Or Native American, or Amerind, or some other entirely different name, depending on your textbook. I think it's rather like studying "White Civilization." The little I read about this matter indicates to me that just as I have little in common with the Finnish, it isn't really fair to do a unit JUST on "Indians" as a general one-month topic and leave it at that. And yet, that's just what I'm doing during this year's studies. Still, it's a month "off" our curriculum, in addition to some work we're doing on Lewis and Clark. It seems that most curriculum I've seen kinda skips over Indians entirely, or confines them to a short two-week period in November. I think it's more important than that. I also think that it's easy to demonize the white settlers as greedy when in reality, history is never so simple. We're reading about farming people and hunting people, and the fact that people living by the oceans will have a different diet than people living on the plains. And we did the obligatory noodle necklace for art. We got a very different view of the Indian peoples through our reading of the Little House series last year. It wasn't too flattering. Any ideas for short studies or games on the internet would be helpful this month.
Or Native American, or Amerind, or some other entirely different name, depending on your textbook. I think it's rather like studying "White Civilization." The little I read about this matter indicates to me that just as I have little in common with the Finnish, it isn't really fair to do a unit JUST on "Indians" as a general one-month topic and leave it at that. And yet, that's just what I'm doing during this year's studies. Still, it's a month "off" our curriculum, in addition to some work we're doing on Lewis and Clark. It seems that most curriculum I've seen kinda skips over Indians entirely, or confines them to a short two-week period in November. I think it's more important than that. I also think that it's easy to demonize the white settlers as greedy when in reality, history is never so simple. We're reading about farming people and hunting people, and the fact that people living by the oceans will have a different diet than people living on the plains. And we did the obligatory noodle necklace for art. We got a very different view of the Indian peoples through our reading of the Little House series last year. It wasn't too flattering. Any ideas for short studies or games on the internet would be helpful this month.
Well now you are going to need to come see us. They are building a huge Native American Musuem about 2 miles away from us. It isn't finished yet, but it looks like it is going to be really neat.
ReplyDeleteThere is a Canadian curriculum that has some really good looking stuff on the Indian peoples but I don't have a link. You could do a brief 'Trail of Tears' thing ~ with mapwork.
ReplyDeleteTime line for Crazy Horse~ www.emayzine.com/lectures/CRAZYHOR.html
And the ghost Dancing is interesting because of the similarity in belief to much of Christianity ~ at least as Wovoka practised it.
Let us know what you do. The NAI is similar in many ways to the Celts & though I am not knowledgable I found my study of their beliefs & culture very interesting.
I think we kinda skim over that part of our history when I was a kid. I remember checking out a book about how awesome Buffalo Bill was when he shot all those buffalos.
ReplyDeleteLOL @ me. I couldn't figure out why you would be studying the country of India!! Forehead slap.
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