Very few Native American students pursue careers in the geosciences. To address this national problem, several units at the University of Oklahoma are implementing a geoscience “pipeline” program that is designed to increase the number of Native American students entering geoscience disciplines. One of the program's strategies includes the development of an undergraduate course called ‘Earth Systems of the Southern Great Plains.’ The course focuses on geoscience topics that relate to the southern plains (particularly Oklahoma), emphasizes “sense of place,” integrates indigenous knowledge and geoscience content, makes use of Kiowa stories and metaphors, and uses Native American Art as a vehicle of learning. Students in the course are required to put living indigenous philosophies into practice through teaching activities and the construction of geoscience models using everyday materials. The course is designed to highlight the integrated nature of Earth processes, elicit students' experiences through explo...

How might we teach undergraduate students about Indigenous geographies using historical maps? This paper describes processes associated with the bridging of a historical Kiowa map with computerized geographic information systems (GIS) and undergraduate geography curriculum. The authors applied an indigital framework as an approach for melding Indigenous and Western knowledge systems into a third kind of construct for teaching undergraduate students about historical/contemporary spatial issues. Indigital is the blending of Indigenous knowledge systems, such as storytelling, language, calendar keeping, dance, and songs, with computerized systems. We present an origin story about the indigitization of a historical Kiowa pictorial map, known as the Chál-ko-gái map, at the University of Missouri, USA. Undergraduate student engagement with the map resulted in new questions about Indigenous geographies, particularly map projections, place names, and the meaning of Kiowa symbols.