In a classroom at Oyster River Middle School in Durham, eighth grade teacher Valerie Wolfson does not begin the story of America with the Declaration of Independence or even the arrival of European colonists. She starts thousands of years earlier, with the people who already lived on this land, and works her way forward from there. The approach, she says, is not a departure from teaching American history. It is American history, told more completely than most students ever encounter it.
As New Hampshire schools prepare to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, a small but committed group of educators is working to ensure that Indigenous history, and specifically the history of the Abenaki, the Native people whose homeland encompasses much of what is now New Hampshire and Vermont, becomes a genuine and sustained part of what students learn in the Granite State. The effort is neither simple nor fully supported by state policy. But for the teachers and community members who are driving it, the work matters far too much to leave undone. As reported by New Hampshire Public Radio, the quiet movement is gaining momentum even without a formal state mandate.
The Gap in How NH Students Learn History
New Hampshire teachers operate with considerable freedom when it comes to classroom content. Beyond federal Common Core standards and state-level requirements around genocide education and civics, educators have significant latitude to determine what gets taught and how. That flexibility is, in some ways, a gift. It allows teachers like Wolfson to build curricula that reflect the full complexity of American history, including the lives and perspectives of the people who inhabited this region for millennia before Europeans arrived.
But that same flexibility also means that Indigenous history can easily be omitted, condensed into a single unit, or reduced to a collection of cultural artifacts and pre-colonial customs rather than a living, continuing story with direct relevance to New Hampshire communities today. Wolfson has spent decades pushing against that tendency, curating content and teaching practices that give students a genuine grounding in who the Abenaki were, and who they are.
Her classroom at Oyster River Middle School is decorated with posters reflecting a broad and inclusive view of history. Social media accounts she has assembled give her a steady feed of content from Indigenous creators and educators who offer ideas, perspectives, and materials she can weave into her lessons. She approaches the subject with what she describes as ongoing humility, aware that her own education did not prepare her to teach this content well, and that she has to keep learning in order to teach it honestly.
Abenaki Educators Cross Borders to Teach
One of the most compelling elements of the current effort to bring Indigenous history into New Hampshire classrooms involves collaboration that crosses the international border with Canada. Jacques Watso is a citizen of the Abenaki First Nation at Odanak, one of two federally recognized Abenaki nations, located about 90 miles northeast of Montreal. He is also a caterer who prepares traditional Abenaki food as a way of connecting students to culture in a tangible, immediate way. Watso has been traveling to schools in the region to give lessons on Abenaki history and contemporary Abenaki life.
His approach is intentional in its breadth. He does not limit his teaching to pre-colonial Abenaki culture, presenting it as a finished chapter in a history that has since been written by others. He wants students to understand that Abenaki people and communities exist today, that their culture has survived extraordinary pressures, and that the history of what happened to them is not a distant abstraction but a story with living consequences.
Watso works alongside colleagues from Odanak who are developing formal curriculum materials designed for K-through-12 classrooms. The goal is to make those materials available for in-person visits and through virtual courses that New England and Canadian schools could access. Wolfson at Oyster River Middle School has already said she would welcome a visit.
The involvement of educators from Odanak in New Hampshire classrooms reflects something important about how Indigenous history works across political boundaries. The Abenaki homeland did not follow the lines that would eventually become the United States-Canada border. Abenaki people moved across what is now northern New England and Quebec for thousands of years, and their history, culture, and contemporary communities cannot be understood by looking only at one side of that border. The collaboration between New Hampshire educators and Abenaki community members from Canada acknowledges that reality in a practical and meaningful way.
Teaching the Full Story
What does it look like in practice to teach Indigenous history as part of American history rather than as a supplement to it? Wolfson’s approach offers some clues. Rather than reserving a unit on Native Americans for a specific point in the school year, she integrates Indigenous perspectives throughout her curriculum. When students learn about colonial settlement in New England, they learn it in the context of what was already here and what the arrival of European settlers meant for Abenaki communities. When they study conflicts and wars, they study how those conflicts looked from multiple sides.
The 250th anniversary of the United States provides both an opportunity and a challenge for this kind of teaching. On one hand, it is a moment when Americans are reflecting on the founding and the meaning of national identity, and that reflection is richer when it incorporates the full sweep of the continent’s history. On the other hand, anniversary commemorations often emphasize founding myths and national pride in ways that can crowd out more complicated stories.
Wolfson and educators like her are trying to seize the anniversary as a teaching moment without letting its celebratory frame narrow what students actually learn. That means being willing to discuss land dispossession, the deliberate destruction of Indigenous cultures and languages, and the ways in which Indigenous people were systematically excluded from the American story even as that story was being told in their homeland.
