Native American Heritage Month Resources

While I firmly believe that EVERY MONTH is Native American Heritage Month, that title is officially designated for November, making this an excellent time to share some Indian Education for All resources that have piqued my interest.

Multi-grade

Lessons for Our Land are lessons designed by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation for Pre-K through 12th grade to help "teachers to incorporate Native American stories, lessons and games into regular classroom instruction." The site has over a hundred lessons that touch on tribes in all parts of the United States. Montana-associated lessons include lessons on natural resources on Montana Indian Reservations, calendars and seasonal rounds (exploring month names from four Montana tribes and interpreting them to describe seasonal activities), allotment, fractionalization, and more. I haven't looked at all of them (there are a LOT), but the ones I've examined look really good.

As always, I invite you to check out the IEFA Lesson Plans the Montana Historical Society has created over the years. Among my favorites are "Blood on the Marias: Understanding Different Points of View Related to the Baker Massacre of 1870" (grades 7-12), the cross-curricular art-based material included in The Art of Storytelling: Plains Indian Perspectives (K-12), and our newest IEFA offering, "Neither Empty Nor Unknown: Montana at the Time of Lewis and Clark" virtual tour and activities (grades 4-8).

Elementary 

One of our most popular hands-on history footlockers (especially for lower elementary students) is the Montana Indian Stories Lit Kit, which includes puppets and class sets of stories collected for the Indian Reading Series (1972) and reprinted by the Montana Historical Society Press. There are MANY more stories than those in the footlocker: From 1972 to 1983 the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory Indian Reading & Language Development Program produced 140 culturally relevant stories written by local Indian authors and illustrated by Indian artists, and all of them are available for download. A few years ago, Rob and Halladay Quist put several of the stories to music. You can find the song lyrics here and hear the songs (and watch Mariah Gladstone sign them using Indian sign language) on YouTube.

High School

Using Primary Source Documents to Understand Tribal Sovereignty is a high school American History, Government and ELA lesson plan created by Jolena Hinchman and Katie Hurin that asks students to read U.S. Supreme Court cases, speeches, letters, and other documents "to examine the historical foundation of the relationship between the US government and Indian tribes" and "to determine how tribal sovereignty has persisted or has diminished over time."
Wind from an Enemy Sky: Historical Fiction and Current Events surrounding the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and Kerr Dam is an OPI Indian Education model teaching unit for 10th-12th grade that uses D'Arcy McNickle's historical fiction novel Wind from an Enemy Sky, as an anchor text for both studying the novel and examining issues of sovereignty, treaty rights, allotment, and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes' history. (Note: A copy of the novel was distributed by the OPI to all Montana public high school libraries in 2013. A class set of 15 novels is available for loan by contacting Joan Franke at 406-444-3694 or jfranke@mt.gov.

The Power of Place: Place-Based Approaches to Researching Indigenous Montana Histories is a model student research project created by Casey Olsen of Columbus. Intended to provide teachers with flexible guidance through the challenging and rewarding process of researching local histories and landscapes with their students,  "The Power of Place" is not a cookie-cutter project. Rather, Casey describes his experience in leading students in a place-based research project, shares resources that he created (for example, his Research Graphic Organizer), and tips (find community partners, look to your local museum, engage tribal cultural experts, among others.) He also shares one of the final projects his students created: a driving tour of Stillwater County.

Resilience: Stories of Twenty Indian Women is a fifty-six-page booklet (which can be downloaded from OPI) featuring short essays on over twenty Montana Indian women, including warriors, bankers, politicians, beaders, language preservationists, community organizers, traditionalists and embracers of modernity. The booklet features essays written for our Women's History Matters project and are also available and work well with two of our Women's History Matters lesson plans: Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things! Connecting Biography to Larger Social Themes Lesson Plan (grades 8-12) and Biographical Poems Celebrating Amazing Montana Women Lesson Plan (grades 4-6). 

And, of course, let me know your favorite best IEFA lessons to teach--during November or any time of year.