Objective: Students will be able to design an argument on why it is important to learn about Native American history through stories, poetry, and movies by Native Americans
Estimated time to complete lesson
:5 class periods
Main Idea: History is directly tied to culture and by using stories, poetry and movies by Native Americans it helps share the multitude of experiences that native people have had.
Do Now: Name a fictional or non-fictional hero that you have learned about in history. What culture or region of the world does the story come from? How does this story of this fictional or non-fictional character help you to better understand the culture of the people from which the story originates? (eg. Hercules/Greek…Thor/Norse-German...Mahatma Ghandi/India)
Connection: Fictional or non-fictional heroes allow learners to gain understanding of language, cultural values, and have a place of comparison of their own cultural values.
Activity: Students will recall a previous lesson in which we analyzed songs from Disney’s
Pocahontas
. They will then be asked if they believed that the songs were written by Native Americans. Students will write the reasons they believe or don’t believe it was written by Native American on a t-chart. After analyzing these features, the teacher would ask if the songs had more culturally appropriate language would the songs have been better. The teacher should explain that the power of the story and its purpose is in the hands of the storyteller: the decision to keep in details versus excluding others is in their hands. Disney has taken the story of Pocahontas and used it to make money, so as a result they have told the story in such a way that is authentic enough to be perceived as culturally aware but not so historically detailed to lose their younger audience members who are the targeted audience.
Students will then work with a partner to read excerpts of Sherman Alexis’s
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
, poems from Siobhan Senier’s
Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England
and the class will view video clips from the movie Skins (2002) and Smoke Signals (1998). I will model for them the process of filling in their Literary Document Analysis form. Each time students are exposed to text or source they will be responsible for identifying who the hero(es) are, what they believe the storyteller’s intended purpose of the writing or movie was and what details enhanced the story by being told by the American Indians themselves.
At the end of each text student will be responsible for writing their reactions to the sources in a reflection that can later be used to help write their essay.
After looking at all of their sources they will then take their compiled evidence to formulate a response on why it is important to teach Native American history with authentic writings and images by the natives themselves. Students will be provided a graphic organizer and time to complete their first draft of their essay in future classes.
Differentiation: Students can choose 1-2 texts and one video clip to use as evidence for their essay. In the case of students who prefer analyzing the video clips, you can allow them to use the in-class example as their literary text. For students who might be stronger in literary analysis, the teacher or student can identify a theme in two or three poems to analyze and focus on texts versus the video clips for analysis.