People & Culture
Long before the U.S. Constitution was written, five nations in what is now New York State had agreed to govern together under a shared set of laws. That story, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, is where this Kahoot! begins. From there, it moves across North America and through time: the cliff dwellings Ancestral Puebloans built into the canyon walls of Mesa Verde, the forced removal of the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears, the effort to bring buffalo back to the Great Plains, and the lives of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities in Canada today. Some answers may surprise you, and some will change how you think about history you thought you knew.
Teachers: Use it to open or review a unit on Indigenous history, government, or human rights, or pair it with the rest of the Indigenous Peoples Around the World Kahoot course.
The San have lived in the Kalahari, a vast semi-desert stretching across Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa, for thousands of years. They are among the oldest continuous cultures on Earth. Watch the BBC video clips to see how they live in a place with little surface water: reading animal tracks in the sand, hunting with poisoned arrows, making fire by hand, and finding food and water where outsiders see none. Then take the Kahoot to test what you’ve learned, including the harder story of how San communities have fought to stay on their land and keep their knowledge alive as the world around them changes.
Teachers: Show the clips as a class before playing the Kahoot live or assign both for independent learning. It works as a hook for units on Indigenous peoples, African geography, or human adaptation to extreme environments. The land rights questions give students an opening to discuss who decides how traditional lands are used.
One of the last landmasses to be settled, New Zealand, or Aotearoa, is home to the Māori, the Indigenous people of New Zealand. Over 700 years ago, the Māori brought traditions, knowledge, and their language, te reo Māori, to Aotearoa, all of which continue to shape the country today. Explore Māori history and culture, from extraordinary waka voyages to the haka performed by a New Zealand sports team. Watch the BBC videos below to gear up with the knowledge you need to take the Kahoot!
Discover how Māori communities have preserved their identity and traditions across generations, despite there being a time when te reo Māori was discouraged in schools. Learn more about the significance of it now being an official language of New Zealand, as well as the marae as community gathering places and cultural practices such as haka and tā moko. Explore how Māori heritage remains a vibrant and important part of life in Aotearoa today.
Teachers: Use the videos as a lesson starter, homework activity, or introduction to Indigenous cultures and New Zealand history. Follow with the Kahoot as a live class quiz or self-paced challenge to check understanding and spark discussion. Students will learn about Māori migration to Aotearoa, the Treaty of Waitangi, the importance of marae, te reo Māori, and cultural traditions including the hongi, haka, and tā moko. The activity supports learning about Indigenous histories, cultural identity, and the ways traditions can be preserved and revitalized over time. Watch for common misconceptions, such as thinking haka is only performed in happy occasions such as to welcome guests or at sporting events, when it is also performed to honor achievements such as at funerals.
The Maya built one of the world's most remarkable civilizations, creating impressive cities, studying the stars, and developing advanced systems of mathematics and writing. Explore the achievements and legacy of the Maya people. Watch the BBC videos below, then take the Kahoot to test your knowledge.
Discover how Maya societies flourished across parts of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. Learn about their temples, calendars, scientific knowledge, and cultural traditions, while exploring how Maya communities continue to live and celebrate their heritage today.
Teachers: Use the videos as a starter activity for lessons on ancient civilizations, geography, or cultural heritage. Follow with the Kahoot as a formative assessment or review activity. Students will examine Maya achievements in architecture, astronomy, mathematics, and writing, while learning about the lasting influence of Maya culture. The activity supports comparisons between civilizations and encourages discussion about how ancient knowledge continues to shape the modern world. Watch for misconceptions such as the belief that the Maya disappeared, as millions of Maya people still live throughout Mesoamerica today.
Sápmi stretches across the far north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia’s Kola Peninsula, and it’s home to the Sámi, the Indigenous people of the region. Watch the BBC video clips to see how Sámi families have followed reindeer herds across the tundra for centuries, why their bright traditional clothing (gákti) can show where someone comes from, and how joik, a traditional form of song, is used to express a person, place, or feeling. Then take the Kahoot to test what you’ve learned, including how a warming Arctic is making snow, ice, and grazing land harder to predict, and what that means for a way of life built around them.
Teachers: Show the BBC clips as a class before playing the Kahoot live or assign both for independent learning. It fits units on Indigenous peoples, European geography, or climate change, and gives students a concrete example of how a warming planet affects real communities.
“Sharing is caring” is a good motto, but winning a Nobel Peace Prize takes a lot more. You could ask Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, the South African judge named as the 2026 winner, but she may be too busy to answer. At 85, she is still hearing cases at one of the world’s highest courts.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded each year to a person or organization that has made an exceptional contribution to peace. That means more than good manners. Winners have often spent decades helping countries cooperate, ending wars, or defending people’s rights. Pillay’s prize highlights an important idea: peace is more than the end of fighting. It also depends on protecting rights, applying laws fairly, and holding people responsible for the most serious crimes.
