Challenging Status Quo Oregon Trail Curriculum

What are your memories of learning about the Oregon Trail?  As an elementary student you likely played The Oregon Trail video game, wrote a diary entry from the perspective of a settler, “planned” for the journey by calculating the costs of supplies, studied maps of the trails to the west, participated in reenactments of settler life, completed an art project depicting pioneer and/or Native lives, or read about hardships on the journey from settler perspectives that might have included violent encounters with Native communities.  As a secondary student you likely read a brief paragraph about “Oregon Fever” and the Oregon Trail in a social studies textbook chapter titled “An Expanding Nation,“ “From Ocean to Ocean,” “Westward Expansion,” or “Manifest Destiny.”

Too often these types of assignments focus exclusively on the perspective of white settlers traveling on the Oregon Trail. When perspectives of Native peoples living in Oregon since Time Immemorial are included in the curriculum, they are frequently supplemental to the primary narrative, one shaped by a nostalgia for the “courageous pioneers” and their “trailblazing accomplishments” resulting in the omission of the joys, sorrows, realities, and resilience experienced by Native communities in the past and present.  What did you take-away from lessons like this?  For many, what is remembered is dying from dysentery while playing The Oregon Trail video game, the impression that westward movement and settlement was inevitable, and Native communities are in the past.

We recognize that the standard curriculum often overlooks essential aspects of history, presenting an oversimplified narrative that neglects or erases the diverse and complex experiences of people who lived and are living along the Oregon Trail route. The Oregon Trail Curriculum Project aims to dismantle one-dimensional portrayals of the Oregon Trail to foster a more accurate and inclusive understanding of this historical period and its legacy.  Our curriculum supports teachers and students to challenge prevailing assumptions and grapple with the far-reaching effects of colonization on the people and communities encountered along the ancestral lands the Oregon Trail crossed.  We believe students thinking critically about and learning to challenge the status quo Oregon Trail curriculum is crucial for fostering empathy, critical thinking, and a more comprehensive understanding of our shared past that empowers students to become active participants in shaping a more responsible, inclusive, and equitable future.

Applying the 6Ps to the Oregon Trail

We view the Oregon Trail Curriculum Project as a sibling to the recently published book Teaching Critically About Lewis and Clark: Challenging Dominant Narratives in K-12 Curriculum (Schmitke, Sabzalian, & Edmundson, 2020). Teaching Critically About Lewis and Clark (Schmitke, Sabzalian, & Edmundson, 2020) provides teachers resources and teaching strategies to complicate existing elementary and secondary lesson plans about the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery. The framework organizing the curriculum is referred to as the six orientations for anticolonial curriculum or the 6 Ps: place, presence, perspectives, political nationhood, power, and partnerships (Sabzalian, 2019; Sabzalian, Miyamoto-Sundahl, & Fong, 2019).  This framework disrupts the Eurocentric ways textbooks and other curriculum present the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery. The authors write,

These orientations explicitly support a context for more critical engagement with dominant narratives about Lewis and Clark, and we see them as broadly facilitating curriculum about Indigenous peoples and perspectives, laying a foundation for other critical social studies curriculum to challenge colonial ideologies and take seriously Indigenous perspectives and sovereignty.  (Schmitke, Sabzalian, & Edmundson, 2020, p. 4)

We believe the Oregon Trail Curriculum Project responds to the call for the development of anticolonial social studies curriculum by applying the 6 Ps to dominant narratives about the Oregon Trail in similar ways to how Teaching Critically About Lewis and Clark (Schmitke, Sabzalian, & Edmundson, 2020) applied the 6 Ps to extend understanding of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery.

The Oregon Trail Curriculum Project challenges the traditional “facing West” perspective of textbook curriculum by embracing an anticolonial framework that centers the perspectives of Native communities “facing East.”  In shifting away from the conventional settler perspective often presented in textbooks, the Oregon Trail Curriculum Project examines the significant impact that westward invasion had on the ancestral lands and ways of life of Native communities along the Oregon Trail.  We want students to encounter Native perspectives as multiple and not as a unified single generalization and victimization.  We acknowledge the resilience of Indigenous peoples in the face of the profound challenges and changes as a result of the Oregon Trail’s passage.  In addition, we want students to encounter Native perspectives as multiple and not as a unified single generalization.

Ready-to-Teach Lesson Plans

Each lesson plan includes an introduction, learning objectives, connection to Oregon standards, detailed description of teaching procedures, and all materials needed to facilitate the lesson.  The Oregon Trail Curriculum Project lesson plans are designed to go beyond surface-level accounts to encourage critical thinking among elementary and secondary students.  The learning activities are varied and engaging, supporting students’ understanding of the complex interactions between settlers and the diverse cultures that flourished long before westward invasion.  Finally, in examining the legacy of the Oregon Trail, students consider their own relationships and responsibilities to place.

Teachers using lesson plans from Teaching Critically About Lewis and Clark (Schmitke, Sabzalian, & Edmundson, 2020) have shared how they are adapting elementary lesson plans for teaching middle/high students and vice-versa. We encourage users of the Oregon Trail Curriculum Project website to do the same and adjust the curriculum to best fit the needs of your students.

We believe the Oregon Trail Curriculum Project is ongoing and collective work. Thus, we hope you reach out to us to share your teaching and learning stories helping us update the curriculum presented on the website.  Click here to download our informative flyer for sharing with others.

Camas (Public Domain)