This project involved teaching Peruvian Indigenous dance to non-Indigenous people to understand how to preserve Indigenous culture, values in the world, and to better relationships between humans and nature. The questions for this investigation were: What occurs when non-Indigenous students explore a curriculum designed to foster an understanding of Indigenous Peruvian dance and the Quechua culture? How does learning Indigenous dance serve to teach indigenous cultural values such as respect, communication, integrity, care of nature, and social interaction? How will my participation in this exploratory project affect my role as a teacher of indigenous Peruvian dance?

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Participants at three different institutions took part in this project. The first was an urban parochial school with eighty participants from 5th, 6th, and 7th grades who were 95% white and 5% international students. The second institution was a dance studio, with ten student participants, 5- 10 years old, of 100% of Peruvian American descent. The last one was a teacher dance workshop with twenty participants of different ages with 60% Hispanic and Latinx and 40% white teachers.

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This research employed fun, Indigenous stories and techniques in teaching and learning about Indigenous dance and culture during the fourteen-learning lessons. Students connected their own experiences with new knowledge through the cognitive, social, emotional, and artistic aspects of each lesson. The classes took place for one hour per week with each class at the school and the dance studio, and for three hours a day, once a month, at the teacher workshops. Documentation and reflections were gathered from these three places using videos, photographs, surveys, and interviews with teachers, students and parents, as well as observations.

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Through Indigenous Peruvian dance, participants discovered that each participant makes an essential contribution to living in peace and understanding with nature and other human beings. During this project, the participants engaged with an atmosphere of enriched culture that gave life to Peruvian culture and created new forms of learning that enriched their own lives. This study also helped students to understand others and be more tolerant of differences.

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Teaching and exploring indigenous techniques have much potential for strengthening the self- esteem and cultural identity of both teachers and students. Through decolonizing methodologies and Indigenous processes, we may build a better worldview for educating on the existence of Indigenous cultures and what we can learn from our encounters with the history and culture of Indigenous values.