There There by Tommy Orange, the Importance of Place, and Contemporary Native American Communities

There There by Tommy Orange, the Importance of Place, and Contemporary Native American Communities

Grade Band: Secondary
Subject: Language Arts

By Miriam Rock

Curriculum Designer’s Letter and Story

The city of Philadelphia is my home. My life has been a series of phases characterized by either leaving or returning to Philadelphia. As a child, I spent three years living in Jerusalem, first as a toddler, and then again for my 8th-grade year. I returned to the city for high school. I left Philadelphia to attend undergrad at Yale, where I majored in English, before returning to the city to get a master’s at Penn in teaching high school English. My first job took me away from Philadelphia again and I spent three years teaching at Sandy Spring Friends School in Maryland before returning to Philadelphia in the summer of 2018 to teach at Friends Select School. At each phase of my life, I have distinct memories of recognizing and cherishing Philadelphia—and the places and people associated with the city—as my home.

At Sandy Spring Friends School, I led a week-long trip to New Mexico where my school partnered with Cottonwood Gulch, a wonderful organization that has been in the four corners area since 1926 and has cultivated community partnerships throughout the last 90 years. Through these partnerships, we had the opportunity to spend time on Navajo Nation with Irene Notah, learning about traditional Navajo weaving, and in Zuni with Ken Seowtewa, learning about Zuni art. The experience was deeply meaningful for my students and for me and underscored the power of experiential education and of storytelling.

That trip stayed with me even as I transitioned from teaching at Sandy Spring Friends School, a suburban Quaker school set on 160 acres in Maryland, to teaching at Friends Select School, an urban Quaker school in Center City Philadelphia. Friends Select is blocks from City Hall and from the Art Museum. The students come from all over the city, often navigating public transit to reach school. 38% of the students are students of color; 8% are international students. Approximately 30% of the student body receives financial aid.

At Friends Select School, I teach a variety of upper-level English courses, including a one-semester senior elective titled “Race, Gender and Nationality in Literature.” I developed the course at Sandy Spring Friends School out of the desire to center the voices of writers of color in my classroom and to respond to my students’ desire to engage with the intersections of race, gender, nationality, class, religion, mental health and other topics as they exist in literature and in all of our lives. It was with this course in mind that I applied to Stephanie Wood’s 2019 NEH summer institute, “Discovering Native Histories along the Lewis and Clark Trail.” The institute presented a remarkably unique opportunity to travel through Montana and North Dakota, visit a variety of historic and cultural sites, and meet with a series of thoughtful scholars and representatives from the Crow (Apsáalooke), Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Lakota tribes.

One of the focuses of the journey was the way in which the lives, stories, and land of Native Americans are sidelined by mainstream American visions of physical space and history. I was struck by the sheer complexity and diversity of the stories and cultures of the various tribes categorized as Plains Indians. I was also moved by the conversations that we had around the place and ancestral homeland and by the ways in which the individuals we talked to thought about the significance both of the loss of so much of their ancestral home and the importance of the remaining land. It was incredibly humbling to realize that, while I viewed Philadelphia as my home after my family lived in the area for 70 years, some Plains Indians had the same homelands for 12,000–13,000 years.

As part of the institute, we were asked to create a set of teachings that we could integrate into our curricula. Going into the summer, I knew that I wanted my teachings to focus on There There, a novel published in 2018 by Tommy Orange, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal nations of Oklahoma. The novel is set in Oakland and is voiced by a variety of characters as they prepare for the Big Oakland Powwow. There There focuses on the contemporary experience of urban Native Americans as they engage with questions of their own identities, of their connections to their tribal heritage and other Native Americans, and of their relationship with the land.

It feels important to me to acknowledge what it means that I, as a white person, am preparing, teaching, and sharing this unit. One of the reasons that I was so eager to participate in the NEH summer institute was the opportunity it created to learn directly from representatives from different tribes about their experiences. I was honored to hear from people such as Dr. Shane Doyle, Rose Williamson, Conrad Fisher, Dr. Janine Pease, Loren Yellow Bird, Calvin Grinnell, Alisha Deegan, Dr. Carmelita Lamb, Representative Ruth Buffalo, and Dakota Goodhouse. Less than 1% of Philadelphians are Native American. If I had stayed home, it is very unlikely I would ever have the chance to connect meaningfully with people of Native heritage.

Similarly, the majority of my students have had very few opportunities for exposure to Native voices. It is partially in response to this lack of Native voices in my school and in traditional English curricula that I developed this unit. My goal is to re-center Native experiences in my classroom and to use my privilege to amplify narratives from communities that have faced generations of structural oppression and discrimination. As a non-Native person, I am honored to have been given this opportunity to develop this curriculum in conversation with the Honoring Tribal Legacies team.

One of the most defining characteristics of There There is that it is narrated by 12 different characters, all of whom have Native heritage. I was really drawn to the way in which this structure celebrates the diversity of voices, experiences, and perspectives of urban Native Americans. As I developed this unit, I tried to replicate Orange’s diversity of voices. I worked to integrate a variety of sources, most of which we discussed during the NEH summer institute and, subsequently, focus on the experiences of Plains Indians.

