American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The COVID-19 global pandemic brought many stressors that greatly impacted communities on many different levels, and in the shadow of these stressors were opportunities to innovate. This was especially true for early learning communities, and specifically for Indigenous early learning communities. From a foundation of Community-Based Inquiry, I aim to tell my story as a first time director at Daybreak Star Preschool where our process of healing and re-membering Indigenous practices with preschool children is rooted in land-based pedagogy and curriculum. This process built a momentum for our early learning community to move from a place of simply surviving the pandemic, to a place where we could thrive in reciprocity with our plant relatives and their wisdom.