Pillay grew up in a family of Indian descent in South Africa under apartheid. Apartheid was a system of laws, in place from 1948 until the early 1990s, that separated people by race and denied non-white South Africans equal rights. Despite facing discrimination, she became a lawyer. In 1995, she became the first non-white woman to serve as a judge on South Africa’s High Court.
She went on to work at the international level. She was a judge on the International Criminal Court, which puts individuals on trial for crimes such as genocide and war crimes. She then served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN’s top official responsible for protecting human rights around the world. Throughout her career, she has argued that the same basic legal principles should apply to everyone, everywhere.
Today, she is a judge at the International Court of Justice, the UN’s main court for disputes between countries. She is hearing a case in which Myanmar is accused of genocide.
Women have been flying planes since before commercial airlines even existed, so why is it that today, women make up only about 6% of pilots worldwide? Although they account for more than a third of the aviation industry’s workforce, most women work in the cabins or on the ground and are much more rarely in the cockpit.
This low (ahem, abysmal) percentage of female pilots has several possible explanations, but it shouldn’t surprise you that none of them are because women aren’t capable! More likely reasons include a lack of female role models, limited access to science and technical education, gender stereotypes, and the challenge of balancing a demanding career in aviation with family life. These are a lot to work against, but support such as scholarships, cadet programs, flexible working, and family-friendly policies could help more women enter the profession and stay in it.
Think those are too much to ask for? Take a look at India! There, around 15% of airline pilots are women — that’s almost three times the global average. Experts say this is partly because of a smaller gender pay gap and the rapid growth of their aviation industry.
Unfortunately, getting more women into piloting roles isn’t as simple as just hiring more females. Part of it starts in early education, where schools can show young women that a career in aviation is possible for them (not just the boys in their class). Organizations like governments and airlines also need to address pay, safety, and working hours.
Examine the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and its system of governance, explore the remarkable cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, and see how Native communities are restoring buffalo herds with deep cultural and ecological significance. Experience traditional arts such as hoop dance and hear Indigenous voices discussing issues affecting their communities today.
Together, these stories reveal the diversity of Native nations and communities, each with its own history, traditions, and relationship to the land. They also connect past and present, showing how Indigenous peoples are preserving languages and cultural practices, strengthening communities, and shaping conversations about land, sovereignty, conservation, and identity.
From ancient places and longstanding traditions to contemporary challenges and achievements, these BBC videos offer multiple perspectives on the Indigenous peoples and cultures that have shaped — and continue to shape — North America.
Meet young chefs as they prepare foods connected to their families and cultures, from favorite recipes to dishes enjoyed for celebrations and special occasions. Along the way, discover new ingredients, cooking techniques, and flavors while seeing how food traditions can be shared across generations.
Every recipe has a story. The foods people cook can reflect where they live, their family histories, the ingredients available to them, and traditions that have been passed down over time. These clips offer a window into different cultures while highlighting something people everywhere have in common: gathering together to cook, eat, and share.
Grab a seat at the table and explore the people, traditions, and stories behind the food.
Travel from the busy streets of Jodhpur to the teak forests of central India, encountering a country shaped by thousands of years of history and extraordinary cultural and geographic diversity. Meet langur monkeys adapted to life alongside people, explore the origins and flavors of foods such as samosas, and see how daily life and traditions vary across communities.
Look deeper into India’s past through influential figures including the emperor Ashoka, whose rule helped shape the spread of Buddhism, and Mahatma Gandhi, whose nonviolent resistance became central to India’s independence movement. Other clips examine questions of equality, identity, social expectations, and the ways traditions can persist, adapt, and be challenged over time.
Together, these stories offer multiple perspectives on one of the world’s largest and most diverse countries — connecting its past with the people, places, and ideas shaping India today.
In Signs of the Chinese Zodiac, it is 2016 and the start of the Year of the Monkey. That means that markets are filled with red lanterns and monkey decorations. What does the Year of the Monkey mean for people who were born in that year? This video is excerpted from BBC’s Chinese New Year: The Biggest Celebration on Earth, a documentary series detailing the world's largest annual human migration (Chunyun), where over 1.5 billion people celebrate the Lunar New Year.
In Preparing for Chinese New Year, a family in Beijing prepares for Chinese New Year in 2016 by cleaning the house, getting haircuts, and preparing scrolls that they will hang outside their house. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Chinese New Year: The Biggest Celebration on Earth, a documentary series detailing the world's largest annual human migration (Chunyun), where over 1.5 billion people celebrate the Lunar New Year.