I break the unit into sub-sections, based on the sections of the book (Part I: Remain, Part II: Reclaim, Part III: Return, Part IV: Powwow). There is a total of sixteen class periods, each focused either on a night’s worth of reading or on a written assignment. The period lengths of the different teachings vary dramatically: we operate on a six-day schedule and the class meets four of every six days for 45, 60, 45, and 80 minutes, respectively. This unit is developed for classes of 15–18 seniors. In general, I expect students to spend 30–45 minutes on homework each night. I often aim to give students either multiple nights or a weekend to complete written assignments, referred to in this unit as reflections. At the beginning of each lesson plan, I will designate what homework is due at the beginning of that period and how long that period is.

Curriculum Design Approach

The Honoring Tribal Legacies curriculum follows a place-based multiliteracies design approach. This type of framework incorporates learning about “place” using physical and cognitive activities that focus on our visual, auditory, tactile, spatial, smell/taste, movement/gestural, linguistic, and spiritual abilities. Lessons provide a variety of learning experiences including community discussions, journal writing, creative arts pieces, presentations, video and audio files, and other activities designed to engage students on a more than perfunctory level.

Curriculum Expressions

  • Big Idea:

Tommy Orange’s There There shows some of the many connections between contemporary Native Americans and different native histories. The novel, forms the focus of this language arts unit for the window it provides onto life for urban Native Americans in contemporary times. It presents several of countless unique native voices and perspectives.

Non-Native high school students across the United States often think of “Indians” as a monolithic people who only lived in the past. We need more Native voices and perspectives, such as Tommy Orange provides, to help correct misconceptions and bring greater balance to history and a deeper understanding of underrepresented groups in this country today. Ron Charles of the Washington Post (May 29, 2018) wrote that this book “acknowledges a brutal legacy of subjugation and shatters it,” and it does so from a young Native man’s point of view, as he grapples with balancing a painful history and “an inheritance of beauty and spirituality … communion and sacrifice and heroism,” according to Sara Hildreth of Fiction Matters (Aug. 6, 2019).

  • Enduring Understandings:

    • There is no one universal Native American experience or way of life.
    • Native American experiences can be viewed through the lens of resilience.
    • Connections can be drawn between the experiences described in works of literature and those described by individuals.
    • Native women were very important in traditional Plains Indian cultures.
    • Native Americans continue to make art.
    • Tribal identity is a complex combination of heritage, family, history, experience, and blood-based relationships.
    • Counting coups is an example of the way in which traditional modes of Native men showing their worth through physical feats are complicated by contemporary life.
    • Joy Harjo is the first Native Poet Laureate in the United States, named in 2019.
    • There There is structured such that themes from earlier in the novel appear later in the novel, often in different characters’ voices.
    • Federal policies surrounding land and relocation changed the ways that different Native communities engaged with the place. The resulting tensions are ongoing.

  • Essential Questions (Aligned with Trail/Tribal Themes)

    • How do maps shape our understanding of place? What can maps miss?
    • How does what is taught impact our understanding of our world, our country, and ourselves?
    • How does an individual balance their place in larger society with their personal, familial and tribal identities?
    • How does Orange integrate Cheyenne stories and traditions into There There?
    • What does it mean to be Native?
    • How do we balance connecting to art emotionally and intellectually?
    • How does the way something is written impact its meaning and reveal the author’s intention?
    • How does the end of There There serve as a culmination thematically and in terms of plot and character development?
    • How does history shape and create the present?
    • What value comes from learning about people whose lives are substantively different from our own?

  • Common Core State Standards

    • ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.1
    • ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.2
    • ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.3
    • ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.4
    • ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.5

Lesson Plans

Lesson 1: “Part I: Remain”

    • A. Enduring Understandings:
      • There is no one universal Native American experience or way of life.
      • Native American experiences can be viewed through the lens of resilience.
    • B. Essential Questions
      • How do maps shape our understanding of place? What can maps miss?
      • How does what is taught impact our understanding of our world, our country, and ourselves?
      • How does an individual balance their place in larger society with their personal, familial, and tribal identities?

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #1 DUE: come to class having read the cast of characters.

—45-minute class period—

[10 min] Individual work in class.

Students should fill out the handout, Names for Racial Groups.

[20 min] Whole class

Students share their ideas. As they do so, teacher records student thoughts on the board where the Names for Racial Group presentation is projected.

[5 min] Whole class

Teacher turns to the last page of the presentation and asks for a student volunteer to read Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s quote. Teacher leaves space should students want to share.

[10 min] Partner work

Students work with a partner to answer the following questions before sharing their ideas with the class:

      1. How many different Native nations were there in the US?
      2. How many can you name?

After student discussion, the teacher explains that there are 576 federally recognized tribes, which does not include state-recognized tribes and tribes who have either never been recognized or who have had that recognition rescinded. Teacher explains that while part of the goal of this unit is to get us more acquainted with one specific experience—that of Cheyenne living in contemporary Oakland—another part of it is to work to avoid reducing the Native experience to one narrative since there are so many distinct experiences.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #2 DUE: come to class having read pp. 9–26.

