This resource provides lesson adaptation ideas for Comprehensive Distance Learning within the SB 13 Tribal History/Shared History 4th, 8th, and 10th Grade Lessons.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
This link provides access to the ODE 10th Grade Tribal History/Shared History Lesson Plans.
Material Type: Lesson
This lesson explores the concepts of personal and cultural identity and asks students to reflect on how their own sense of identity might impact their health. The lesson provides a holistic look at the different types of health people experience. While the lesson acknowledges that discrimination based on identity is an unfortunate fact of life for many people, identity can also be used as a springboard to better health. This concept is explored in the second activity. The lesson also draws on examples from Native American culture to show how survivance and physical identity expression can support a positive experience of health.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
Throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries tribal nations and Indigenous communities have continued to assert their right to self-governance and sovereignty despite numerous efforts to force them to assimilate. By extension, the purposeful erasure of Indigenous peoples as a living and thriving presence in the current, modern-day world also remains a reality. Tribal sovereignty predates the existence of the U.S. government and the state of Oregon. Tribalgovernments are separate and unique sovereign nations with the power to execute their self-governance to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens and to govern their lands, air, and waters. One of the ways Indigenous communities have been embodying their right to sovereignty is through the establishment of an Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Indigenous Peoples’ Day serves as a reminder of the contributions, both past and present, of Indigenous communities and tribal nations. In this lesson, students will explore the concepts of tribal sovereignty and self-determination and learn about efforts by tribes and other entities to promote and support the celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. This lesson is meant to be used with its companion lesson: Indigenous Peoples’ Day as an Act of Sovereignty Part II.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
Throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries tribal nations and Indigenous communities havecontinued to assert their right to self-governance and sovereignty despite numerous efforts to forcethem to assimilate. By extension, the purposeful erasure of Indigenous peoples as a living and thriving presence in the contemporary world also remains a reality. Tribal sovereignty predates the existence of the U.S. government and the state of Oregon. Tribal governments are separate and unique sovereign nations with the power to execute their self governance to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens and to govern their lands, air, and waters. One of the ways Indigenous communities have been embodying their right to sovereignty is through the establishment of an Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Indigenous Peoples’ Day serves as reminder of the contributions, both past and present, of Indigenous communities and tribal nations. This lesson extends the knowledge gained from Part I by asking students to make meaning of Indigenous Peoples’ Day and to explore how advocacy leads to a local proclamation and change.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
Elizabeth Woody is a poet and educator of Navajo, Wasco, and Yakama descent and is an enrolled tribal member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. Woody’s writing focuses on the histories of her ancestors, the rich Pacific Northwest landscape, and the experience of being a tribal member, an American, and a woman in contemporary society. Woody is the winner of the American Book Award. In 2016, she was named the eighth poet laureate of Oregon—the first person of American Indian heritage to hold that honor. Oregon poets laureate are appointed by the governor and serve a two-year term as cultural ambassadors, traveling around the state to share the power of reading and writing poetry. In this lesson, students will explore and analyze Woody’s poetry. Students will have the opportunity to listen to Woody speak about her work and her relationship with language and the landscape. They will reflect on and discuss her perspective and the process by which she writes. Students will also learn a structured strategy for analyzing poetic text and recognizing key themes. Finally, students will demonstrate what they have learned by creating a group analysis and presentation of one of Woody’s poems.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
This math lesson introduces students to an important element of Native American culture: thepow wow. These are public events in which Native people celebrate and share their culture; honorfriends, family members, elders, and military veterans; participate in singing and dancing; and display traditional skills and crafts. There are more than a dozen pow wows held in Oregon each year, from early spring to early fall, in all regions of the state. Most pow wows are also open to non-Native people. In this lesson, pow wows serve as the basis for a task-rich exercise in which students choose which pow wow to attend and then calculate the related expenses. The lesson allows students to develop their skills in using math for contextual problem solving and to make informed decisions.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
This link will provide access to all of the ODE SB 13 Tribal History/Shared History 4th Grade Lesson Plans.
