Teaching Native American Histories

FAIN: ES-261642-18

Five Colleges, Inc. (Amherst, MA 01002-2324)
Alice Nash (Project Director: February 2018 to April 2021)
Linda Coombs (Co Project Director: August 2018 to April 2021)

A three-week institute for 25 school teachers on the history of Native Americans in New England.

This summer institute examines five key concepts in Native American Studies through a rigorous, interdisciplinary humanities program that includes primary source analysis, museum and Native community visits, and conversations with Native and non-Native guest presenters. For three weeks, participants will live and work together in the Wampanoag homelands of southeastern Massachusetts to explore Native histories and contemporary issues through the framework of grounded history, identities, land, historical trauma and re-evaluating classroom resources. This topic is timely because a wealth of exciting scholarship has appeared since the turn of the 21st century but these new understandings have not been widely incorporated into K-12 or even post-secondary teaching. The Institute is particularly well suited for History and Social Studies teachers because questions about sources and interpretation are integrated throughout and approached from several directions.