—60-minute class period—

[15 min] Whole class.

Teacher will open class with space for students to share their thoughts, prompting them as necessary with the following:

      1. What are your reactions to the reading?
      2. What stuck out to you?
      3. What was confusing?

[20 min] Individual work

[5 min] Student volunteer reads aloud pp. 6–7 (“There’s an old Cheyenne story… just kept rolling.”).

[5 min] Students write their answers to the following:

      1. How do the different family members treat the mother? How does she treat them?
      2. What happens to the head at the end of the story?
      3. What is this an allegory for?

[10 min] Students share out their ideas.

[15 min] Partner work

[3 min] Student volunteer reads aloud pp. 9–10 (“Plenty of us… rid of us”).

[2 min] Teacher shows students Crow (Apsaalooke) Mural, Joseph Medicine Crow, a mural in Lodge Grass, Montana, on the Crow reservation. Teacher briefly explains: Joseph Medicine Crow was a war chief, author, and historian. He lived from 1913–2016. We will learn more about him later in the unit.

[5 min] Students work with a partner to compare and contrast the passage from There There with the mural. Students answer the following:

      1. What does it mean to be resilient?
      2. Why look at the Native experience through the lens of resilience?

[5 min] Students share their ideas with the class.

[10 min] Whole class and partner work.

Students should turn to the partner on their other side and think about the following:

      1. What do we learn from Tony Loneman’s section?

Think about:

      1. Physical place
      2. Characters
      3. Plot

Students share their ideas with the class.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #3 DUE: come to class having read pp. 27–44.

—45-minute class period—

[10 min] Individual work

Student volunteer reads aloud p. 28 (“The first time… up his face”).

In their notebooks, students spend the rest of time answering the following:

      1. In this passage, Orange lays out the connection between different parts of Dene’s life and public transit.

Write a short narrative that demonstrates your relationship with public transit.

      1. What memories do you link to public transit? How does it connect you to Philadelphia?

[25 min] Partner work

[5 min] Teacher distributes the Different Versions of There There handout, playing the Radiohead song.

[10 min] With a partner, students fill out questions at the bottom of page 1 before sharing their answers with the class.

[10 min] As a class, students read the quotation at the top of page 2, before filling out questions 1 and 2.

Students fill out question 3 individually.

[10 mins] Whole class

Teacher shows students Maps presentation, pointing out:

      • The territory of the plains Indians
      • The story of the separation of the Cheyenne (after the government sent the Cheyenne to Oklahoma to be placed on a reservation there, a group of them decided to return to Montana and the Crows chose to give them a piece of their reservation).
      • The reality that the vast majority of Native communities are displaced from their ancestral homelands (Leni Lenape, who were local to the Philadelphia region, are now in Oklahoma).
      • When so much of life depends on connection to place as a way to connect to shared memory, Native Peoples who were separated from their homelands need to be resilient and to reinvent those connections.
      • Part of what is interesting about There There is that we see Urban Indians connecting to the landscape and beginning to write new layers onto it.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #4 DUE: come to class having read pp. 45–78

—80-minute class period—

[10 min] Whole class

Class will draw a web of people in the book so far. Students will name characters and connections between them. Teacher will draw them on a board (preferably one that can remain for the course of the unit), roughly (and secretly!) replicating the finished character map.

[10 min] Partner work

Student volunteer reads aloud pp. 50–52 (“Sister, you don’t have to worry… so far west we almost disappeared”).

With a partner, students answer the following:

      1. What parallels is Two shoes making between bears and Indians?
      2. Why have this come from a stuffed animal? How does this fit with the rest of the world building that’s happened so far?

Students share their answers.

[7 min] Teacher explains

Teacher explains the idea of vision quests to students:

    • Many Plains Indians, including the Cheyenne, would go on vision quests. They spent four days with no food, water or speaking, in an isolated place. They spent the time praying.
    • The goal was to have visions that they could bring back to their tribe to benefit the tribe and give guidance for upcoming decisions.
    • Because they don’t think of the planet as dead land, different features have spiritual resonance. You can imagine that, if they have spent multiple days with no food or water, they start to have conversations with the world around them. One elder described it somewhat jokingly as the original trip.
    • If there’s time, teacher reads the following, excerpted from Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions by John Fire/Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes.
    • “But the more I think about it, the more I believe that the only real medicine man is the wićaśa wakan—the holy man. Such a one can cure, prophesize, talk to the herbs, command the stones, conduct the sun dance or even change the weather, but all this is of no great importance to him. The wićaśa wakan has gone beyond all this. He has the wakanya wowanyanke—the great vision. Sitting Bull was such a man. When he had his sun-dance vision at Medicine Deer Rock he saw many blue-coated soldiers fall backward into the Indian camp and he heard a voice telling him, ‘I give you these, because they have no ears.’ Sitting Bull knew then that the Indians would win the next battle. He did not fight himself, he commanded no men, he did not do anything except let his wisdom and power work for his people.
    • The wićaśa wakan wants to be by himself. He wants to be away from the crowd, from everyday matters. He likes to meditate, leaning against a tree or rock, feeling the earth move beneath him, feeling the weight of that big flaming sky upon him. That way he can figure things out. Closing his eyes, he sees many things clearly. What you see with your eyes shut is what counts.
    • The wićaśa wakan loves the silence, wrapping it around himself like a blanket—a loud silence with a voice like thunder which tells him of many things. Such a man likes to be in a place where there is no sound but the humming of insects. He sits facing the west, asking for help. He talks to the plants and they answer him. He listens to the voices of the wama kaśan—all those who move upon the earth, the animals. He is as one with them. From all living beings something flows into him all the time, and something flows from him. I don’t know where or what, but it’s there. I know” (pp. 155–156).

