Lessons for Highschool

This interdisciplinary lesson invites students to explore how science, engineering, and Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) can work together to address water quality and environmental challenges. Centered around the restoration of wetlands using Floating Treatment Wetlands (FTWs), students examine the environmental, cultural, and economic trade-offs in land use decisions. This FTW system has been used by the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe on their own reservation’s stormwater pond as part of their commitment to high water quality standards. Through group debate, hands-on FTW design work, and a community outreach campaign, students gain insight into how ecosystems can be restored through both modern STEM practices and the values embedded in TEK. The Snoqualmie Indian Tribe prioritizes water quality for the benefit of everyone, including animals, plants, and the land. Addressing the disruption of water systems while also providing solutions and encouraging collaboration is a responsibility of the Snoqualmie people that was passed down by their ancestors. For the Snoqualmie people, protecting water goes beyond its use as a resource because water connects them to their history and way of life.

The Snoqualmie River holds deep significance to the Snoqualmie Tribe in that it ties the Snoqualmie history, culture, and people together through the land and waters. The significance of the Snoqualmie River is a shared experience, and members of the Snoqualmie Tribe have both personal connections and familial connections to its history that span over thousands of years. This lesson relates these complex cultural connections to students through beavers who are central figures in Snoqualmie oral tradition. The value of respect for animals, plants, and the land is inherent to Snoqualmie Tribal worldview. Many animals and plants are featured in stories that occur in the Snoqualmie people’s deep history. In this way, beavers, for example, are valued more than their ecological function or their value as a resource. The use of beavers in hunting is not held as an extractive process separate from the value of human beings. These concepts touch on some of the Snoqualmie Tribe’s Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) that are foundational to understand natural resources as critical cultural resources in the context of colonization. Through multimedia activities, discussions, and engineering design challenges, they learn how Indigenous science and sustainability practices provide enduring models for ecological restoration and environmental stewardship.