The UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education (CCCSE) is delighted to collaborate with Teach Climate History on an event focusing on Indigenous history, ecology and history in schools.
The climate crisis demands new approaches to education. One way teachers can respond is by making different choices about what and how we teach. In our talk, we present a project at Taitā College, a secondary school in Te Awakairangi, New Zealand, that integrated mātauranga (Indigenous Māori knowledge) with critical, place-based historical thinking.
This project unfolded in three parts. First, we selected a learning context—Wairarapa Moana, New Zealand’s third-largest lake—that illustrates how colonisation has altered local ecologies and how Indigenous communities resist such changes. Second, we organised a field trip to the lake with tribal custodians, reinforcing and expanding students’ learning through direct engagement with the land and its history. Finally - or more accurately, underpinning these two - some students consolidated their learning through
Te Ahi Kaa, a school-based restoration of a swamp behind Taitā College that fosters Māori ways of thinking and being.
Through these activities, students developed a profound connection to the land and became active agents of change. This project highlights how integrating Indigenous knowledge and critical historical thinking can empower young people to respond to global challenges while grounding them in their local contexts.