Indigenizing the Teaching of North American History: A Panel Discussion

In late-October, Active History editor Thomas Peace met with Marie Battiste, Alan Corbiere, and Sarah Nickel to discuss decolonization and Indigenization in the teaching of North American history. Over the course of an hour, the conversation explored the meaning of decolonization, Indigenizing the academy, Indigenous resurgence in the Indigenizing of history, assessed specific anticolonial strategies for affecting change in the discipline, and provided advice for history teachers and professors about how to change pedagogies and curriculum.

To extend the conversation, we asked the panelists to provide a list of useful resources history teachers and professors can use to learn more about the subjects addressed during the session. Here is their reading list:

• Marie Battiste, Visioning Mi’kmaw Humanities: Indigenizing the Academy (Sydney: Cape Breton University Press, 2016)
• Susan Sleeper-Smith et al., eds., Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
• Marie Battiste, Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013)
• Devon Mihesuah, “Should American Indian History Remain a Field of Study,” in Devon Mihesuah and Angela Cavender Wilson, eds., Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).
• A Syllabus for History after the TRC