[3 min] As a whole class, students answer the following:

    1. How does the idea of vision quests change your reading of this moment?

[10 min] Individual work

Student volunteer reads aloud pp. 73 (“Fuck Bill… for her to see”).

Students write their responses to the following. Teacher makes it clear that the answers will not be shared.

      1. How does the way you view your body shape your daily life?
      2. How does the way other people view your body shape your life?
      3. How does the way you view other people’s bodies shape your and their lives?

[10 min] Whole class

Student volunteer reads aloud p. 77 (“Back in my room… for free online”).

Class listens to A Tribe Called Red’s eponymous album.

[30 min] Whole class

Class watches We Hold the Rock: The Indian Occupation of Alcatraz. (25 min), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEmae2PsWJI

At the end of the documentary, teacher leaves space for students to respond to the documentary, asking the following as necessary:

      1. What did you think of the documentary?
      2. What surprised you? What did you find particularly interesting?
      3. How does it connect to There There? How is it similar to/different from the vision of the occupation of Alcatraz that Orange crafts?

 

Lesson Plan 2: “Part II: Reclaim”

    • A. Enduring Understandings:
      • Connections can be drawn between the experiences described in works of literature and those described by individuals.
      • Native women were very important in traditional Plains Indian cultures.
      • Native Americans continue to make art.
      • Tribal identity is a complex combination of heritage, family, history, experience, and blood-based relationships.
    • B. Essential Questions
      • How does Orange integrate Cheyenne stories and traditions into There There?
      • What does it mean to be Native?

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #5 DUE: come to class having read pp. 79–97.

—45-minute class period—

[5 min] Whole class

Class continues to update character map (Finished character map; teacher on the board, students in their notes).

[15 min] Individual work

Student volunteer reads aloud p. 82 (“Bill shakes his head… he’s a baby”).

Students respond to the following in writing:

      1. What do we learn about Bill as a character from this passage? Is there truth in what he says?

Students share their ideas.

[15 min] Partner work

Student volunteer reads aloud pp. 94–95 (“Octavio kept the gun… shook hands with Octavio”).

With a partner, students answer the following:

      1. What do we learn about Calvin as a character from this passage?
      2. Compare this passage to the passage about Bill. What do you notice about the narration in each chapter? How does that add to or impact our experience as the readers?

Students share their ideas.

[10 min] Whole class

Teacher introduces the Comparison Reflection. Teacher projects the various websites on the board, showing students how to search for videos and playing excerpts from class selected videos. Students are expected to complete the reflection as homework with teacher providing either a weekend or multiple nights for students to work on it.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #6 DUE: Come to class having completed the Comparison Reflection (described in the previous class period).

—60-minute class period—

[20 min] Whole class to discuss recently completed assignment (“Comparison Reflection”)

On the board, teacher writes:

      1. On what comparison did you base your reflection?
      2. What video did you watch? Why did you pick this video?

Students each have up to one minute to share.

[40 min] Group work on Janine Pease’s “Role of Plains Indian Women” (2019)

Teacher divides students into four groups by counting them off. Teacher prints 1 copy of Role of Plains Indian Women (2019), a presentation from Dr. Janine Pease, and gives each group ¼ of the pages.

– Groups:

      1. Storyteller, Family and Kinship, Provisioner, Keeper of Culture, In Creation Story.
      2. Keeper of the Home, Property Owner, Participant in Sacred Ceremonies, Healers/Pharmacists, Manly Hearted Women.
      3. Persons of Influence, Bundle Carrier, Master Teachers, Kids Learn by Listening, Camp Movers.
      4. Honors for Industry, Women Athletes, Women’s Societies, Quilling Associations

In their groups, students read their pages and answer the following:

      1. What do you learn about Plains Indian Women from these pages?
      2. What lines are particularly powerful?
      3. How does this vision of Plains Indian Women compare to stereotypes or preconceptions you had about the role of women in traditional Native communities?

Whole class

Groups share their findings, including the powerful quotations. Teacher projects the presentation, turning to the pages referenced by the presenting groups.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #7 DUE: come to class having read pp. 98–117.

—45-minute class period—

[5 min] Whole class

Teacher projects MMIW facts and figures, asking for student volunteers to read statistics.

Class responds to the following:

      1. How did we get from traditional roles to contemporary reality?

[10 min] Whole class

Student volunteer reads aloud pp. 100–101 (“What r u doing… And she didn’t”).