The Broader Challenge in New Hampshire
New Hampshire has a complicated relationship with its Indigenous history. The Abenaki were the primary inhabitants of the region for thousands of years before European contact, and their presence shaped the landscape, the waterways, and even many of the place names that New Hampshire residents still use today. But that history has largely been invisible in public education and civic life.
The state has no federally recognized Native American tribes within its borders. The Abenaki people who remain in New Hampshire and the broader region are part of nations centered in Vermont, Quebec, and New Brunswick, and their connection to the land that is now New Hampshire is real but not recognized through formal legal structures. That has made it easier, historically, for New Hampshire’s Indigenous history to be treated as ancient and concluded rather than ongoing and relevant.
Efforts to change that framing have encountered resistance in some quarters. A bill in the 2025 legislative session sparked controversy over questions of Abenaki identity and the membership of the state’s Native American Commission, reflecting the political complexity that surrounds these issues even when the stated goal is simply to ensure that Indigenous voices are represented in state government and education.
But the educators working on the ground, in classrooms like Wolfson’s and in communities like Odanak, are less focused on political debates than on the practical work of making sure students have access to a more complete and honest account of the place they live. That work proceeds school by school, classroom by classroom, often without formal institutional support.
Why It Matters for NH Students
There are practical and ethical reasons why this kind of teaching matters for New Hampshire students specifically. On the practical side, students who grow up with a more accurate understanding of the full history of the region they live in are better prepared to be thoughtful citizens. They are more likely to understand the roots of persistent inequalities and more equipped to think critically about the stories their communities tell about themselves.
On the ethical side, the history of what happened to the Abenaki and other Indigenous peoples in New England is a history that New Hampshire is part of. Land dispossession, forced assimilation, the suppression of language and culture: these are not distant national stories. They happened here, on the land where New Hampshire’s schools, farms, towns, and cities now stand. Teaching that history honestly is not a matter of guilt or grievance but of accuracy and respect.
Wolfson, after more than 25 years in the classroom, continues to see the impact that this kind of teaching has on students. When young people learn that the place they live has a deep and layered history, that people with rich and sophisticated cultures have called this land home for thousands of years, and that those people’s descendants are still alive and still connected to this place, it changes how students see their own community and their own responsibility as residents of it.
That change, educators like Wolfson and Watso believe, is precisely what education is for. And as the United States marks 250 years since independence, ensuring that New Hampshire students have access to the fuller version of that story seems more important than ever.
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Are there formal requirements for teaching Indigenous history in New Hampshire schools?
New Hampshire does not have specific state mandates requiring schools to teach Indigenous history. Teachers have significant discretion over curriculum content beyond federal Common Core standards and state requirements around genocide and civics education. This means that how much Indigenous history students encounter depends largely on individual teachers and school districts.
Who are the Abenaki and what is their connection to New Hampshire?
The Abenaki are the Indigenous people whose ancestral homeland encompasses much of what is now New Hampshire, Vermont, and parts of Quebec and the Maritime provinces. They inhabited and shaped the region for thousands of years before European contact. Today, Abenaki people are members of nations centered in Vermont and Canada, including the Abenaki First Nation at Odanak. New Hampshire has no federally recognized Native American tribes within its borders.
What is the Abenaki First Nation at Odanak?
Odanak is one of two federally recognized Abenaki nations, located in Quebec, Canada, about 90 miles northeast of Montreal. The community has been working to develop K-12 curriculum materials on Abenaki history and culture for use in schools in New England and Canada, including in-person visits and virtual courses to make authentic Abenaki perspectives accessible to students across the region.
How is the 250th anniversary of the U.S. shaping how teachers approach Indigenous history?
The U.S. 250th anniversary in 2026 has prompted reflection on what American history includes and how it is taught. Educators who prioritize Indigenous history see the anniversary as an opportunity to encourage a more complete telling of that story, one that starts thousands of years before European colonization rather than at the founding. The challenge is avoiding a purely celebratory framing that crowds out more complicated historical realities.
What resources are available for NH teachers who want to incorporate Indigenous history?
Resources include the Indigenous New Hampshire Collaborative Collective, curriculum materials being developed by the Abenaki First Nation at Odanak, and a growing community of Indigenous content creators on social media who share educational materials. Teachers like Valerie Wolfson at Oyster River Middle School in Durham have also built networks of educators doing similar work. The hope among advocates is to make formal, high-quality curriculum materials widely available for New Hampshire classrooms.
For related coverage of education policy in New Hampshire, see our reporting on civics education and student engagement at Saint Anselm and beyond, as well as teacher pay pressures across the state education system and our look at afterschool and childcare workforce challenges.
