For decades, music education scholars have debated whether the benefits of including culturally unfamiliar music in school curricula outweigh the risks. While some authors emphasize the unique potential of music to cultivate cultural awareness, empathy, and intercultural understanding (Campbell, 2018; Howard, 2018; Mellizo, 2023), others argue many “culturally diverse” resources are written by cultural outsiders, lack adequate contextualization and/or contain inaccurate or mis-leading information, which re-inscribes power dynamics and can lead to negative outcomes like stereotyping, tokenism, and essentialism (Hess, 2018; Stark, 2023). Educators who use these types of resources might unintentionally promote intercultural misunderstandings and reinforce colonial tendencies (Matsunobu, 2019).Smithsonian Folkways Music Pathways are new educational resources that respond to complexities and contradictions that can arise when music teachers attempt to diversify and decolonize the curriculum. Perhaps most importantly, Music Pathways are written collaboratively by teams of educators, ethnomusicologists, and culture-bearing musicians/cultural knowledge keepers, who draw from their own cultural value systems and music transmission methods with which they are familiar. Lessons are well-contextualized—providing educators with valuable background information from multiple perspectives and trustworthy sources. They also include ample opportunities for active listening and hands-on music making.In this paper, I will reflect on the process of using this collaborative process to create a Music Pathway lesson about the music and cultural values of the First Nations Mi’kmaq people in the Northeastern part of Turtle Island (North America). After many brainstorming sessions and lengthy periods of reflection, an overarching theme and guiding framework for the lesson began to emerge. Drawing on an important Mi’kmaq concept called etuaptmumk (two-eyed seeing), this lesson encourages students to listen with “two ears”—combining Indigenous and Western perspectives to gain a deeper understanding of the musical sounds.