Rationale
The curriculum unit is a fifth grade literature unit and will be taught to the general education students or to English Language Learning (ELL) students in the classroom. The majority of my students are Navajo and I propose to teach our children about the realities of how Native American Indians were first viewed in movies. We will discuss Hollywood’s depictions of Native American Indians when they were first depicted in motion pictures. Native American Indian roles in movies are only authentic if they validate the tribes’ culture and language. In the Diné Nation almost every 4 out of 5 households has a satellite dish and a flat screen television in their living room. Already our children are exposed to various kinds of movies and in Kayenta we have a theater, which provides the latest movie release to the community and the surrounding smaller communities. Also, some homes have internet connections and have access to streaming movie videos. I know our children enjoy viewing movies and will watch particular movies over and over and over again. I know they are analyzing films internally and they do not realize what skills they are using. As teachers we need to address these skills and show them that they are already aware of the formal elements of film.
Although our children view numerous movies, they need to know and understand that they can analyze them using the formal elements of film style so that they are able to interpret, explain, and justify their thinking. They watch the latest popular movie and we asked how the movie was? They reply, “The movie was good and it had a lot of action” and that is it. I will need to teach them there is more to a movie than just viewing it. I want my students to understand how Native American Indians are depicted in movies. Early examples of the “Cowboys and Indians” theme came from movies like the many movies John Wayne has featured in. Native American Indian roles were often played by white actors like Burt Lancaster in the movie Apache, and Charles Bronson in Chato’s Land. Eventually, I want my students to learn how the movie industry has changed over time, now featuring actual Native American Indian producers, actors and actresses in cinema. Today many of the well-known Native American Indian producers like Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals & Skins), Neil Diamond (Reel Injun), and Heather Rae (Frozen River) are making an effort to use authentic Native American Indians and culture in their films. These popular media venues give our students the exposure to films that, I believe, establishes their ideas of what and how Native American Indian actors or actresses should portray.
Teachers within our school do not extensively discuss books in relation to film, so the idea of analyzing this type of movie genre with literary texts is a new one. I feel our students need to know how to compare written texts and films. I plan to use short clips from the two movies and the books to attempt to align the actual events from parts of the book to the scene of said movies. I would like my students to read the literature and view the movie and then find similarities and differences, such as when some parts of the film do not adhere to the book. The Native American Indian literature adapted to film that I plan to use in my teachings about cultural authenticity, story, and film elements are The Education of Little Tree, and Indian in the Cupboard. While teaching the reading components, I will ask my students to compare and contrast the various settings, the different characters, the events, and the themes within the scene. Additional information needs to be taught so that students will have background knowledge about how to view films like a director. The vocabulary words of film, like sequence, motion, parallel editing, cross- cutting, close-up, extreme close-up, and mechanical motion are some of the terminology students need to know when analyzing film. Handbooks of film terms will be useful while teaching students the introduction to film, because the end product of the course is to create a short film using these film elements. As I teach my unit, students will be exposed to many examples of short, short snippets to students’ generated movies so they will begin to think about how their movies will be created up to the final cut.
As teachers in the classroom we have the knowledge and power to teach the correct factual information about Native American Indian character, events, and settings in literature and film to our students. We need to explain the stereotyping of Native American Indians and other cultures to make a change in how our students will think when they become adults. We need to inform students that Native American Indians do not say, ‘how’ when greeting people, we do not all live in teepees, we do not all paint our faces and attack white settlers, we do not all wear feathers in our hair, we do not dance to bring rain, we are not lazy and we are not drunks. I know that change is a long process, but teachers have an impact upon students’ learning. We are with them five days a week and up eight to twelve hours a day. We need to take advantage of the time we spend with them within these teaching times and to expose them to all realms of learning. Film is medium students enjoy and it is a teachable moment. We can show the film during their lunch recess or after school so that they are familiar with the whole movie. This is the twenty-first century and Native American Indians have made progress forward and have adapted to the life style of western culture (everyone likes movies), while still maintaining our traditional culture and language.
Comments: