Educator and Community Leader Workshop: What is the Relationship Between the Taking of the Land and the Taking of the Children?

This class is limited to 20 participants; pre‐registration is required.

Workshop Description:

This is a special day‐long workshop for educators and community leaders to learn how to enter into conversation with students and community members about unexamined events in social history. Specifically, it will provide an in‐depth learning of some of the history of forced removal of indigenous children form their families and indigenous people from their land, specifically in what is now New England. Teachers and community leaders will learn approaches for incorporating this history into your teaching and leadership. It is organized and led by the Upstander Project and centers around the question: what is the relationship between the taking of the land and the taking of the children?

Educator and Facilitator

Mishy Lesser, Ed.D., is the learning director for the Upstander Project and Education Fellow at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut. She is co-director of the Upstander Academy, a weeklong professional learning experience for teachers and museum educators that focuses on genocide and decolonization and the skills of upstanders. Currently Dr. Lesser spends much of her time researching and writing the teachers’ and viewers’ guides for Dear Georgina and Bounty. Mishy authored the twelve-lesson Dawnland Teacher’s Guide to help students explore the relationship between the taking of the land and the taking of the children, and the four-lesson Coexist Teacher’s Guide to promote learning about the complexity of reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda. She is a Circle Keeper and has been featured on WBUR (Boston) and PRI/BBC’s The World. Mishy was a Fulbright Scholar in Ecuador and spent 12 years learning and working in the Andes.

The Dawnland screening and related classes are co‐sponsored by the Smith Center for Religious and Spiritual Life, Smith Indigenous Students and Allies Association, and the Smith Oﬃce for Equity and Inclusion.