I’ve added a new step to the planning I do for my school visits and appearances at conferences and festivals: using the map tool from Native Land Digital to learn about the Indigenous histories of the places I go and current information about the nations represented.

So, for instance, over the summer I appeared at a university whose history, according to Native Land Digital, included Massawomeck and Manahoac people. My first visit in 2019-20 will be at a school where the history comes up as Tonkawa and Comanche.

Again, my goal is to learn this for every school I visit, every conference site, every festival location. I’m going to learn a lot.