Specific Classroom Activities
Activity #1
Learning Objective: Students can describe, using a variety of methods, the history of broken treaties that leads to a lack of trust between indigenous people and the government.
Procedures: Students should be given access to information that will allow them to research specific groups of indigenous people and the treaties that affected them. Students will be given at least three different sources to review and compare, and will receive a graphic organizer that will allow them to take efficient notes. Each teacher should use the graphic organizer that they believe will work best for their students, the goal should be to find and record the main ideas of the source, the specific indigenous nations that are discussed, and the specific terms of the treaties that have been broken.
Students will then be required to research the present-day status of the specific indigenous groups that are discussed within their sources. Students should record as much information as possible about education, employment, standard of living, and other economic and social factors which can be compared against other segments of society.
Once this information has been recorded students will be asked to make a visual display (chart, graph, infographic, etc.) that communicates the information visually as well as textually. A choice between electronic and/or paper displays could be offered to the students depending on the teacher preferences and classroom resources. Students will be tasked with reaching, supporting, and communicating conclusions about how the broken treaties have or have not led to the current conditions of the indigenous people and whether or not the level of trust has been affected.
One possible extension activity would be to create a chart that students can fill in as they review all of the different posters/slides to see whether or not there is any variation between different indigenous groups. Assuming there is, students should be tasked with offering an explanation as to why that may be.
Activity #2
Learning Objective: Students can use informational text to research the restrictions placed upon the Osage people and the reasons for those restrictions.
In this activity students will work in groups and read pages eighty through eighty-eight of David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon. This excerpt discusses the wealth that the Osage acquired from the oil leases on their land, and more importantly describes the restrictions that the white people put on the Osage in the use of their own money. This assignment gives students the opportunity to practice and present independent research prior to starting the culminating project.
Students will read the excerpt and then create a brief summary within their groups. Once finished with this, students will make a table/chart/diagram that shows the different ways in which the white people limited or restricted the Osage’s spending, and the reasons for these actions found within the text.
Students will be asked to present their information to at least two other groups, these groups will provide feedback to the presenters for both content and presentation effectiveness. Teachers should create a feedback form that ensures that specific useful feedback is communicated. In addition to the collaborative feedback offered these larger groups should also work together to draw conclusions that will be presented to the whole class. It can be left to the individual teacher to decide how the groupings work best in their own classrooms. In my classroom we will start with groups of three, and then move to groups of roughly nine. This will produce about three different sets of conclusions that the class can discuss during the final steps.
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