As of 2017, twenty-seven states now require that curriculum about American Indians be presented in public schools. The first state to develop this new direction was Montana, whose “Indian Education for All” mandate (1999) has become a model for many others. An earlier law, of 1972, had already recognized “the distinct and unique cultural heritage of American Indians and is committed in its educational goals to the preservation of their cultural integrity.” Other states have followed this lead. Yet traditional textbooks rarely suffice in meeting requirements to include U.S. Native American cultures and histories, continuing to under-represent many indigenous experiences in our classrooms. Teachers wishing to meet the new requirements remain hard pressed to flesh out their curriculum without new programs of study or independent research. Given the relative isolation of tribes on rural reservations and the obscurity of Native people in urban areas, the task of working to teach “with tribes” not just “about them”—as Washington state’s “Since Time Immemorial” law (2015) requires—is especially challenging.
This NEH Summer Institute offers U.S. school teachers a rare opportunity to work with tribes in a quest to reframe and enrich the Lewis and Clark story, which already enjoys pride of place in many classroom lessons. The Institute provides an immersive experience along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail (LCNHT), which paved the way for the settlement of the West. The LCNHT is named for Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who took the “Corps of Discovery” from St. Louis to the coast of Oregon and back again between 1804 and 1806. President Thomas Jefferson sent the Corps to document the West in preparation for others to “fill up the canvas”—in other words, to settle and colonize the vast region. The Corps’ fact-finding, journaling, and map-making activities on that early 19th-century expedition opened the doors for the next big leap in the Westward Movement, which partially displaced Native communities and ultimately put in place the educational requirement the Institute will be assisting teachers to fulfill—to bring Native voices and perspectives back into the fold.
In seeking indigenous peoples’ thoughts on the meaning of Lewis and Clark and, more generally, the settling of the West by Euro-Americans, we have chosen to travel from west to east, in other words, the unexpected direction. Although we will be following part of Clark’s return journey (see the map of the Trail), more significantly, we will be gazing east, attempting to put ourselves in the position of the first peoples here, and to some extent, imagining the oncoming march of settlers, rather than following along with that flow. We will also examine the Trail as a National Park of vast length, representing a physical marking of “the West,” and a living testimonial to the ways Euro-Americans have imagined these landscapes, how they energetically embrace them as part of their own origins, and shape them as pre-destined elements of a national tale. The journey will give us a chance to consider the evolving methods used by the land’s Native and non-Native keepers over time, the descendants of whom have recently come together to create more judicious interpretations of lesser-known aspects of this common history.
But, actually being present in the historic setting of early encounters will add exceptional depth to the sources we will be learning to interpret. Our itinerary will provide us with the rare opportunity to meet tribal elders in their own territories, hear their stories first hand, and ask them questions. It will help us understand the tribes’ profound associations with the landscapes, see the rivers that provide the waters essential for life, gaze upon the mountains and the plains their ancestors selected as prime settlement areas because they were full of plants and animals essential for human sustenance. Visiting pre-contact village sites, we will better understand how the Trail did not pass through unoccupied, “virgin territories,” but rather homelands within which people lived and moved—not nomadically, but with forethought and in a sustainable way—in rhythm with the seasons, carefully managing the natural resources so as not to exhaust them. Seeing the differences in geography and the varying cultural and historical experiences of the many tribes we study in person will facilitate a nuanced understanding that counteracts the tendency to imagine a single “Native American experience.” We will gain insights into how various cultures perceive place as it was affected by their religious views, social memory, the changing seasons, proximity to homelands, and even their own mapped or graphic representations. We will witness the significance of place for cultural and resource exchange and how it played (and plays) into both conflicted and peaceful relationships. We will come to understand more deeply the importance of place-based learning for school children, who respond with greater understanding, pride, and enthusiasm when their homeland is featured in their history lessons.
This Institute will make a conscious and explicit approach to historiography, bringing to light the craft of history as it is carried out when examining oral, written, or painted records of Native experiences. Locating such historical materials has never been easy, but we will have excellent guides and indigenous storytellers to locate and help interpret these diverse sources in museums, archives, in online digital collections, and oral tradition. We will look rigorously at the advantages and drawbacks of oral traditions, based as they are on fallible human memory and yet retold repeatedly—through stories and chants, and even performed in dance. Though they have been passed down through the generations, in the end, such methods have been fairly effective for preserving details, particularly their underlying meanings. We will learn to “read” visual records for embedded cultural codes, whether these are ancient petroglyphs, painted stories on hides, or textiles with beads or featherwork serving as “texts” (multimodal forms of meaning-making). When we also approach written primary sources, we will provide paths to classroom discoveries, reading between the lines or interrogating the vocabulary for its intended meanings in its temporal context. This study of a wide range of primary sources will also be couched in the reading of secondary sources participants will have consumed prior to coming together for the Institute. These texts will be part of ongoing discussions that begin with our first seminar, an engagement that will provide context and chronology and facilitate comparisons with Euro-American historical methods, sources, and understandings of the past. Daily reading requirements will be 50 pages or less, with diurnal opportunities for group process and inquiries put to elders.
From the period of the first encounters between Native peoples and the Corps, we will widen our temporal focus to include a consideration of the antecedents of the Westward Movement—the tribal occupation of the plains and mountain regions before contact—as well as the outcomes of cross-cultural exchanges, especially as they affected the lives of the indigenous peoples over the succeeding centuries, up to the present day. Historians coming from “Western” traditions naturally look for a sequentialist chronology, but in this Institute we will also learn of non-linear indigenous ways of configuring the past that might, for instance, point to recurring events that are cyclical and reinforce life lessons, that travel time through “flashbacks and dreams,” or that bring people full circle to their origins and their ancestors’ teachings.
Three weeks is a reasonable amount of time for this summer institute. We are balancing time in the classroom with time visiting thoughtfully selected historical sites and Native communities, with somewhat more emphasis on the latter. The pace of the journey is a fairly comfortable one, with time built in for quality discussions with speakers, reading time, and reflective journaling. Teachers will take away memories of unparalleled experiences visiting reservations and meeting elders, with clearer understandings about the impact of the Westward Movement, and new knowledge of interdisciplinary methods and challenging sources for teaching this crucial period in U.S. History.
This institute is being funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this web resource do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.”