Teaching an Honest History on Relations with Native Americans to Students, No Matter How Dark or Gruesome it is
Topic & Grade Level: U.S. History, 10th Grade
Big Question / Essential Question
How were Native Americans actually treated by white people during the conquest for
North America that traditional education fails to point out?
Enduring Understandings / Big Ideas
Oppression can be seen in many forms over history, and even be so subtle that many do not notice it unless they look closer into it.
Standards
WI SS.Hist1.a.h.: Evaluate multiple events from different perspectives using primary and secondary sources, and analyze intended and unintended causes from both long- and short-term perspectives; evaluate how different groups and individuals contributed to the event or cause.
WI SS.Hist1.b.h.: Evaluate multiple events from different perspectives using primary and secondary sources, and analyze intended and unintended effects from both long- and short-term perspectives; evaluate how different groups and individuals contributed to the effect.
WI SS.Hist3.b.h.: Evaluate historical perspectives to create arguments with evidence concerning current events.
WI SS.Hist4.b.h.: Evaluate and justify predictions of potential outcomes of current events based on the past.
WI SS.Hist4.d.h.: Analyze how the POV of the author can influence the content and intent of a primary or secondary source, and identify whose voices may be left out.
Staging the Question
will take students on a field trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum to look at the artifacts on Native Americans and learn of their life styles prior to the age of exploration. Students will be able to see and hear first hand from historians that have studied indigenous people’s ways of life.
Unit Lessons
Supporting Question 1:
How did Christopher Columbus’ expedition to the Americas
cause persecution toward Native Americans?
Featured Sources
Goals & Learning Activities
Formative Assessment/Task
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7VR2yny9mc&feature=emb_title
Students will watch a video on Columbus’ voyage to the new world in order to understand who he was and why he took the voyage. They will learn what he hoped to accomplish with these voyages. Then, students will watch a video on why many people are opposed to Christopher Columbus and celebrating him. I will then have students move themselves in to a circle to and have them debate is we should or should not celebrate Columbus day. While students are debating, I will write key items that are mentioned for both sides on the board.
Students will be asked to write a one page paper on why they believe we should or should not celebrate Columbus day. They will be asked to use information from both videos in their paper, as well as arguments that were made in class during the debate.
Supporting Question 2:
How is the real story of the first Thanksgiving actually one of
harm toward Native Americans?
Featured Sources
Goals & Learning Activities
Formative Assessment/Task
https://4.files.edl.io/0ec3/06/28/18/155729-1b8ab639-28ff-4b2d-858e-4ecf1f9cbbc4.pdf
- Chapter 3: “The Truth About the First Thanksgiving”
I will start the class off by asking students what they have learned about in regards to the first Thanksgiving between Native Americans and the Pilgrims. As students say what they know about it, I will write these items on the board. Students then will be put into groups to read over the chapter from “Lies My Teacher Told Me, Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong,” in order to read about the true events of the first Thanksgiving. They will be asked to highlight key details they find in the chapter. Upon finishing, students will then be asked what they think of Thanksgiving now compared to what I written on the board. I will then ask the question, “should we still celebrate Thanksgiving/”
Students will be asked to write at least two page paper, one page from the perspective of the Native Americans and how they felt about their new neighbors. The second page will be from the perspective of the pilgrims and how they viewed the Native Americans they met. They will then conclude the paper as to why it is important to understand the perspectives of both groups in regards to Thanksgiving.
Supporting Question 3:
How did trade between Native Americans and Settlers eventually lead to death and destruction?
Featured Sources
Goals & Learning Activities
Formative Assessment/Task
https://newsela.com/read/natgeo-new-England-Colonies-Native-Americans/id/53355/
https://newsela.com/read/natgeo-French-Relationships-Native-Americans/id/52039/
Students will be given a copy of the Newsela articles, and we will popcorn read them as a class. I will then hand out a T chart with one heading being positive relations and the other being negative relations. As a class we will fill it out based on information from the articles regarding how did European settlers and Native Americans have positive relations and how they had negative relations. We will also use prior knowledge from other classes here to fill it in with information not mentioned in the article.
Students will be asked to write a one page essay on how they believe relations with Native Americans could have been positive, or if it was per-determined to end up negatively. Students will be able to use the article and T chart we made in class to come up with ideas. They can focus on land rights, trade, war, and religion. They may use outside information, but will need to cite it at the end of the essay.
Summative Performance Task
Task Description
Students will write a three to five page essay on early American relations between European settlers and Native Americans. Students will be asked to focus on how natives were oppressed, and narratives that are held to today that are not true on the relations that were once had.