Material Type: Lesson
This lesson encourages students to begin thinking about and questioning those stereotypes. The lesson includes three activities, each of which explores a challenging but important topic related to the experience of Native Americans in Oregon. These topics touch on issues of history but are presented in the context of health because of their tremendous impact on the physical, mental, and emotional health of Native people, past and present.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson
In this lesson, students will have the opportunity to learn about one such game, which is often called double ball in English. Double ball is a team sport that is similar to the contemporary game of lacrosse, in that it involves multiple players using long sticks and a ball, with the purpose—in most versions—of getting the ball across a goal line or through some sort of target. Many tribes, including several in Oregon, played a version of double ball and continue to do so today.While focused on physical education, this lesson reinforces two important concepts that are woven throughout this curriculum. First, students will learn that while there are many similarities across tribal nations and Indigenous communities— including some of the games they play—Native American people are far from homogeneous and in fact represent a rich diversity of unique cultures. Second, students will be encouraged to think about how the specific natural environment in which a given tribe lived—its ancestral territory— shaped its identity and culture in both large and small ways. Understanding this strong connection to place is essential to understanding and respecting Native American cultures in Oregon and across North America, past and present.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
This lesson explores the preservation and revitalization of Indigenous languages—why it’s important and what tribes in Oregon are doing to keep their ancestral languages alive. This is important for many Native American tribes, who are attempting to save their languages from “linguicide” caused by decades of colonialism and forced assimilation. Language revitalization can help restore and strengthen cultural connections and pride, which in turn can promote well-being for both tribes and their members.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
This lesson introduces students to the history and importance of the Indigenous language known as chinuk wawa. Students will have the opportunity to learn how tribes from diverse regions and language families used chinuk wawa as a method of communication among groups essential for trade, political, social and other reasons. They will also reflect on the power of language and the relationship between language and cultural identity.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson
The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–1806 was of great consequence for the United States, the future state of Oregon, and the vast numbers of Indigenous people who had been living in the American West for thousands of years. The passage of time, mythmaking, and selective interpretation have obscured or distorted both minor and major realities about the purposes of the expedition, the people involved, and its impact. In this lesson, students will explore how historical events can be viewed and interpreted differently by different people, and why some stories about historical events can dominate or exclude others. These occurrences in the historical record were often intentionally organized and supported to present a narrative that was favorable to one side over another. Students will also learn details about the Lewis and Clark Expedition that provide a fuller picture of Native American contributions to the journey and its long-term impact on Indigenous people, specifically in Oregon. This lesson can be incorporated into elementary Oregon history units and/or provided as an extension. It assumes that students are already familiar with the general outline and key people of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
This lesson introduces students to two of the most important aspects of Native American culture, both past and present: oral storytelling and the role of elders within tribal communities.Tribal nations and Indigenous communities in Oregon are varied and have multiple unique languages, world views, ways of life, and traditions. Like most cultures, they have many ways they communicate, preserve, and pass on their cultural and ceremonial traditions to future generations.One of these ways is through oral tradition, in which information is passed down through the generations by word of mouth. There are many forms of oral tradition, including poems, songs, speeches, choreography, and spoken word. One of the most well-known forms of Native oral tradition is storytelling. Western oral tradition is often divided into categories of folktale, myth, and legend. Tribal nations do not make this distinction and simply say “stories” or “teachings.”
