Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What are some of the main problems people face when services they depend on are disrupted?

Teaching Suggestion: Discuss students’ past experiences with power and other service outages, including preparations that can be made and workarounds that can be employed. Add “What if?” scenarios to further complicate matters—e.g., What if cellphone service is out too? What if roads are impassable due to rain or snow? What if service isn’t restored in a month? A year?

• “Millions of Texans Still Reeling From Water Disruptions After Last Week’s Brutal Arctic Blast” is a USA Today news report about the hardships people faced when a winter storm disrupted services.
• “What Would Happen in an Apocalyptic Blackout?” is a long feature article from BBC Future on the ripple effects of prolonged power outages.

2. What are cultural healing and cultural reclamation? How do these ideas relate to Indigenous cultures?

Teaching Suggestion: Discuss whether citizens and governments today have a responsibility to right past wrongs committed toward Native people. What are the pros and cons of non-Native people involving themselves in cultural reclamation?