High School American History:

“Navigating our way through vast amounts of information to arrive at a new understanding is an essential skill,” says teacher KNA, “and it is one we’ll be practicing a lot in our social studies classes.” Beginning the year with Indigenous America, students returned to familiar ground. “Like many topics, this is one where students bring a wide range of background and knowledge and varying levels of expertise,” KNA shares. But by returning to familiar ground with new skills, students discover just how much is unfamiliar, just how much of history is untold. As they learn major themes like the formation of treaties, reservations, and cultural assimilation, new research skills allow them to see what stories have been overlooked, like Native American resistance. By examining excerpted primary and secondary sources, students discover points of departure, as well as points of comparison, from our national stories. 

For their first inquiry project, students developed their own research focus area. “We look at a whole range of topics,” says KNA, “and that’s what I really value – having students find an opportunity to explore a question they are interested in.” Their topics included:   

• The Suquamish baseball team’s goodwill tour of Japan in 1921
• The connection between National Parks and the reservation system
• The PNW Fish Wars
• Representation of the Quileute in Twilight and in pop culture
• Female leaders and change-makers
• The Voluntary Relocation Act of the 1950s that encouraged Native Americans to move to urban centers
• Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
• Professional sports teams and Native American names and iconography

In addition to choosing their own topics, students also asked their own questions. “How to ask the right question and figure out how to strategically chart their next step, that is big, complex work,” KNA explains. “Research is messy and hard and needs a lot of skills.” It’s also rewarding. After a visit to the Suquamish Museum and the end of the unit to connect their expanded knowledge to our local history and community, students articulated their new understandings:

“You could spend a lifetime learning the different histories of the people we put under the umbrella term “Native American”. I think this is more important than the one narrative of being conquered and vanquished. There are still Native Americans alive today, it’s not even just history. It’s here and now.” Mele

“I feel it is important to remember the suffering and devastation that Native American populations had to go through. However, it may be more important now to dwell on the stories that got skipped before. The strength, resilience, intelligence, and resistance of the Native American peoples. They did not sit idle while these atrocities were happening and there were attempts to resist, many successful.” Mele

“Currently, indigenous people are still resisting against the effects of colonization. One specific problem the indigenous community is facing is MMIW (missing and murdered indigenous women). Out of all demographic groups, indigenous women are murdered or have gone missing more than any other. However, there are activist groups making a change by bringing this inequality to the attention of the media.” Julieta

One goal of this first inquiry project is for students to develop the skills to ask meaningful questions and learn methods and tools for answering those questions through scholarship, like evaluating a source for credibility. This is not only the work of being a historian; it’s also the work of citizenship. The very skills that enable them to analyze the past allow them to better understand the present and even equip them to fully participate in their futures. 

Photo Credit: Coco Ragan at the Suquamish Museum.