'Don't Take Our Voices Away' A role play on the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change

Julie Treick O'Neill, Tim Swinehart, Zinn Education Project

This resource has students role-play an Indigenous climate summit. It includes handouts about each Indigenous group and their concerns about climate change.

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Teachers may want to lead a land acknowledgment for the Indigenous peoples whose unceded land they are on. They can look this up at [link https://native-land.ca] Care should be taken to set ground rules so that racist stereotypes are not reinforced (for ex, students should not speak with accents). The link provided goes to an article that describes the purpose of the lesson and how the lesson went in practice. Teachers may need to read this more than once and take notes on what the steps of the lesson are. This lesson touches on climate change concepts like ocean acidification but doesn't go into detail. To expand this lesson, students could do additional research to more deeply understand the climate impacts mentioned in their handout. Teachers may want to adapt this activity to address the current COP (which happens annually) by watching some of the proceedings and reading articles related to COP events and decision-making. The activity could be appropriate for upper middle school (7th-8th) with some modifications.
This resource teaches students about climate change impacts from the perspectives of six Indigenous communities around the world. Students read the actual report Indigenous Peoples made called the Anchorage Declaration from the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change to reflect on similarities and differences to their own decisions in the role play. Only a few references were cited, so students could extend the activity by looking up the reference sources. Passed initial science review - expert science review pending.
Students are split into groups representing Indigenous communities where they learn about specific issues affecting these communities. They then discuss action items they would like to bring to the UN Climate Summit (aka Conference of Parties/COP), role-playing as representatives from their community. An understanding of climate change and how it impacts people would be a helpful prerequisite. There is not a teacher's guide, but examples show how it was used in a history classroom. It is recommended that the educator read through the paper and take notes in lieu of a comprehensive lesson plan available. Teachers will need to look up the action items from the Indigenous Climate Summit on which this activity is based for the homework component on p. 6 where students compare their outcomes to the real summit.