Teaching About Conquest & Colonization

Our blog contains numerous resources for teaching about conquest and colonization. We’ve written posts on Rethinking Columbus, Thanksgiving Reconsidered, and Indigenous Stereotypes, just to name a few. In our posts we share lesson plans, fiction and non-fiction books, and other online materials.

For a list of relevant, exemplary books, see Kalyn Finnell’s Reading RoundUp of “10 Books About Indigenous Peoples of Latin America.”

In addition to what we’ve shared on the blog, our office (the UNM Latin American & Iberian Institute, or LAII), has developed extensive curriculum materials to support teaching about indigenous peoples of the Americas. In particular, we’ve developed or compiled resources about Rethinking Columbus and the Conquests of Spanish America. To learn more about these materials, visit the LAII website or click on the individual lesson plans below.

Rethinking Columbus
(to complement the Rethinking Schools’ teacher resource book, Rethinking Columbus)

About
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
Introductory Activities
Content Activities
Closure Activities
Middle and High School Activities
Curriculum Standards
- NM Language Arts Standards and Benchmarks
- NM Social Studies Standards and Benchmarks
Resources
- Works Cited
- Supplementary Documents

The Conquests of Spanish America (developed by New Mexico teachers to link New Mexican and United States history to the conquests of Spanish America)