Class responds to the following:

      1. What are your initial reactions to this scene and to Orvil finding spider legs in his leg?

[10 min] Partner work

Teacher plays National Observer interview with Tommy Orange. Here are two (additional?) possibilities:  https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/11/11/video/bestselling-author-tommy-orange-never-used-read, and https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/11/11/video/tommy-orange-indigenous-stereotypes.

With a partner, students answer the following:

      1. How do spiders appear in the novel?

[15 min] Group work

Students break into four groups. Two groups focus on Jacquie and two groups on Harvey. Students respond to the following:

      1. What are your character’s flaws? What are their strengths? Find at least three passages as evidence.

Groups share their findings.

[5 min] Whole class

Class discusses the following:

      1. The topics in this chapter are pretty intense. Should we be reading them in school? Why/why not?

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #8 DUE: come to class having read pp. 118–141

—80-minute class period—

[17 minutes] Individual work

Student volunteers read aloud pp. 121–122 (“And so what Orvil is… Indian depends on it”) and p. 137 (“Blood must flow… individual tribes to decide”).

Students write in response to the following:

      1. What does it mean to be Native?
      2. What do and don’t you need?
      3. Who gets to decide?

Students share their ideas.

[13 min] Partner work

Students answer the following, using evidence from pp. 130–131, pp. 134–136, and p. 141.

      1. What is a powwow?
      2. What is powerful about it?
      3. Why is a shooting at a powwow so tragic?

[2 min] Bathroom break

[48 min] Whole class

Class watches Pow Wow Trail—The Songs. (48 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3itr_5N0HbI

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #9 DUE: come to class having read pp. 142–155

—45-minute class period—

[5 min] Whole class

Class continues to update character web (Finished character map; teacher on the board, students in their notes).

[10 min] Whole class

Class discusses the reading, using the following questions from the teacher as guidance:

      1. What struck you from the reading?
      2. What was interesting?
      3. What connections are you drawing?

[10 min] Whole class

Student volunteer reads aloud p. 142 (“The bullets will come… bullets in bushes”).

Excerpted from Storied Stone: Indian Rock Art of the Black Hill Country by Linea Sundstrom.

Contextualizing material:

      • “The Black Hills and buttelands were more than a resource bank, however. To the historic Kiowa, Naishan Dene (Kiowa Apache), Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, and Lakota people they were a homeland, dotted with sacred places such as Bear Butte and Bears’ Lodge Butte, known today as Devils Tower. The Mandans, Hidatsas, and Poncas, who dwelled in farming villages along the Missouri River, ventured westward into the Black Hills and butte country to hunt, trap eagles, and pray for visions” (p. 3).
      • The Black Hills are in western South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming (p. 4).
      • They were home for the Lakotas and northern Cheyennes until the 1870s when gold was discovered in the hills, which prompted white miners to flood the area (p. 5).
      • The discovery of gold and the rush that followed affected their colonization and the displacement of Native communities.

According to Dakota Goodhouse, a member of the Lakota tribal nation:

      • The Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming are the sites of the inception stories for Cheyenne and They’re also extremely sacred.

According to Conrad Fisher, a member of the northern Cheyenne tribal nation:

      • The Cheyenne are in the process of buying back land in the Black Hills.

Whole class discusses the following:

1. How does the larger significance of the Black Hills change how you read this chapter?

2. If every detail is intentional and layered with meaning, how does that change how we read this book?

[15 min] Partner work

Students work with a partner and respond to the following:

Look through everything we’ve read so far. What do you notice about tense and person (first, second, third) that the various narrators use?

[5 min] Whole class

Teacher introduces the Close Reading Reflection. Class discusses how to pick a rich passage.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #10 DUE: Close Reading Reflection

—60-minute class period—

 [50 min] Whole class

Class watches Ruth Buffalo discussing her experiences as the first Native American Democratic Woman elected to the North Dakota State Legislature. Video sourced through the Honoring Tribal Legacies Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=207605933511808&ref=search

[10 min] Whole class

Class responds the video thinking about the following:

      1. What are your initial reactions to this video?
      2. What themes did you notice emerging in her talk?
      3. How do these themes connect to There There?

 

Lesson Plan #3: “Part III: Return”

    • A. Enduring Understandings:
      • Counting coups is an example of the way in which traditional modes of Native men showing their worth through physical feats are complicated by contemporary life.
    • B. Essential Questions
      • How do we balance connecting to art emotionally and intellectually?
      • How does the way something is written impact its meaning and reveal the author’s intention?

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #11 DUE: come to class having read pp. 157–186

—45-minute class period— 

[5 min] Whole class

Class responds to the following:

      1. What do you think of Opal?

[25 min] Text Explosion (An activity that came from Susan Lytle and Meg Goldner Rabinowitz)

Teacher reads p. 165 (“‘Go to sleep’… making her look back”).

Students pick one sentence and write a response to this passage. They must write in complete sentences and should use the following as a guide for their reflections:

      1. Why did you pick this line?
      2. What does the line reveal?
      3. How does it connect to the novel?
      4. How does it connect to you?

