The Kairos Blanket Exercise is a powerful interactive educational tool that teaches, in approximately 1 1/2 hours, the history of Indigenous presence and settler colonialism in North America. 

​

We at Pitzer first encountered it, in its Canadian version, from our Vancouver Island University partners in 2017.  The experience was transformative, and our whole Pitzer delegation unanimously agreed/declared : "We have to bring this to Pitzer to educate our community!"

​

We also agreed we had to revise the existing U.S. script to centrally incorporate the experiences of the Tongva and other California Tribal Nations.

​

In fall 2017 Tongva knowledge holders shared stories with Professor Steinman's students, and in spring 2018 these students worked, also under the guidance of Tongva Elder Julia Bogany, to  insert this info into the U.S. script. It has been an amazing project that is continuing forward!

​

We hope to be offering the Tongva- and California-inclusive version of the U.S. Blanket Exercise soon! A number of students, community members and faculty have worked on the ongoing project of creating a historical script that is specific to the territory we are based in, and honors its original peoples as well as neighboring California Indian Nations.

​

Separately, we have already held the exercise for two Los Angeles high schools that serve students with Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan ancestries, and we all can imagine creating a version that tells the story of Spanish colonization and subsequent nation-state domination of Indigenous peoples south of the U.S. border. 

​

Learn more in general at: https://www.kairosblanketexercise.org/. Thank you Kairos organization for creating this wonderful educational tool!