Do You Know Where You Are? Bringing Indigenous Teaching Methods into the Classroom

Within sociological literature. Indigenous Studies and settler colonial theoretical frameworks are beginning to be regarded with greater respect and consideration. Yet, the discipline still struggles to emerge from the grasp of settler colonial assumptions; we continue to wait for U.S. Sociology to acknowledge and appreciate that all teaching, learning, and research on Turtle Island takes place on Indigenous homeland. It is a tall task to "decolonize" sociology as a field; however, Indigenous feminist scholars remind us of our responsibilities to critique problems and to offer a generative pathway forward. We take up this charge and offer our experiences and suggestions for how we can take steps toward decolonizing our college classrooms. In this article, a professor and two students write about our differing and shared experiences of learning together in an Indigenous Methodologies graduate seminar at a research-intensive university. We approached the class, and this article, with the following question: What if we were able to imagine a classroom experience that nurtured and inspired us to be in good relation with the Indigenous peoples and homelands on which our classrooms are built? We share our experiences and suggest tools we all may use to bring Indigenous teaching methods into our classrooms, and into our lives outside the classrooms.