After students spend 3–4 minutes writing, the teacher explains the next set of instructions.

Teacher will read the passage aloud again. At the end of each sentence, the teacher will pause. If students wrote a reflection about that sentence, students will quietly tap the desk and then read their reflection. If multiple students tapped the desk for the same sentence, teacher will reread the sentence before each of the related reflections. Teacher will continue to read the passage until all students have shared their reflections.

[10 min] Partner work

Student volunteer reads aloud p. 169 (“Opal went cold… she’d ever seen”).

Student volunteer reads aloud pp. 162–163 of American Indian Myths and Legends, “Sun Teaches Veeho a Lesson.”

With a partner, students answer the following:

      1. What characteristics of Veho emerge from these two passages?
      2. What does it mean for Opal to compare Ronald to Veeho?
      3. In terms of her characterization of him?
      4. In terms of her connection to Cheyenne traditions?

[5 min] Students share their ideas.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #12 DUE: come to class having read pp. 187–207

—80-minute class period—

 [15 min] Whole class

Student volunteer reads aloud pp. 245–246 from American Indian Myths and Legends, an introduction that explains the idea of counting coups.

Student volunteer reads aloud pp. 177–178 (“It was around… That’s where it was at”) and p. 191 (“Part of what… Probably never will”) from There There.

Class discusses the following:

      1. How does the explanation of counting coups change the way you read these passages?

[10 min] Partner work

Students discuss the following with a partner:

      1. How do Octavio and Daniel’s chapters impact how you view them?

Students share their ideas.

[5 min] Whole class

Students discuss the following:

      1. What do we know about Blue?

[10 min] Individual work

Students spend 3–4 minutes answering the following:

      1. Compare and contrast Blue’s life with that of her mother (Jacquie) and her grandmother.
      2. Why does Orange set up this dynamic?

Students share their ideas.

[5 min] Bathroom break

[35 min] Group work

[5 min] Students are divided into six groups:

        1. Fancy Shawl
        2. Jingle
        3. Women’s Traditional
        4. Grass
        5. Men’s Fancy
        6. Men’s Traditional

[15 min] In their groups, students research their style of dance, responding to the following:

        1. What are the distinguishing characteristics of this style in terms of the dancing and the clothing?
        2. What is it meant to represent?
        3. Find a clip of people dancing this style to share with the class.

[15 min] Groups present their findings.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #13 DUE: come to class having read pp. 208–225.

–45-minute class period–

[10 min] Whole class

Students discuss the following:

      1. What did you think of this chapter?
      2. Of Thomas?
      3. Of the bat scene?

[20 min] Partner work

Student volunteer reads aloud p. 209 (“But once you… head scratches”).

With a partner, students respond to the following:

      1. In which person (first, second, third) are different chapters written?
      2. When and why does Orange vary the person?
      3. Why write Thomas’ in second?

[10 min] Individual work

Student volunteer reads aloud p. 216 (“The chip you… same bathtub”).

In their notebooks, students create a written response to the following:

      1. What do you think of this passage?
      2. What is Thomas talking about here?
      3. Is he white?

Students share their ideas.

[5 min] Whole class

Students watch a few minutes at the start of Alexis Nakota Sioux Powwow—Host Drums Grand Entry (2014) video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptZ4HrX5Vqo.

Class discusses the following:

      1. What do you notice about this music?
      2. How would you characterize the drumming and singing? 

 

Lesson Plan #4: “Part IV: Powwow”

    •  A. Enduring Understandings
      • Joy Harjo is the first Native Poet Laureate in the United States.
      • There There is structured such that themes from earlier in the novel appear later in the novel, often in different characters’ voices.
      • Federal policies surrounding land and relocation changed the ways that different Native communities engaged with place. The resulting tensions are ongoing.
    • B. Essential Questions
      • How does the end of There There serve as a culmination thematically and in terms of plot and character development?
      • How does history shape and create the present?
      • What value comes from learning about people whose lives are substantively different from our own?

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #14 DUE: come to class having read pp. 227–247.

—60-minute class period—

[5 min] Whole class

Teacher distributes Joy Harjo poetry handout

Teacher shares some basic information about Joy Harjo, some selection of the following, excerpted from her 2012 work, Crazy Brave: A Memoir:

