Drum, Singer, Song, Storyteller
Essential Understandings
Essential Understandings TH/SH
Essential Understanding 1. Since Time Immemorial
Essential Understanding 2: Sovereignty
Essential Understanding 3: History
Essential Understanding 5: Identity
Essential Understanding 6: Lifeways
Essential Understanding 7: Language
Essential Understanding 1: American Indian Cultures
Essential Understanding 2: Time, Community, and Change
Essential Understanding 3: People, Places, and Environments
Essential Understanding 4: Individual Development and Identity
Essential Understanding 5: Individuals, Groups, and Institutions
Essential Understanding 9: Global Connections
Essential Questions
- What characteristics make a good story?
- How do stories about place shape your Community?
- How do stories about place shape your State?
- How do stories about place shape your Country?
- What is your relationship to Water, Earth, and Animals?
Grade Themes
3: My Community
4: My State
5: My Country
Overview
This unit will allow students to learn about Indigenous Stories, Storytellers, and the importance of Storytelling in multiple mediums. The unit will introduce Storytelling from a Native American perspective in relationship to Community, State, Country, and Mother Earth.
Logistics
Where does this activity take place?
Classroom
How are students organized?
Whole class
Time Required
- Each lesson contains a 5 Day Scope & Sequence.
- Each day is approximately 45-60 minutes in duration.
- The unit will take approximately 5 weeks to completion.
Assessment Outcomes
- Students will learn about storytelling from an Indigenous perspective in multiple mediums (read alouds, music videos, interviews, dance, and ceremony).
- Students will learn about the importance of Indigenous community through storytelling.
- Students will learn about the 9 federally recognized tribes in the past, and present time.
- Students will learn about a relationship to Mother Earth through an Indigenous lens.
Oregon Standards
Reading & Language Arts Content Standards
3 RL.2 Recount and summarize stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral, and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.
4.RL.2 Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.
5.RL.6 Describe how a narrator’s or speaker’s point of view influences how events are described.Oregon Social Studies Standards:
Oregon Social Studies Standards
3.11. Describe how individuals, groups (e.g., socioeconomic differences, ethnic groups, and social groups, including individuals who are American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian) events and developments have shaped the local community and region.
3.14. Explain why individuals and groups (e.g., socioeconomic, ethnic, religious groups, and other traditionally marginalized groups) in the same historical period differed in the way they viewed and interpreted historical events.
4.11. Analyze the distinct way of knowing and living among the different American Indian tribes in Oregon prior to colonization, such as religion, language, and cultural practices and the subsequent impact of that colonization.
5.25. Analyze multiple accounts or perspectives of the same event, issue, problem or topic and describe important similarities and differences.
5.27. Identify characteristics of an event, issue, or problem, suggesting possible causes and results
VA.10.CO1.4 2. Examine and apply personal and external resources, such as interests, research, and cultural understanding, to create artwork.
VA.1.CR1.4 1. Generate and research ideas for artwork that draw upon specific moods, feelings, or themes.
MA.10.CO1.4 1. Examine and use personal and external resources, such as interests, research, and cultural understanding, to create media artworks.
Background for Teachers
- Teachers should know that traditional oral storytelling has been told by Native Americans since time immemorial. In addition to traditional oral storytelling, Native artists, authors, and community members continue to share stories through multiple modern mediums.
- Teachers should know that stories of my community, state, and country will address Native American land removal, genocide, restoration, and resilience.
- Teachers should know that these terms are/can be used interchangeably: Natives, Native Americans, Indigenous, Indigenous Peoples.
Key Terms
- Relatives (People): A term interchangeably used for friends, blood relatives, non-blood relatives, community members, and tribal members.
- More-than-human Relatives: A term referring to animal relatives, land relatives, water, and Mother Earth.
- Mother Earth: Everything on earth and their relationship to each other, and us. (i.e. Land, Ground, and Spirit)
- Time Immemorial: A period of time in relationship to ancestral lands before colonialism, and memory.
- Genocide: Intentional erasure and destruction of a group of people, their culture, language, and lifeways.
- Restoration: To restore; build something that has been destroyed.
- Resilience: Strength and adaptability during times of struggle.
- Treaties: A formal agreement (and document) between parties that is legally binding; the supreme law of the land.
Key Ideas to Be Aware of and Keep in Mind
- Indigenous peoples have lived in all regions of Oregon and Pacific Northwest since time immemorial.
- There are 9 Federally Recognized Tribes in Oregon; there are many tribes that are not federally recognized at this time.
- With discussions around land removal, genocide, and broken treaties; Indigenous Peoples and Native Americans are continuing to strive and thrive in the modern world. Please be aware that discussions around resilience should also be balanced with current Indigenous communities and what we are accomplishing today.
Before Delivering These Lessons
- Watch/Listen to each suggested recording in its entirety to check for school and ageappropriate content.
- Pre-read each read aloud for fluency and question/answer assessment and discussion.
- Download a free Epic! account, a digital reading platform.
Materials
- KWL (Know, Want to Know, Learned) Worksheet (1 copy per student)
- Indigenous Stories & Storytelling Student Packet (1 copy per student)
- Indigenous Stories & Storytelling Student Packet (Line-less) (Speech-to-Text)
- 9 Federally Recognized Tribes of Oregon Jigsaw Worksheet (1 copy per student)
- 9 Federally Recognized Tribes of Oregon Jigsaw (Electronic Student Copy)
- 9 Federally Recognized Tribes of Oregon District Map (1 copy per student)
- End of Unit Collective Poster (Graphic Organizer) (1 copy per student)
- Crayons, Markers, Colored Pencils, Used Magazines
- Projector/TV and Speakers
Unit Learning Targets
- We can describe what characteristics make a good story.
- We can discuss community, and make a Zine representing what community means to you.
- We can identify, research, and present information on one of the nine Federally Recognized Tribes of Oregon.
- We can begin to understand Oregon’s Broken Treaties history and Native Americans relationship to our Country.
- We can conceptualize that non-human relatives are alive and need to be protected and cared for.