6th Grade: Native American Land Curriculum, Standard Two Lessons

by Shannon Britton

Native American Land Curriculum

6th Grade

Standard Two: American Indian Land Tenure History

Standard One Goal: Students will demonstrate knowledge of key events in American Indian history and how these events relate to the current land tenure of American Indian tribes and individuals.

Rationale: Modern Indian land tenure is a result of centuries-long history between natives and their colonizers. Huge native land losses were a result of warfare, displacement, assimilation, broken treaties, tax lien foreclosures, congressional diminishment, executive orders, forced evictions, illegal settlement by non-natives and illegitimate sales. Furthermore, highly complex relationships between federal government, tribal governments, and state governments have evolved, created by treaties, legislation, executive orders and court decisions. All of this has had an enormous impact on modern Indian land tenure, which cannot be fully understood without an understanding of the history of American Indian colonization. In addition to exploring the history of domestic colonization and subsequent changes in land tenure, principles of European colonization are further explored in relation to indigenous homeland losses in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and South America.

Lesson 3: Age of Discovery

Achievement Goals: Describe the different ways in which European settlers and Native North Americans viewed land and land use.

Due to these vast differences in native and non-Native cultures and conceptions of land, land disputes began almost immediately after non-Natives arrived in North America. This lesson will enable students to explore these conflicts by examining further the differences between native and non-native conceptions of land.

Lesson 3: Background, Student Activity, Evaluation, Resources

Standard Two, Lesson Three, Lesson Plan Overview

Debating for Land, Lesson Plan (All Papers)

Debating for Land, Lesson Plan

Land Debate for Students

Part 1- The Search for the Site of the Sand Creek Massacre

Part 2- The Search for the Site of the Sand Creek Massacre

Maps of Indian Territory, the Dawes Act, and Will Rogers' Enrollment Case File

Andrew Jackson's Message to Congress on Indian Removal

The Homestead Act of 1862

Treaty with Saux and Foxes, 1804

Fort Laramie Treaty, 1868

Campfire Stories with George Catlin

In particular, review the sections entitled "Sacred Geography", "New
Views on Land Claims" and "Depicting Ownership" from the "Ancestral Lands" campfire stories.

Lesson 4: Develop knowledge of how land “ownership” and native land tenure began to change through the allotment of Indian lands.

Achievement Goals: Learn about and research a tribe’s land tenure history, focusing on the allotment and assimilation era in American Indian federal policy.

Originally, treaties were made to reduce animosities between settler governments and tribes or to establish relations of trade, peace and war, and delimited non-native settlement. Gradually, however, as non-natives became much more numerous and gained military advantages over Indians, treaties became a means by which tribes attempted to retain portions of their original territories or self-governance in the face of an overwhelming number of settlers and soldiers encroaching on their lands. In this lesson, students read portions of and compare treaties. They will also make a treaty of their own with fellow classmates.

Lesson 2: Background, Student Activity, Evaluation, Resources