      • Harjo grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and explains, “Tulsa was a Creek Indian town established on the Arkansas River, after my father’s people were forcibly removed from their homes in the South in the mid-1800s” (pp. 18–19).
      • Her father “was born of tribal leadership… [of] the Creek, or Mvskoke people. Samuel Checotah, another grandfather, was the first principal chief after we settled in Indian Territory, or Oklahoma. Osceola, the Seminole warrior who refused to sign a treaty with the United States government, was our uncle” (p. 21).
      • Her mother was a “mix of Cherokee and European that dazzles” (p. 23)
      • Her parents got divorced when Joy Harjo was eight years old and her father left. She was the oldest of four and had two brothers and one sister (p. 51).
      • “In the country there was a revolution going on. I’d seen it lift its head at Indian school as fresh art began coming through us. Indian country began riding the wave of a giant waking consciousness, inspired by the civil rights movement. We were waking up all over the country, at Alcatraz, in Pine Ridge, in Minneapolis, in Washington D.C…. Though black America inspired us, Indian people were Most of us did not want to become full-fledged Americans. We wished to maintain the integrity of our tribal cultures and assert our individual tribal nations. We aspired to be traditional-contemporary twentieth-century warriors, artists, and dreamers” (p. 139).
      • “As I sketched, I considered the notion of warrior. In the American mainstream imagination, warriors were always male and military, and when they were Indian warriors they were usually Plains Indian males with headdresses. What of contemporary warriors? And what of the wives, mothers, and daughters whose small daily acts of sacrifice and bravery were usually unrecognized or unrewarded? These acts were just as crucial to the safety and well-being of the people” (p. 150).
      • From the New York Times piece, “Joy Harjo is named US Poet Laureate”:
      • Named poet laureate June 2019.
      • First Native poet laureate.
      • Harjo told the New York Times, “My poems are about confronting the kind of society that would diminish Native people, disappear us from the story of this country.”
      • Three of her poems online:

[10 min] Individual work

Class divides up “She Had Some Horses” so each student has an equal number of lines. Students will have 3 minutes to decipher their lines and prepare to read them with intonations that help convey their understanding. Then, students will read their lines aloud.

[15 min] Partner work

With a partner, students answer the following:

        1. What are the most powerful lines in this poem? Why?
        2. What is the speaker’s relationship with horses?
        3. What is the message of this poem?

Students share their ideas.

[5 min] Whole class

Teacher reads A Map for the New World, explaining any vocabulary with which students are unfamiliar.

[10 min] Individual work

Students complete a text rendering of this poem.

      • Each student will choose a stanza to which they feel a connection.
      • Then, pick a line that conveys an intense emotion from the speaker.
      • And, finally, pick a word that reveals the meaning of the poem.

Class goes in a circle, completing three rounds, one for the stanza, one for the line, one for the word. Students do not introduce their text or why they chose it; they simply read it after the person next to them has finished.

[15 min] Whole class

Class responds to the following questions:

        1. What is this poem about?
        2. How does the language reveal this focus?
        3. How does it make you feel? Why?
        4. How does it connect to larger conversations about Native American experiences that we’ve been discussing?

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #15 DUE: come to class having read pp. 248–268.

—45-minute class period—

[10 min] Individual work

Pp. 227–268 have 15 chapters. Teacher gives each student a chapter; if there are more than 15 students, have students double up on p. 227 (Orvil) and p. 257 (Edwin).

Students each pick two sentences that feel really important to them.

Have students read to the class the two sentences they picked in order.

[10 min] Partner work

With a partner, students answer the following:

        1. What did you notice about what people picked? Do common themes emerge?
        2. What’s happening structurally at this point in the novel?

Students share their ideas.

[10 min] Individual work

Have students look at the character mask and think about the following:

        1. What do you notice?
        2. Are people connected or isolated?
        3. How does this change your understanding of individual characters?
        4. How does this connect to the maps of Native land we examined at the beginning of the unit?

Students share their ideas.

[15 min] Whole class

Teacher asks for 5 student volunteers, 4 to act, one to narrate.

Students perform pp. 259–260 (“They walk in silence… she’s ghost white”).

Students respond to the following questions:

        1. How does this scene make you feel? Why?
        2. What do you notice about colors? What meaning does that add?

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #16 DUE: come to class having read pp. 269–290.

—80-minute class period—

[5 min] Whole class

Teacher introduces the final writing assignment for the unit, a personal essay about students’ connection to place.

[10 min] Partner work

Student volunteer reads aloud pp. 273 (“Octavio looks… doesn’t hear anything”).

With a partner, students respond to the following questions:

        1. What happens in this fight?
        2. Who is on each side?
        3. Why do they turn on each other?

Students share their ideas.

[15 min] Individual work

Student volunteers read pp. 280 (“Before she acknowledges… locked on Orvil”), p. 282 (“When she comes out… Let’s pick him up”), and p. 283 (“Blue sits next… do but wait”).

Students respond to the following in writing:

      1. How does the shooting shift relationships between family members?
      2. Does that change how you understand the shooting?

Students share their ideas.

[10 min] whole class

Student volunteers read pp. 284–285 (“But Opal knows… You can’t”) and p. 290 (“Tony is back… birds are singing”).