Long before the U.S. Constitution was written, five nations in what is now New York State had agreed to govern together under a shared set of laws. That story, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, is where this Kahoot! begins. From there, it moves across North America and through time: the cliff dwellings Ancestral Puebloans built into the canyon walls of Mesa Verde, the forced removal of the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears, the effort to bring buffalo back to the Great Plains, and the lives of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities in Canada today. Some answers may surprise you, and some will change how you think about history you thought you knew.
Teachers: Use it to open or review a unit on Indigenous history, government, or human rights, or pair it with the rest of the Indigenous Peoples Around the World Kahoot course.
The San have lived in the Kalahari, a vast semi-desert stretching across Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa, for thousands of years. They are among the oldest continuous cultures on Earth. Watch the BBC video clips to see how they live in a place with little surface water: reading animal tracks in the sand, hunting with poisoned arrows, making fire by hand, and finding food and water where outsiders see none. Then take the Kahoot to test what you’ve learned, including the harder story of how San communities have fought to stay on their land and keep their knowledge alive as the world around them changes.
Teachers: Show the clips as a class before playing the Kahoot live or assign both for independent learning. It works as a hook for units on Indigenous peoples, African geography, or human adaptation to extreme environments. The land rights questions give students an opening to discuss who decides how traditional lands are used.
One of the last landmasses to be settled, New Zealand, or Aotearoa, is home to the Māori, the Indigenous people of New Zealand. Over 700 years ago, the Māori brought traditions, knowledge, and their language, te reo Māori, to Aotearoa, all of which continue to shape the country today. Explore Māori history and culture, from extraordinary waka voyages to the haka performed by a New Zealand sports team. Watch the BBC videos below to gear up with the knowledge you need to take the Kahoot!
Discover how Māori communities have preserved their identity and traditions across generations, despite there being a time when te reo Māori was discouraged in schools. Learn more about the significance of it now being an official language of New Zealand, as well as the marae as community gathering places and cultural practices such as haka and tā moko. Explore how Māori heritage remains a vibrant and important part of life in Aotearoa today.
Teachers: Use the videos as a lesson starter, homework activity, or introduction to Indigenous cultures and New Zealand history. Follow with the Kahoot as a live class quiz or self-paced challenge to check understanding and spark discussion. Students will learn about Māori migration to Aotearoa, the Treaty of Waitangi, the importance of marae, te reo Māori, and cultural traditions including the hongi, haka, and tā moko. The activity supports learning about Indigenous histories, cultural identity, and the ways traditions can be preserved and revitalized over time. Watch for common misconceptions, such as thinking haka is only performed in happy occasions such as to welcome guests or at sporting events, when it is also performed to honor achievements such as at funerals.
The Maya built one of the world's most remarkable civilizations, creating impressive cities, studying the stars, and developing advanced systems of mathematics and writing. Explore the achievements and legacy of the Maya people. Watch the BBC videos below, then take the Kahoot to test your knowledge.
Discover how Maya societies flourished across parts of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. Learn about their temples, calendars, scientific knowledge, and cultural traditions, while exploring how Maya communities continue to live and celebrate their heritage today.
Teachers: Use the videos as a starter activity for lessons on ancient civilizations, geography, or cultural heritage. Follow with the Kahoot as a formative assessment or review activity. Students will examine Maya achievements in architecture, astronomy, mathematics, and writing, while learning about the lasting influence of Maya culture. The activity supports comparisons between civilizations and encourages discussion about how ancient knowledge continues to shape the modern world. Watch for misconceptions such as the belief that the Maya disappeared, as millions of Maya people still live throughout Mesoamerica today.
Sápmi stretches across the far north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia’s Kola Peninsula, and it’s home to the Sámi, the Indigenous people of the region. Watch the BBC video clips to see how Sámi families have followed reindeer herds across the tundra for centuries, why their bright traditional clothing (gákti) can show where someone comes from, and how joik, a traditional form of song, is used to express a person, place, or feeling. Then take the Kahoot to test what you’ve learned, including how a warming Arctic is making snow, ice, and grazing land harder to predict, and what that means for a way of life built around them.
Teachers: Show the BBC clips as a class before playing the Kahoot live or assign both for independent learning. It fits units on Indigenous peoples, European geography, or climate change, and gives students a concrete example of how a warming planet affects real communities.
“Sharing is caring” is a good motto, but winning a Nobel Peace Prize takes a lot more. You could ask Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, the South African judge named as the 2026 winner, but she may be too busy to answer. At 85, she is still hearing cases at one of the world’s highest courts.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded each year to a person or organization that has made an exceptional contribution to peace. That means more than good manners. Winners have often spent decades helping countries cooperate, ending wars, or defending people’s rights. Pillay’s prize highlights an important idea: peace is more than the end of fighting. It also depends on protecting rights, applying laws fairly, and holding people responsible for the most serious crimes.
