Indian Land Tenure Curriculum > 3-5 Curriculum > Standard 2 > Lesson 1

Achievement Goal: Describe how North America is home to many distinct Indian tribes and communities and how these groups established their homelands in every part of the continent. Explain the word “indigenous”.

Time: One class period

Core: History, Civics/Government

This lesson will teach children about the word “indigenous” and how North America was populated by an amazing variety of peoples and cultures before contact. This lesson will also encourage the students to think about how geography, place, and culture are intertwined.

Preparation:

1. View the “Early Indian Tribes, Culture Areas, and Linguistic Stocks” map at either of the websites listed in the resource section of this lesson.
2. View the lesson plan from the online curriculum “A World of their Own: The Americas to 1500” at http://www.eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/crossroads/sec4/Unit_1/Unit_IQ1.html . This lesson teaches children about the different Indian cultures found across the United States and helps them relate these different cultures to the different landforms, environment, and natural resources found in these regions. Using an atlas and the “Early Indian Tribes” map listed earlier, you may want to create maps of specific parts of the United States (such as the Pacific Northwest or the East Coast) to display greater geographic detail and the diversity of tribes within culture areas.

Student Activity:

1. Introduce the word “indigenous” to your students. Explain that indigenous plants are ones that originated in or occur naturally in an area or environment. Apply the word to animals that may live in the lands surrounding the community. Finally, ask the students what “indigenous people” are. Ask them how this is reflected in and affects these peoples’ history, knowledge, spiritual beliefs, and culture.
2. Show the children the map “Early Indian Tribes, Culture Areas, and Linguistic Stocks” to students at the website listed in the resources section of this lesson. Emphasize that native people were found everywhere in North America . Explain to the students that this map is an anthropological study that seeks to find similarities and differences between groups of people. Explain that any borders shown in the maps between different tribes are conceptual rather than fact.
3. Discuss the concepts of “homelands” and “territory.” Today, a person’s homelands may be the city, community or neighborhood, while a person’s territory could be analogous to their reservation, state or region.
4. Working in small groups, have students quickly brainstorm about different local animals, and what their territory might be. For example, a student might think about a Black-Footed Ferret. An individual or family of ferrets’ home range would be an area of sagebrush prairie from which they could find food, water and shelter. Its territory as a distinct species might be North Dakota or the Northern Plains.
5. Have the students write down some of the things they need in their own homeland, such as where to find food, material for clothes or where to buy clothes, be with friends, and go to school or the doctor. Have the students share their lists with the class.
6. Have students discuss where their homeland, or community, is located within a larger territory, such as their reservation or aboriginal territory.
7. On the back of the first sheet of paper, have the students write down some of the things their native ancestors needed in their original homelands before there were stores and cars and shopping. They may want to include some of the social or ceremonial activities of their native ancestors and where these activities took place.
8. Ask what might happen if part of a student’s community or “homeland” was no longer available to them. For example, what might happen if the portion of their homeland containing the grocery store or the mall was no longer available to them? How would they adjust to this change? Would they move to find a new source of groceries or clothes?
9. Explain that this is similar to what happened to native ancestors when settlers began arriving into their original homelands. If settlers claimed their forests, grasslands, or lakes and streams, natives often found they could no longer use those places. That portion of their homelands was no longer available, similar to losing a grocery store today.
10. Ask how native ancestors would have to adjust their lives if a portion of their homelands disappeared in this manner. For example, what might they have to do if the plains where the buffalo grazed were no longer available because settlers had plowed it up for agriculture?
11. Have the students think about their current homelands. How would their lives change if the population suddenly increased ten times in only two years? How would this big population growth effect the natural environment? The community?
12. If you seek to have the children relate homelands, culture, and geography more closely, have them follow the activity presented in the “ A World of their Own: The Americas to 1500” curriculum described in the Preparation section of this lesson.

Evaluation:

• Students should be able to explain what the word “indigenous” means and how to spell it.
• Determine if the students can comprehend the idea of homelands and how modern homelands are similar to those of native ancestors.
• Assess the students’ grasp of the relationships between environment, geography, and culture.

Resources:

• http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/histus.html ; http://www.reisenett.no/map_collection/histus.html . These two websites feature a map entitled “Early Indian Tribes, Culture Areas, and Linguistic Stocks”, From The National Atlas of the United States of America (Arch C. Gerlach, editor).Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Geological Survey, 1970.
• http://www.thebearbyte.com/Maps/NativeAmericanLandsMaps/NATribFront_JPG.html. This map is easier to read and simply lists the name of the tribe in an undefined geographic location in the United States without reference to culture group.
• Online curriculum from “Crossroads: A K-16 American History Curriculum”, section “A World of their Own: The Americas to 1500” at http://www.eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/crossroads/.
• For an alternative activity, review the lesson “Not ‘Indians,’ Many Tribes” at the National Endowment for the Humanities “Edsitement” webpage, http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=324.