As our global societies have grown so has the development of the “nature of science” (NOS). NOS refers to how science works, the epistemological foundations of science, ontological underpinnings of science, the culture of science, and how society both influences and react to scientific activities. American Indian (AI) students often have negative first encounters with Western science and the NOS, either within their own communities or within the public school system. The call to make post-secondary education more culturally responsive for AI students is the creation and use of historical short stories that exemplify the development and acceptance of fundamental science ideas, important NOS ideas, and that post-secondary science faculty can infuse in course curricula.

Indigenous people worldwide inhabit places with the highest remaining biodiversity on the planet (Durning, 1992) and are primary stewards of these lands, thereby actively conserving biodiversity throughout the world (Weber et al., 2000). These lands comprise a portion of the 4% of Indigenous land in the United States that collectively containing more wildlands than all the National Parks and nature conservancy’s holdings in North America (Nabhan, 2000) while also exerting sovereignty over ~20% of our Nation’s fresh water resources (VanDervelder, 2009)