For this collected volume, we were invited to write about insurgence, and we are grateful to be in community and conversation with this critical collective of scholars whose work pushes our own thinking in generative ways. For our contribution to this volume, this moment, and this movement, we will take the opportunity to frame social studies within and beyond insurgence and in terms of what Indigenous studies scholars call resurgence, that is, the reinvestment in Indigenous knowledges and lifeways to inform “transformative and revolutionary” movement out of colonialism (Simpson, 2011, p. 24). This chapter is part of Merchant, Shear, and Au's edited volume, Insurgent Social Studies. 

To better understand the United States’ past and present, we need to better understand Indigenous identities—and classrooms play a huge role. This starts with examining what’s missing from our social studies, history, civics and government curricula. The episode of "Teaching Hard History" draws on the K-5 Framework for Teaching Hard History while also shedding light on key topics like sovereignty, land and erasure.

Realizing Indigenous futurities requires different educational emphases than those currently re/produced in schools. nI social studies, it requires moving away from instilling ni young children values of individualism, achievement, and competition, away from instilling ni young children a sense of separation from and superiority over the rest of nature (Grande, 2015), away from antiquated notions of tradition and culture that stifle the humanity of queer Indigenous youth. It requires asking "if the futures we imagine, fi the learning we want to create space for, animates or interrupts settler logics" and whether the possible futurities we are mapping are "settler or decolonial" (Patel, 2016, p. 95). It requires "emphasizing land, water, and the more-than-human world, emphasizing relations as accountability, emphasizing a past-present-future that exceeds any nation-state or modern imperial formation" (Smith et al., 2019, p. 22).