Native America: Understanding the Past through Things

Activities

Materials Needed:

Student journal books

Computers with internet access

Anthologies of Native American poetry, essays and short stories

Historical monographs of Pennsylvania Indian history

Standard American literature textbooks

Chart Paper

Markers, Tape

Each lesson may be conducted over one to three days, depending of the availability of space in one's core curriculum. The target group is 11th graders, heterogeneously assigned to third year English with a focus on American literature. The lessons may be adapted for middle or elementary school, based on the choice of literature. They may be presented together as a unit or spread out through the school year.

Lesson Plan # 1

Speaking of the Blackfeet . . . James Welch said this: "They weren't particularly noble Indians. They weren't particularly bad Indians. They were human beings. That's really what I wanted to get across, the idea that historical Indians were human beings. They weren't clichés."

(http://poetry.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.ipl.org/div/natam/)

Content/Concepts: Acknowledging and Countering Stereotypes

Goal: To raise student awareness of both the widespread influence yet stereotypical views of American Indians in modern culture; to establish a framework for both noticing and analyzing the incidence of these limiting attitudes.

Instructional Strategy/Delivery: Brainstorm ideas, images of what constitutes being an American. Record the contributions on large newsprint and post. Distribute Bingo Sheets. After activity, analyze in regard to percentages of negative, positive or simple informational aspects of each square's item.

Performance Task: Move about classroom, speaking to each classmate at least once, finding individuals who can answer questions in Bingo blocks. Only one answer permissible from each person until each classmate has been approached. Write answer in block and have classmate who provides the answer initial the block. Score one point for each completed row.

Text/Media: Handout:

Find someone who. . .

(table 06.04.01.01 available in print form)

Extension: Homework or Research: Select two items new to you and track down five facts for each. View the movie Pocahontas. Compare with real-life story via the web (http://www.powhatan.org/pocc.html).

Lesson Plan # 2

"An odd thing occurs in the minds of Americans when Indian civilization is mentioned: little or nothing." Paula Gunn Allen

Content/Concepts: Textbook Survey and Discovery

Instructional Strategy/Delivery: Students as Detective/Scholars

Performance Task: Utilizing both the table of contents, timelines, and index, create a list of all textual and pictorial Native American-based "elements" in our textbook. Roughly compare with other materials. Begin web search for oral traditions and writings of Native Americans that might be added to round out the volume.

Text/Media: Holt, Elements of Literature, Fifth Course

Extension: Homework or Research: Write a proposal to the School Reform Commission requesting redress for the omissions. Make a case for a particular poem, short story, or novel excerpt that should be added to the text as well as ancillaries like film and trade books that should be made part of the 11th grade curriculum.

Lesson Plan # 3

I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again. William Penn

[the white runners] should have walkt along by the River Delaware or the next Indian path to it . . . should have walkt for a few Miles and then have sat down and smoakt a Pipe, and now and then have shot a Squirrel, and not have kept up the Run, Run all day. Lappawinsoe, Lenni Lenape chief

Content/Concepts: William Penn and Indians of the Delaware Valley: Promises Kept

Instructional Strategy/Delivery: Convergence of art, politics and religion

Performance Task:

1. View artist's rendering of William Penn's Treaty with the Indians.
   Write a journal entry telling the story from Penn's, then the Indians' point of view. Check whether it is possible to identify any of the Indians by name.
2. Read the story of the 1737 Walking Purchase. Write a letter by an imaginary Indian attorney to William Penn's sons explaining what legal actions you propose to take and your reasons why.
3. Investigate the fate of the Delaware Lenni Lenape tribes in the years, decades, and centuries after their encounter with the Penn family.
4. Create a poster that features a story or writing by a Lenni Lenape from any era. Decorate with sketches of items printed in the history book, Pennsylvania.

Text/Media: http://www.delawaretribeofindians.nsn.us/walking_purchase.html

Extension: Homework or Research: Fill in a Pennsylvania and U.S. map showing the movement of the Delaware Lenni Lenape tribes. Write an original poem or story to record any segment of their history.

Lesson Plan # 4

". . .the name and memory of Hiawatha. . .has been confused with two Indian divinities, the one Iroquois, the other Algonquin, and his history has been distorted and obscured almost beyond recognition." Horatio Hale

Content/Concepts: The Power of Literature to Misinform: "Hiawatha"

Instructional Strategy/Delivery: Paired Guided Reading

Performance Task:

1. In a small cooperative learning group of 3 or 4, read a portion of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Hiawatha." Write a summary of that portion. Include notes on literary devices used, including rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, simile, metaphor and imagery. Report out to class for gathering of the complete story.
2. In the same group, read your portion of the Horatio Hale account of the life of the real Hiawatha.
3. Use a Venn diagram to assess where the stories differ and converge.

Text/Media:

1. "Hiawatha" from website: http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/hiawatha.html
2. Biography of the real Hiawatha by Horatio Hale, 1883
   http://www.markshep.com/nonviolence/Hiawatha.html
3. Selected "warrior" poems from Spider Woman's Granddaughters.

Extension: Homework or Research: (1) Investigate the contemporary reception to Longfellow's poem and current views (from invisibility to parody). Write a persuasive essay for a literary criticism text recommending its inclusion or exclusion in a modern-day high school curriculum.

(2) Read Paul A. W. Wallace's White Roots of Peace: Iroquois Book of Life, chapters: 'Hiawatha Sees Himself," "Combing the Snakes Out of Atotarho's Hair," and "World Citizens," then write an informational essay comparing Hiawatha's Indian legend-based role in the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy with the simplification/distortion in Longfellow's rendering.

Lesson Plan # 5

"American Indians have been written about from the time of the intrusion of white men on the Western Hemisphere. . . The instances of American Indian authors expressing their personal views of the human condition have, until the last few years, been rare and unnoticed." T.D. Allen

Content/Concepts: Indian Writers of Today: Lives, Themes, Voices

Instructional Strategy/Delivery: Literary Exploration

Performance Task: Combine name searches in American Indian anthologies with searches on the web for a writer who has written both poetry and fiction, short story or in novel form. Create a book cover to symbolize your contents: short biography, timeline, list of friends and associates, list of writings, one poem with explication, one prose excerpt with explanation of context.

Text/Media: Anthologies compiled by Ishmael Reed, Alan R. Velie, Paula Gunn Allen, Diane Glancy & Mark Nowak; novels: Ceremony and Winter in the Blood.

http://www.ipl.org/div/natam (Click on poets)

Extension: Homework or Research: Create a mini-bio to be placed on the class wall timeline. Select one date from your author's life, learn and record one literary and one historical event that coincide with that date. Create post-its to apply in line with your mini biography.