About

The development

These resources were developed as a way for teachers and students to return year after year to the art, artists, and ideas from Boundless. We wanted to create something that would center the makers and the objects to avoid both the persistent whitewashing of and denial of Indigenous people’s stories and futures in North America that is so common in dominant American culture and curricula, and also move fluidly between and across the varied people, places, and times that the Boundless project features. 

The Curriculum

The digital curriculum takes inspiration from the exhibition’s belief in the importance of how water flows. Organized around four major concepts: Place, Continuance, Kinship, and Storytelling—all broader themes that run through Boundless—we encourage teachers and students to start with these big ideas and, from there, learn about many different artists and objects across periods, cultures, and practices. Each artist’s work brings a different perspective to understanding the broader concepts. In turn, we hope that students and teachers alike can grow to understand the importance of teaching Indigenous histories as Boundless—histories that are abundant and continuously flowing. 

The K–12 digital curriculum, much like the exhibitions and broader project, does not provide a linear sequence or hierarchy of specific events, periods, or Indigenous cultures—and instead focuses on the abundance and continuance of Native American artists and authors, past, present, and future. As a result, this curriculum is non-exhaustive and won’t be the answer to correcting all of the errors and gaps in Indigenous histories in the United States education system. It is but a starting point and an offering to educators to show different and innovative ways of foregrounding object-based teaching.

Boundless K-12 teaching resources are made possible with financial support from the Mass Humanities’ Expand Massachusetts Stories grant program with support from the Mass Cultural Council.

Contributors

Olivia Feal is a museum and arts educator. Born to a Cuban and Puerto Rican father and an Italian and Polish mother, Olivia is a 2nd Generation New Yorker and 1st Generation College Grad. She is an advocate for informal learning spaces, educational equity, hands-on learning, and making art and museum spaces accessible. She believes that through the making and close-looking of art, we can disentangle personal, institutional, and historical narratives to help us take meaningful action in our world. At the Mead, Olivia manages the K-12 School Programs and Amherst College Student Museum Educators and coordinates the Summer Internship.

Carolyn Gennari is an interdisciplinary artist working across video, animation, performance, and sculpture. Using the archive as source material, her creative practice is heavily research based and explores how performance and media can generate news ways of thinking about the past. Often beginning her projects within archives and museums, Carolyn traces objects back to present day communities, sites and events, positioning the archive as an active site in which to consider history and its relationship to the contemporaneous. Gennari received her MFA from Stamps School of Art & Design, in 2017 and her MA certificate in Museum Studies in 2020 from the University of Michigan. She is based in Central Falls, RI and Rochester, NY. 

Genevieve Simermeyer has been a museum educator and resource developer/writer for the past twenty-five years. She has worked with many museums across the country. For nearly a decade, she served as the School Programs Manager at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Genevieve is the author of Meet Christopher: An Osage Indian Boy from Oklahoma, winner of a 2010 American Indian Youth Literature Award from the American Indian Library Association. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and holds a Master’s of Education and Museum Studies from Tufts University. Genevieve is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation of Oklahoma.

With thanks to our digital-accessibility consultant, Julia Handschuh, our reviewers, Angela D’Souza, Kiara Vigil, Heid E. Erdrich, and all of the contributing artists.