Since Time Immemorial - Part 2 of a series   

Since Time Immemorial is an invaluable resource available for teaching our children about the history and sovereignty of Washington State Tribes.  This curriculum has been developed and endorsed by all 29 federally recognized tribes in our state.  

SinceTime Immemorial is a web-based curriculum available for free for WA State teachers, including Pearl parents, and it has been a required part of an education in WA State schools since 2015 when Senate Bill 5433 was passed. We welcome you to explore the Ready to Go Lessons provided by grade level, pre-k through high school, and the vast array of  activities and resources available for use including videos, coloring and activity books, timelines, primary sources and documents and slide presentations.  These lessons could easily be added to any Social Studies SLP.

In Pearl, we are working to create Social Studies SLP templates that include Since Time Immemorial, but in the meantime, we invite you to explore the web page and let your teacher know how you can add some of these lessons and activities to your current Social Studies plans. It might be easiest to add a month long unit something like this:

Example for Grades 2-3,  from the Since Time Immemorial Ready to Go Lessons:

Week 1 - Native Stories of How Things Came  to Be - Lesson Plan Link here.

Week 2 - Honoring the Salmon - Lesson 1 Salmon Boy; Lesson 2 First Salmon Ceremony; Lesson 3 Salmon Summer; Lesson 4 Salmon Summer pt. 2

Weeks 3 & 4 - Giving Thanks; A Native American Cultural Tradition - Lesson 1 Where Does Our Food Come From?   Lesson 2 How Do We Show Gratitude?  Lesson 3 “Seya’s Song”  Lesson 4 First Salmon Ceremony

In addition to the Since Time Immemorial website, another excellent resource for connecting our children to Native culture is the Living Nations, Living Words project, founded by Joy Haro, the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States.  “As the first Native U.S. Poet Laureate, I decided that my signature project should introduce the country to the many Native poets who live in these lands. Our communities innately shared and share poetry from before the founding of the United States to the present.”  The “Living Nations, Living Words” project features a sampling of work by 47 Native Nations poets through an interactive ArcGIS Story Map and a newly developed Library of Congress audio collection.