Goals
Students will be able to acknowledge that Native Americans were treated unfairly during early history of North America, as well as how they are still to this day by not having the truth be taught about the relations they had with European settlers. The stories of Christopher Columbus and the first Thanksgiving are not being taught correctly to students, and erases the true facts of history. They should be able to demonstrate understanding the facts of the time and perspectives that may have been held by both Native Americans and European settlers. They will also be able to understand that some of the oppression still exists today in the form of forgetting or purposely erasing history.
Resources
This video tells the basic story of who Christopher Columbus is, why did he go on his voyage, what did he accomplish, and why he is remembered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7VR2yny9mc&feature=emb_title
This video goes over why individuals are pushing to change Columbus day to Indigenous people’s day as it is seen as offensive to Natives when Christopher Columbus was incredibly harmful to these people.
https://4.files.edl.io/0ec3/06/28/18/155729-1b8ab639-28ff-4b2d-858e-4ecf1f9cbbc4.pdf
This is a link to the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me, Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” by James Loewen. The specific chapter I am using is chapter 3: “The Truth About the First Thanksgiving.” Here gives an accurate account of what actually happened resulting in the creation of our national holiday.
https://newsela.com/read/natgeo-new-England-Colonies-Native-Americans/id/53355/
https://newsela.com/read/natgeo-French-Relationships-Native-Americans/id/52039/
Both articles above talk about relations Native Americans had with French and British settlers. They examine positive and negative aspects to their relations such as land rights, war, and trade.
I decided to go with this topic because I feel Native Americans are most misrepresented in U.S. History. False stories of how the United States was created are constantly being taught to our students and leave out how poorly Native Americans were treated by European settlers. Columbus enslaved thousands of indigenous people. The first Thanksgiving is celebrated based on the massacre of hundreds of Native Americans. British and French settlers were incredibly abusive in trying to remove Native Americans from the lands they had called home for centuries. On top of this, their competition in the fur trade and trapping lead to wars leaving so many dead.
I feel the standards reflect these three lessons quite well. The first two standards focus on the causes for Native Americans being oppressed by European settlers. As a class, we then talk about what those effects are. Effects do not necessarily need to be immediately following events. In many cases, such as in the case of Christopher Columbus, the effects of what he did are felt today with the large push to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s day. This in turn leads in to SS.Hist3.b.h and SS.Hist4.b.h as students will analyze how the perspective of European settlers has effected how Native Americans are talked about in United States history. If one looks through a textbook on the United States, it is clear that Native Americans are mentioned up till the road to the Revolutionary War. Then, they are brought back during manifest destiny and President Jackson, only to disappear for the majority of the rest of the textbook. It is clear that as Europeans pushed to rid of the Native Americans, so has our society. Just look at how reservations are in the United States. Full of addiction, poor land, and are on average well below the poverty line for most families. Where do we go from here? How do we make up for the oppression we caused so many years ago? One way of doing this is analyzing the point of view of those who have spoken out against the injustice that was faced in the past and is still today. “Lies My Teacher Told Me, Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” provides a clear point of view intended to inform students of how history really happened, specifically for the lives of Native Americans. Students will be exposed to Loewen’s point of view to contradict the point of view they had been raised on. It may make them feel uncomfortable, but that is a part of learning. To grow, one needs to feel challenged. This book challenges all the false notions that United States society had attempted to push on us while hiding the facts. With this though, students can identify that voices from those who view the traditional textbook messages on the history of the United States and Native Americans are very much so left out by Loewen. It is important to understand both sides of the spectrum in order for students to make an accurate assessment of what they believe to be true.
Looking back on the articles we have read in class, one stands out most to me. Sanchez wrote an article titled “Who Made the New Deal?” that really opened my eyes this semester. He talks of how textbooks and traditional teachers simply tell students that the Great Depression started because of the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Yet Sanchez dives into this and talks about how this is unfair to students as they are never told how the crash happened. To understand how the United States fell into one of the largest economic crisis ever, they need to understand how the crash even came to be in the first place. He worked hard to teach his students this, and eventually they seemed to understand. Unfortunately, when he assessed them on learning, many resorted right back to the traditional textbook approach. Students should not just be taught that events happened. They need to be taught how these events came to be. Why is it so important to talk about these topics. I hope to instill in my students to look deeper into the causes and effects, and how all different groups of people were effected. I hope to have a better outcome then he had as well with assessing my students. This is why I want them to not just write about facts in assessing what they learned, but their own opinions and to look through the lenses of the different people of the time. One cannot fully understand history if they don’t look at it through the lenses of the time. In fact, this does not just apply to history, but life in general. We should never make decisions or beliefs without understanding all the perspectives and facts on the issue.
