Introduction
Cited as the foundational document which establishes the structure of the government of the United States of America, the United States Constitution enacts the supreme law of the land. As American citizens, we are taught to revere and understand our country through its lens. Often we teach this reverence in order to create a sense of patriotism in our students, but the patriotic narrative can be limiting when full perspective is not offered. Historically, our Constitution has not protected all of the people it presided over. Often it was used as a tool of suppression and oppression of those groups. Students need to understand both sides of our Constitution: the living and breathing beautifully written document that governs American society, and the self-serving purposefully murkily constructed law of the land.
The following curriculum unit focuses on the hypocrisy laden in the federal government’s dealings with Indian Nations and tribal removal, given the five fundamental political principles that inform the US Constitution. It is a complex topic to relay to middle schoolers, but the lesson of investigating how the theory of a concept (the five fundamental political principles) relates to its real-life application (Indian Removal) is an essential one to understanding the historic functions of government. Living in a society increasingly at odds with itself, it is essential that students understand the limitations of our democratic republic, and how the interpretation of the Constitution has at times been at the whim of whoever is reading it.
Through examining Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, the associated Supreme Court cases, and the resulting action (the Trail of Tears, etc.), students will be invited to assess whether or not the theorized fundamental political principles are actually applicable to the Constitution. Likewise, students will be invited to investigate contemporary American Indian Nations and tribal lands and determine whether or not the Constitution has been used to rectify its previous shortcomings. American Indians are also contemporary American citizens and it will be useful to illuminate their historic experiences alongside their contemporary experiences. The American Indian experience parallels other experiences, and students should be able to determine whether or not they are afforded the same rights as the foundational political principles of the Constitution declare they receive.
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