Indian Education Resources, mostly for middle and high school classes

Glenn Wiebe, my favorite social studies blogger, posted  resources for Indigenous People's Day (Columbus Day)--but since we don't confine the study of colonization and/or first peoples to one day a year, his links are ever-fresh.  

 

John Clayton wrote an article for Wyohistory.org (the Wyoming Historical Society's online encyclopedia) called "Who gets to hunt Wyoming's elk? Tribal Hunting Rights, U.S. Law and the Bannock 'War' of 1895." It provides the background for--and best explanation I've read of--the Herrera case, which was decided by the Supreme Court in 2019 and involved Crow hunters and their treaty rights to hunt in Wyoming. He followed it up with a short blog post, Racism and the Race Horse, which suggests questions for classes to wrestle with.

 

Thanks to Dylan Huisken, Bonner School, who shared the link on the Teaching Montana History Facebook Page, I engaged with the fascinating article/photo project called "Reservation Mathematics: Navigating Love in Native America," for which photojournalist Tailyr Irvine interviewed Indigenous residents in Missoula and on her Flathead Indian Reservation on the issue of blood quantum and how it affects their lives.  

 

In looking at primary sources to prepare for our October 20 discussion, I found a Digital Library of America Primary Source Set titled "Reservations, Resistance, and the Indian Reorganization Act, 1900-1940."  I was particularly interested in the five-minute film clip "Rebuilding Indian Country," which was created in 1933 by the Department of the Interior to explain the new Reorganization Act--even though the focus is on the Minnesota, rather than Montana. (Have you signed up to join the Oct. 20 discussion from 4-5? Renewal Credits available.)

 

And speaking of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, have you seen Vernon Finley's 7-minute interview about how it changed tribal leadership?  

 

I was happy to see these resources because it's hard to find material to teach about later federal Indian policy periods (per Essential Understanding #5). That's why I was also excited to discover The American Stranger, a 1958 NBC Kaleidoscope documentary on American Indians and the failure of federal Indian policy in the 1950s, available to watch on YouTube. 

 

Finally, if you teach grades 6-12, consider registering your classroom to attend the Big Sky Native Filmmaker Initiative's Film Club.

The Native Filmmaker Initiative Film Club is a virtual youth education outreach program that screens a curated selection of Indigenous-made documentary films in classrooms across the state of Montana. Following the screenings, filmmakers visit classrooms via Inspired Classroom's video conference technology for Q&A and discussion activities rooted in Montana's Indian Education for All Essential Understandings. Film Club discussions are led by the Big Sky Film Institute in collaboration with the Montana Office of Public Instruction’s Indian Education Specialist, Mike Jetty, as well as participating filmmakers to talk in-depth about the process of filmmaking. The next film in the series is "Blackfeet Boxing: Not Invisible," and will be shown on Thursday, November 19 at 1:00 p.m. 

 

Teaching Montana History is written by Martha Kohl, Outreach and Interpretation Historian at the Montana Historical Society.