Theme: Native American

Below are lessons, books, films, and more on Indigenous history. We also recommend checking out the Abolish Columbus Day campaign and the list of books for pre-K – 12 recommended by American Indians in Children’s Literature, posted at Social Justice Books.
First Light (Film) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

First Light

Film. By Upstander Project. 2015. 13 minutes.
Story of forced removal of Native American children in Maine sent to boarding schools.
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Children holding signs - Indigenous Peoples Day Parade - Seattle | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Support Indigenous Rights: Abolish Columbus Day

By Bill Bigelow
The movement to abolish Columbus Day and to establish in its place Indigenous Peoples' Day continues to gather strength, as every month new school districts and colleges take action. This campaign has been given new momentum as Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas assert their treaty and human rights. Especially notable is the inspiring struggle in North Dakota to stop the toxic Dakota Access Pipeline, led by the Standing Rock Sioux.

Dave Archambault, chairperson of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, explains that the oil pipeline “is threatening the lives of people, lives of my tribe, as well as millions down the river. It threatens the ancestral sites that are significant to our tribe. And we never had an opportunity to express our concerns. This is a corporation that is coming forward and just bulldozing through without any concern for tribes.”

The “bulldozing” of Indigenous lives, Indigenous lands, and Indigenous rights all began with Columbus’s invasion in 1492.
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Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years (Teaching Guide) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

The New (and Improved?) Textbook Columbus

By Bill Bigelow
Recently, I ran across an old manual that described itself as “An easy step-by-step guide to obtain U.S. Citizenship.” A page of history and government questions begins:
Q: Who discovered America?
A: Christopher Columbus in 1492.

This was the simple, and simplistic, history that I learned in 4th grade in the early 1960s growing up in California — a kind of secular Book of Genesis: In the beginning, there was Columbus; he was good and so are we.

And it stayed the history that most everyone learned until the Columbus quincentenary in 1992 brought together Native Americans, social justice organizations, and educators to demand a more inclusive and critical version of what occurred in 1492 and after.
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Columbus in America

Film. By Paul Puglisi. 2017. 89 minutes.
Documentary on the symbol of Columbus in the United States and the campaign for Indigenous Peoples' Day.
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