-12 schools do not honor specific Native peoples, histories, political nationhood, or knowledges, which limit educators’ interpretive power. Instead, deficit-based narratives in curriculum and society focus on Native victimhood: false notions of extinction, perceptions of inferiority or ineffectiveness, and single stories of poverty and alcoholism. Native knowledges are portrayed as primitive or romantic relics, irrelevant to contemporary concerns.
Recognizing that deficit-based views of Native peoples, knowledges, and nations inform educators’ own learning is a crucial first step, and an ongoing one. “I think that’s hard to acknowledge: what your misconceptions were, for everyone,” one teacher shared, “But I feel like it’s our duty. It’s an obligation for me to then shift my whole thinking, my whole thought process, my whole teaching process, and to incorporate all of that [change].”
Deficit views also inform explanations about the world that erase or devalue Native peoples, knowledges, or sovereignty: what Tigua/Mexica scholar Dolores Calderon calls settler colonial logics. These “explanations” persist. For example, that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, or that treaty rights were granted to Native nations rather than by sovereign Native nations. The forest guide’s actions upheld another: that humans are separate from and superior to the natural world – even as they care for and teach about it.
5. Focus on asset-based, contemporary framing with Native peoples, knowledges, and nations
Recognizing patterns of Indigenous invisibility and erasure was necessary for educators to develop effective, asset-based STI teaching. Strength- or asset-based frames focus on the past, present, and future resilience and agency of Native peoples and nations: their innovation, strength, and leadership for addressing urgent contemporary issues. For example, one teacher’s Native students joined a large climate action youth conference, where he saw their authority amplified: “Out of that entire group it was only the group that I was with [who] had the power of the voice to say things that carried enough weight to actually shift the understanding in the way that we handle climate change. They are living on the landscape where they traditionally have lived since time immemorial, and have felt, and actually have the data within their knowledge of how the climate has changed over the last ten thousand years. And by all rights, they have the most authority to say this is what needs to be fixed right here right now.” Recognizing and countering colonial logics helped educators support Native students and communities against threats, from ocean acidification to Native language loss.
To enact transformative teaching with Since Time Immemorial, OEE educators have many choices. We can notice how we interpret and value students’ ideas from a particular standpoint, and constantly seek to broaden the interpretive resources in our toolkit. We can be vigilant with countering deficit frames applied to Native students, families, and knowledges. We can build relationships in the natural world and with Native communities as reciprocal participants and listeners, rather than dominators. We can approach colonial logics embedded in our own habits with more curiosity and determination. As we identify deficit frames and colonial logics shaping our relationships and understandings, we can share those myths with our students and challenge those frames as we teach. Our lessons can illustrate the urgently-needed leadership of Native peoples, knowledges, and nations with contemporary issues. As individuals and organizations, we can humbly seek partnerships and request feedback from Native colleagues and communities, and be more attentive to ways our own cultural values may shape our responses. And we can accept responsibility for co-designing learning experiences and partnerships that honor Indigenous peoples, lands and nations. Honoring the hummingbird and the Native youth who shared her story expect this of me. What next steps will you take? •T
Recommended Resources for Educators
Educator Self-Reflection Tool with Since Time Immemorial developed from this research: https://tinyurl.com/reflectSTI
Calderon and colleagues’ Research Brief on Land education (different from place-based education) professional development for educators gives important background and concrete suggestions for designing non-Native educator learning. https://cedar.wwu.edu/woodring_dei/33/
Conrad’s (2022) Desettling History: Non-Indigenous Teachers’ Practices and Tensions Engaging Indigenous Knowledges illustrates how two non-Native educators worked to support Native knowledges and sovereignty in place-based settings (email jconrad@temple.edu for a free copy).
Learning in Places Collaborative’s (2021) Frameworks for Educators, and Co-designing Places for Outdoor Learning Facilitation Guide offer resources for designing education aligned with Indigenous knowledges across settings. http://learninginplaces.org
Indigenous STEAM Collaborative’s Learning Activities offer print-ready tools for all settings that incorporate science, technology, engineering, art, and math. https://indigenoussteam.org/learning-activities/
Critical Orientations: Indigenous Studies and Outdoor Education: a free online course taught by Indigenous faculty at OSU, relevant to outdoor educators across settings https://workspace.oregonstate.edu/course/Critical-Orientations-Indigenous-Studies-and-Outdoor-Education