Pillay grew up in a family of Indian descent in South Africa under apartheid. Apartheid was a system of laws, in place from 1948 until the early 1990s, that separated people by race and denied non-white South Africans equal rights. Despite facing discrimination, she became a lawyer. In 1995, she became the first non-white woman to serve as a judge on South Africa’s High Court.
She went on to work at the international level. She was a judge on the International Criminal Court, which puts individuals on trial for crimes such as genocide and war crimes. She then served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN’s top official responsible for protecting human rights around the world. Throughout her career, she has argued that the same basic legal principles should apply to everyone, everywhere.
Today, she is a judge at the International Court of Justice, the UN’s main court for disputes between countries. She is hearing a case in which Myanmar is accused of genocide.
Women have been flying planes since before commercial airlines even existed, so why is it that today, women make up only about 6% of pilots worldwide? Although they account for more than a third of the aviation industry’s workforce, most women work in the cabins or on the ground and are much more rarely in the cockpit.
This low (ahem, abysmal) percentage of female pilots has several possible explanations, but it shouldn’t surprise you that none of them are because women aren’t capable! More likely reasons include a lack of female role models, limited access to science and technical education, gender stereotypes, and the challenge of balancing a demanding career in aviation with family life. These are a lot to work against, but support such as scholarships, cadet programs, flexible working, and family-friendly policies could help more women enter the profession and stay in it.
Think those are too much to ask for? Take a look at India! There, around 15% of airline pilots are women — that’s almost three times the global average. Experts say this is partly because of a smaller gender pay gap and the rapid growth of their aviation industry.
Unfortunately, getting more women into piloting roles isn’t as simple as just hiring more females. Part of it starts in early education, where schools can show young women that a career in aviation is possible for them (not just the boys in their class). Organizations like governments and airlines also need to address pay, safety, and working hours.
Examine the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and its system of governance, explore the remarkable cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, and see how Native communities are restoring buffalo herds with deep cultural and ecological significance. Experience traditional arts such as hoop dance and hear Indigenous voices discussing issues affecting their communities today.
Together, these stories reveal the diversity of Native nations and communities, each with its own history, traditions, and relationship to the land. They also connect past and present, showing how Indigenous peoples are preserving languages and cultural practices, strengthening communities, and shaping conversations about land, sovereignty, conservation, and identity.
From ancient places and longstanding traditions to contemporary challenges and achievements, these BBC videos offer multiple perspectives on the Indigenous peoples and cultures that have shaped — and continue to shape — North America.
Meet young chefs as they prepare foods connected to their families and cultures, from favorite recipes to dishes enjoyed for celebrations and special occasions. Along the way, discover new ingredients, cooking techniques, and flavors while seeing how food traditions can be shared across generations.
Every recipe has a story. The foods people cook can reflect where they live, their family histories, the ingredients available to them, and traditions that have been passed down over time. These clips offer a window into different cultures while highlighting something people everywhere have in common: gathering together to cook, eat, and share.
Grab a seat at the table and explore the people, traditions, and stories behind the food.
Travel from the busy streets of Jodhpur to the teak forests of central India, encountering a country shaped by thousands of years of history and extraordinary cultural and geographic diversity. Meet langur monkeys adapted to life alongside people, explore the origins and flavors of foods such as samosas, and see how daily life and traditions vary across communities.
Look deeper into India’s past through influential figures including the emperor Ashoka, whose rule helped shape the spread of Buddhism, and Mahatma Gandhi, whose nonviolent resistance became central to India’s independence movement. Other clips examine questions of equality, identity, social expectations, and the ways traditions can persist, adapt, and be challenged over time.
Together, these stories offer multiple perspectives on one of the world’s largest and most diverse countries — connecting its past with the people, places, and ideas shaping India today.
In Signs of the Chinese Zodiac, it is 2016 and the start of the Year of the Monkey. That means that markets are filled with red lanterns and monkey decorations. What does the Year of the Monkey mean for people who were born in that year? This video is excerpted from BBC’s Chinese New Year: The Biggest Celebration on Earth, a documentary series detailing the world's largest annual human migration (Chunyun), where over 1.5 billion people celebrate the Lunar New Year.
In Preparing for Chinese New Year, a family in Beijing prepares for Chinese New Year in 2016 by cleaning the house, getting haircuts, and preparing scrolls that they will hang outside their house. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Chinese New Year: The Biggest Celebration on Earth, a documentary series detailing the world's largest annual human migration (Chunyun), where over 1.5 billion people celebrate the Lunar New Year.