Native Americans on Alcatraz Island during the 1969-1971 occupation to reclaim native land. Photograph courtesy of the California Historical Society.
This blog is reposted from the California History-Social Science Project’s blog. The original post can be found here.
Editor’s Note: As we travel around California, one of the most frequent concerns we hear from teachers is that they don’t feel prepared to teach students about the history of California Indians. Elementary teachers have explained that they don’t know enough about pre-contact California, especially the history of indigenous people in their local area. Eighth-grade teachers reflect that their current resources are incomplete and don’t fully document the perspective of native peoples during the 19th Century. And high school teachers often remark they don’t have anything on native history after 1900. We’ve heard these concerns and in response, we’ve brought together a new team of scholars and members of native communities to design a workshop specifically focused on teaching the history of California Indians. Historians Shelley Brooks and Michelle Lorimer will lead the workshop, aided by the important scholarly contributions of Benjamin Madley, Steven Hackel, Clifford Trafzer, Khal Schneider, and Gregg Castro. This workshop will debut at our new Framework Conference series, which starts on September 10 at UC Irvine. Read below for a special blog post about the workshop, and learn more about the Framework Conference series here.
In West Sacramento last month, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order
to apologize for California’s treatment of its Native population. As
the governor explained, “That’s what it was, a genocide. No other way to
describe it. And that’s the way it needs to be described in the history
books.” In our new workshop, “Highlighting Native Californian History
through the Framework,” we hope to guide teachers through this
important, honest, and troubling investigation of California’s history.
California’s History-Social Science Framework
calls for more complex examinations of California Indian history across
grade levels and time periods. Our workshop will focus on ways to
incorporate the history and culture of Native Californian peoples into
lessons at both primary and secondary levels. Lessons that explore
California Indian history provide teachers with unique opportunities to
connect students with local history and contemporary Native communities
that, historically, have been frequently misrepresented and not
consulted in public representations of their groups.
Teaching about the history of California Indians also allows students to
explore interdisciplinary themes that span the various fields of social
and behavioral sciences, including history, geography, economics,
civics (political science), anthropology, religious studies, and
psychology. Investigations that focus on the lives of Native
Californians both before and after foreign contact highlight important
historical thinking strategies. Students learn to understand diverse
perspectives, evaluate historical evidence, recognize continuity and
change, assess cause and consequence, and unpack ethical considerations
of the past.
We will investigate the experiences of Native peoples during
transitional times in California’s history—guided by the major
instructional shifts in the Framework. We will use inquiry to
investigate primary source content from pre-contact, the California
mission era, the Gold Rush, and the modern civil rights era. Teachers
will receive classroom-ready materials for grades 3 (local history), 4
(California history), 8 (19th-century U.S. history), 10 (modern world
history), 11 (modern U.S. history), and 12 (government). Many of these
resources will come from our partnership with the California Historical Society and our shared Teaching California project, which will debut later this year.
Written by Michelle Lorimer, Ph.D., an historian and lecturer at California State University, San Bernardino, Shelley Brooks, Ph.D., and Beth Slutsky, Ph.D., who are both Program Coordinators at the California History-Social Science Project.
