With deeply rooted assumptions established as authoritative in both negative and positive views of California's first nations, it is unsurprising that what students are taught about them today focuses on how the peoples of different regions made use of the naturally-occurring resources available to them. The "History-Social Science Content Standards for California Public Schools, K-12" (1998), which addresses California Indians very narrowly and only in grades one, three, and four, omits nearly everything except hunter-gatherer practices from consideration prior to European contact. The "English-Language Arts Content Standards" (1997) includes no mention of California Indians. One would thus hardly expect the "Science Content Standards" (1998) to depart from this pattern, as indeed it does not; no reference to indigenous knowledge of the natural world appears in the pages of that document. By omitting other paradigms for understanding how human beings gain and use knowledge of the natural world of which people are a part, science education contributes to the process currently underway in which a part is destroying the whole. California offers a good example. In this article the author talks about indigenous ecology, environmental crisis, and science education in California.