City of Las Cruces (Las Cruces Museum System)

The Las Cruces Museum System will adapt a museum exhibit into an educational resource for school-based settings. The Indigenous Borderlands exhibit will launch at the Branigan Cultural Center in late 2022, exploring Indigenous history and culture of the “borderlands,” in the present-day Las Cruces, NM, El Paso, TX, Ciudad Juárez, MX region. The project team will collaborate with local Indigenous academics and cultural leaders to develop educational activities that complement the exhibit and augment school curricula. They will design a traveling trunk as a mobile educational kit loaned to schools for use by teachers. Indigenous partners will provide in-classroom and recorded talks in connection with the trunk. This project will improve students’ understanding of local history and culture of Indigenous peoples; support teachers in history instruction inclusive of Indigenous experiences and perspectives; and strengthen museum capacity to offer community-driven programming.