Students respond to the following:

      1. Why end with these passages?
      2. Why have Tony Loneman’s voice frame this story?

[5 min] break

[25 min] Whole class

Teacher guides students through The Missouri River and DAPL Google Slides and teaches them about the timeline of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

For the Google slides, teacher discusses the following (also located in the notes sections of the slides)

    • Slide 1:
          • Berthold is the reservation of the three affiliated tribes, the Mandan, Arikara and Hidatsa.
          • Standing Rock is the reservation of the Hunkpapa Lakota, Sihasapa Lakota and Yanktonai Dakota.
          • The Missouri river flows east and south and runs through Ft. Berthold and on the eastern border of Standing Rock.
          • Dams on the Missouri River disproportionately affect reservation land.
          • Only major dams are shown in Image 2, but there are an estimated 17,200 dams on the Missouri River.
    • Slide 2:
          • These images show the impact of the Garrison Dam on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
          • The Hidatsa, Mandan and Arikara tribes farmed in the river bed. The river bed would frequently flood, resulting in healthy soil. Once the dam was created, that land disappeared and they were told to farm on the upper plains which were significantly more arid.
          • The dam also divided the reservation into five segments.
    • Slide 3:
          • According to the North Dakota Historical Society, “With the creation of Lake Oahe, more than 160,000 acres of the Standing Rock Reservation were permanently flooded.”
          • You’ll notice that the Oahe Dam and Big Bend Dam again disproportionately impact the reservation land.
    • Slide 4:
          • Note: image rotated 45 degrees.
          • Oil pipelines carry oil extracted through fracking for thousands of miles underground.
          • The Dakota Access Pipeline was originally proposed to run north of Bismarck but the partners creating it redirected it to run south of the city, out of concerns about the proximity to Bismarck’s municipal
          • In 2016, the Standing Rock reservation became the site of protests over the DAPL, specifically over it running under the Missouri River, with the potential for massive contamination if oil leaked into that river.
    • Slide 5
          • The Standing Rock Indian Reservation’s boundaries in this section are the Missouri River to the east and the Cannonball River to the north.
          • Oceti Sakowin (Och-et-ee shak-oh-win) is located off the reservation.
          • The bridge directly north of Oceti Sakowin is called Backwater Bridge. It was closed in October
          • 2016 by the local sheriff’s department.
          • The National Guard (brought in in September) were stationed north of Backwater Bridge.
          • The rivers froze during the winter.

Teacher leaves slide 5 up while discussing the timeline for the Dakota Access Pipeline, drawn from Bikem Ekberzade’s Standing Rock: Greed, Oil and the Lakota’s Struggle for Justice:

          • 2014: “Dakota Access, LLC, the company operating under Energy Transfer Partners that was
          • responsible for constructing the crude oil pipeline system, made an initial application to USACE.
          • The pipeline, once completed, would carry the ‘US light sweet’ of the Bakken and Three Forks oil fields in North Dakota to a holding facility 1,172 miles away in Patoka, Illinois (p. 35).
          • 2016: After concerns about contamination to Bismarck’s water supply, the route was changed to cross “underneath the Oahe Reservoir, approximately half a mile away from the Standing Rock Reservation… This rerouting, the Sioux believed, clearly translated into putting the interests of the predominately white community above the indigenous one, and such a preference would soon ignite arguments over ‘environmental racism’” (pp. 36–37).
          • July 2016: Standing Rock Sioux tribe sued USACE “citing that the Army Corps had violated the Clean Water Act, the Rivers and Harbors Act and the National Historic Preservation Act
          • (NHPA)” (p. 152).
          • September 2016: The construction crew began bulldozing sacred burial ground leading to a
          • confrontation between “private security (with its attack dogs) and protesters” (p. 146).
          • December 2016: “Mainly due to the public outcry, the growing number of protest camps at and
          • around Standing Rock and President Obama’s delayed recommendation, USACE would cave and not grant the easement that Dakota Access needed to cross the river” (p. 154).
          • January 25th, 2017: Trump gave DAPL a green light for proceeding (p.6).
          • February 2017: “The Army Corps initiated a flood warning, using the unusually temperate
          • Dakota winter as an excuse. Despite the moderate temperatures, the tributaries were still frozen
          • and flooding wasn’t imminent” (p. 165).
          • February 22nd, 2017: Riot police in full gear empty the camps (p. 165).
    • Slide 6
          • Hundreds of different nations came to the camps to support the protests, bringing their flags with them.
          • Notes from conversation with Dr. Mike Taylor:
          • November 2016: The camp population peaked at approximately 10,000 people.
          • December 2016: Approximately 2,000 United States military veterans arrived at the Oceti Sakowin camp to support protesters and protect them from the police. This was two days before the army corps halted construction. If they had not, the protests could have turned extremely bloody.
          • February 2017: Only about 300 people remained in the camps. The number of people dropped dramatically once the first snow storm hit.

For further reading on and context for the Standing Rock Dakota Access Pipeline protests, I recommend:

          • Nick Estes, Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (2019).
          • Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock (2019)
          • Julie R. Neidlinger, Blue Like a River (2017).

[7 min] Whole class

Teacher will introduce Regina Brave, a Navy Veteran, explaining the importance of her presence as an elder and a veteran.
Class watches video about Regina Brave on Standing Rock, https://vimeo.com/205766624

[3 min]

Teacher distributes a Huffington Post article about protests surrounding the construction of a telescope on Hawaii’s largest volcano, Mauna Kea. Teacher will explain the basics of the conflict (NASA wants to build a telescope on top of one of the most sacred sites of Native Hawaiian spirituality). Teacher encourages students to read it after class and think about the parallels between Mauna Kea, the Black Hills, and the Missouri River.

Download the curriculum: “There There by Tommy Orange, the Importance of Place, and Contemporary Native American Communities“