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
Native American people have lived in the area “now known as Oregon since time immemorial (long predating European contact and beyond human memory). During the era of colonialism— and even into the 21st century—non-Native people often portrayed the North American continent as a vast wilderness that was virtually unpopulated when they arrived. This could not be farther from the truth. In Oregon alone there were dozens of tribes, each with its own ancestral territory and rich cultural history. There was not a single region of Oregon that did not have an Indigenous tribe or band living within it. Despite disease, genocide, forced assimilation, and cultural suppression, many of these tribes managed to survive, and they continue to carry their cultural traditions forward as sovereign tribal nations. To survive, however, required giving up vast areas of their ancestral territory, sometimes by way of treaties and sometimes as a result of force. The two activities in this lesson will give students an essential understanding of the rich diversity of Native American tribes that existed in Oregon prior to European settlement, the current territory of the nine federally recognized tribes in Oregon, and the inseparable bond between Native people and the land.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
This lesson will give students a foundational awareness of the Indigenous, sovereign people groups who live in what is now known as Oregon—their history, their culture, and the issues that continue to impact them today. When undertaking the study of Indigenous people, it is important to begin with their long history on the land. Indigenous people have lived in Oregon for thousands of years, in established communities, with established social structures, languages, and cultures. They were—and are—deeply and inextricably connected to the land. It is also important to increase students’ awareness of the continued presence of Indigenous people groups in Oregon and to explore what it means to be a sovereign nation within the United States. This lesson will also help students begin to think about how the story of the American West (e.g., the Oregon Trail, westward expansion) has typically been told from a white settlers’ perspective and to consider how that history might look from the perspective of those whose ancestors were here for thousands of years before the settlers arrived. Finally, this lesson will enable students to identify the nine tribes in Oregon that are currently recognized by the federal government and to understand that all of Oregon was and still is Indian Country.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
In this lesson students will learn how Native American tribes living in what is now Oregon incorporated geologic knowledge into their lifeways and cultures. It will describe tribes’ use of stone tools, designation of prominent landforms as significant and meaningful places, and oral traditions they maintained regarding geologic events to help them understand and organize the world they lived in. This lesson assumes students have some familiarity with or prior instruction in earth science concepts such as Oregon landforms, the rock cycle, plate tectonics, and earthquakes and tsunamis.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
Native American tribes in Oregon have relied on salmon for thousands of years. Salmon is considered a first food—a food resource that Indigenous people have depended on since time immemorial. This lesson includes four activities to support student learning about this traditional resource. In the first activity students will learn why salmon are essential to the traditional lifeways of Native Americans in Oregon. In the second activity students will evaluate the life cycle of salmon, specifically the importance of salmon returning to their home stream to spawn. In the third activity students will examine the impact of dams on the life cycle of salmon. Finally, students will work in small groups to identify strategies being used to restore the salmon population in Oregon.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
Lamprey were an important food source for many Native American tribes in Oregon, particularly those in coastal areas and along the Columbia River watershed, and they continue to be an important link to traditional cultural practices. Like salmon, lamprey are anadromous, meaning they are born in fresh water, spend most of their life in the ocean, and return to freshwater to spawn. Sustaining the population of lamprey has always been important to Native people, and one way to do that is by not overharvesting. In previous generations this was not a problem, but hydroelectric dams, pollution, and destruction of habitat have all led to a drastic reduction in the lamprey population over the past century. Today, tribal biologists use both traditional and Western scientific methods—such as fish tagging—to protect and preserve lamprey, salmon, and other aquatic species. Using this real-world context, this lesson engages students in a mathematical process to determine the weights of lamprey using a fraction with each fraction having the same denominator, organizing the lamprey on a number line from lowest to highest weight, and comparing the weights of lamprey in decimal format.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
This lesson uses a dataset and simple mathematical operations to teach grade 4 students important facts about Native American people in Oregon. In the process, it begins to correct several common misperceptions and to build students’ awareness of the active role Native Americans play in contemporary Oregon culture. Students will learn about the nine federally recognized tribes in Oregon, including tribal membership, tribal lands, and the number of people employed by each tribe. This will give them a basic understanding of the presence of Native people in the state. Students will also be introduced to two key aspects of the complex relationship between Native American tribes and the U.S. government: termination and restoration. While the lesson does not cover these elements in depth, it lays the groundwork for future lessons and further understanding.
Material Type: Lesson, Lesson Plan
