I'm all for tying the novels, memoirs, and other literary texts to Montana history and am delighted to help come up with ways to do it. Some have more obvious connections than others. It makes sense to study Montana during the Great Depression when you are reading Grapes of Wrath or Out of the Dust.
Hattie Big Sky (a middle school novel about a woman homesteading in Montana during WWI) connects directly to resources we have on homesteading and on WWI, including chapters in Montana: Stories of the Land and the Story Maps and the lesson plan we created for our WWI centennial project, Montana and the Great War.
Teaching James Welch's Fool's Crow? Have students investigate primary sources relating to the Marias Massacre.
Reading Girl from the Gulches: A Story of Mary Ronan (which offers a girl's-eye view of life in the Montana gold camps)? We've got teaching resources for you.
And of course, OPI's Indian Education Division has a wealth of model lessons for literature, at all grade levels, including Joe Medicine Crow's Counting Coup and Darcy McNickle's Wind from an Enemy Sky.
It took me by surprise, though, when Sentinel High School teacher asked me what Montana resources might complement the Autobiography of Malcolm X. But of course bringing it home makes sense and I was thrilled by the opportunity to look for Montana history resources that tie to the literature you are teaching. See below for the links I sent her--and let me know if you are looking for Montana history connections for a book you are teaching. I don't know if I'll be able to help, but I'm certainly willing to try.
Resources to bring the Montana experience into the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
- “Lifting as We Climb”: The Activism of the Montana Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs talks about efforts to get an equal access to public accommodation law passed in Montana.
- Montana’s African American Heritage Resources has interviews with African American Montanans growing up during the time period as well as other materials (I haven’t read them though).The site also includes a link to this story map of Montana in the Green Book.
- I’ve never read this book, and I hear there are curse words, and other objectionable content--including some misrepresentations of historical events--but it might be interesting to look at Viet Cong at Wounded Knee: The Trail of a Blackfeet Activist by Woody Kipp. I bet you can find excerpts that you could use for comparison.
- Chapter 6: Federal Indian Policy of Montana Mosaic (a 19 minute video) looks at Relocation and the rise of the American Indian Movement through the story of the Juneaus—I think this could be a cool comparison.
Again, if you have books you teach that you’d like to find Montana tie ins for, let me know—coming up with suggested resources to pair with books already being taught in ELA classes has been on my list to do for a long time.
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