Grand Coulee Dam: The Intersection of Modernity and Indigenous Cultures

FAIN: BH-293755-23

Arizona Board of Regents (Tucson, AZ 85721-0073)
David Pietz (Project Director: February 2023 to August 2023)
David Pietz (Project Director: August 2023 to present)
Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted (Co Project Director: August 2023 to present)

Two one-week workshops for 64 schoolteachers on the construction and impact of the Grand Coulee Dam. 

Our K-12 teacher workshops explore how different social groups experience history. The project examines the Grand Coulee Dam as a landmark of contested narratives. One narrative celebrated the social, economic, and cultural power of modernity. The other focused on the loss of indigenous cultural identities. Participants will explore these processes in discussion with experts, site visits, and primary material including oral histories, government documents, art, song, and photographs. The two one-week sessions, paired with two virtual pre-workshop sessions and one virtual post-workshop session, will equip teachers with analytical frameworks to engage their humanities and social science students in conversations centered on how different social groups experience and remember transformative changes of the landscape.