For Educators
This page contains content for K-12, college, and university educators as well as information that might be of interest to the public. Items will include curriculum for teaching treaties as well as information that helps educators learn and share what the Smithsonian calls “essential understandings” about Indigenous peoples and histories as a best teaching practice.
Potential Assignment Examples
Instructors can create a myriad of assignments using this interactive map and primary documents linked within. For example, students can find the land parcel nearest their home and learn what U.S. treaty with the Kanza led to the U.S. acquiring that parcel. They can also determine what higher education institutions received that parcel of land. Then students can read the related treaty and its annotations on this site (https://kansastreaties.com/treaties-history).
Creative Video Response to the Flooding of the Kaw Nation town of Washunga by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Description
“The History of Washunga: Water and Connection to the Land for Kanza People” explores the flooding of Washunga, Oklahoma to create Kaw Lake in the 1970s was created as an assignment for an Indigenous film class at Kansas State. This film examines the location of Kaw lake as a historical, political and economic site of power through archival research of primary and secondary sources. For the video itself, the choices I made with visuals and audio were intentional to identify how I came to understand different questions, connections, and relations. One notable feature is the audio switches between voiceovers for background context, and the audio of a conversation I had with a friend, Margo Losier, to explain and share the different stories I saw within my research. My research started to yield answers about the flooding of Washunga, but as connected to a bigger and broader picture about the loss of multiple communities and related to continued cultural cultivation today. In addition, while this research did not come to a definite conclusion or the complete picture of the story, it does start to recognize how systems of power and the realities of settler colonialism continues to be part of putting together this story within the past, present and future.
-- Elizabeth Elliott
Transcript
Kansas-Specific Sources
⟐ The Kaw Nation Website includes a wealth of cultural, historic, and linguistic information.
⟐ Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Information, videos, and language curriculum about Iⁿ‘zhúje‘waxóbe, the Kaw Sacred Red Rock. Iⁿ‘zhúje‘waxóbe was taken by settlers in 1929 and put in Robinson Park to serve as a monument to the original white settlers of Lawrence, Kansas, where it stood until rematriated by the Kaw Nation in 2023: https://www.robinsonpark1929.com/
Click the link below to read about the In ‘zhúje ‘waxóbe/ Sacred Red Rock Project which will move the sacred stone, In ‘zhúje ‘waxóbe, to Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park near Council Grove as a way to acknowledge the harm done by colonial theft and appropriation:
https://www.sacredredrock.com/
⟐ KANAE: The Kansas Association for Native American Education is a professional organization of advocates for Native American, First Nations, and/or Indigenous students across the state of Kansas. The website offers a plethora of resources for students, teachers, and the public.
https://coe.k-state.edu/collaborations/partnerships/kanae/
⟐ The Land Acknowledgement Toolkit was created by the Kansas Association of Native American Education. This toolkit offers terminology, resources (including a list of past and present Indigenous nations in Kansas), and best practices for thinking about land acknowledgements and more.
⟐ Kansas State Historical Society, “American Indian History” The KSHS site links to guides of the KSHS collections on American Indians.
https://www.kshs.org/p/research-american-indian-history/17526
⟐ “Visit to Blue Earth Village,” Lauren W. Ritterbush. Kansas History, vol. 38, no. 1, 2015, pp. 2-21.
http://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/2015spring_ritterbush.pdf
This excellent article shares the story of the Kanzas’ Blue Earth Village, which was located about two miles east of present-day Manhattan, Kansas along the Big Blue River. The article provides a glimpse of Kanza life through the eyes of others, particularly from the Long Expedition of 1819.
Other Resources
⟐ "Words Matter Case Study" (Smithsonian Institute, native Knowledge 360.
https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/plains-treaties/words-matter
⟐ Evergreen College Native Case Studies Searchable, multi-discipline array of contemporary case studies with teaching notes and activities. Can be searched by academic discipline, theme, or tribe.
https://nativecases.evergreen.edu/collection/a-z
⟐ Indian Land Tenure Foundation’s Lessons for Our Land (pre K- secondary)
“The nonprofit Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF) teaches the Native American story of this land from historical to modern times. The ILTF developed the curriculum to provide both Native and non-Native students with broader insight and understanding of land, cultures, inherent rights, and tribal sovereignty.”
https://www.lessonsofourland.org/
⟐ Land-Grab Universities is a detailed database on land “grants.” This website shows Indigenous land ceded to land grant universities by treaty and tribal nation.
Land-Grab Universities: A High Country News Investigation, by Robert Lee, Tristan Ahtone, Margaret Pearce, Kalen Goodluck, Geoff McGhee, Cody Leff, Katherine Lanpher, and Taryn Salinas, is an award-winning comprehensive investigation into how land was taken from tribal nations and given to public universities to fund higher education. The website includes stories and open-source data about this land that can be sorted by treaty, tribal nation, and university.
⟐ National Archives Resources on American Indian Treaties:
https://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/treaties
⟐ National Museum of the American Indian Smithsonian’s Native Knowledge 360°
Native Knowledge 360° (NK360°) provides educators and students with new perspectives on Native American history and cultures. Most Americans have only been exposed to part of the story, as told from a single perspective through the lenses of popular media and textbooks. NK360° provides educational materials, virtual student programs, and teacher training that incorporate Native narratives, more comprehensive histories, and accurate information to enlighten and inform teaching and learning about Native America. NK360° challenges common assumptions about Native peoples and offers a view that includes not only the past but also the vibrancy of Native peoples and cultures today.
https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360
⟐ Native Governance Center the center offers video resources, blogs, and articles by contemporary Indigenous people about Indigenous political issues.
https://nativegov.org/resources/
⟐ Oklahoma State University Libraries, Digital Collections has digitized Charles J. Kappler, Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties. Volume 2 (Treaties) will likely be the most useful for land acknowledgement work.
https://dc.library.okstate.edu/digital/collection/kapplers
⟐ Oklahoma State University Libraries, Tribal Treaty Database:
https://treaties.okstate.edu/treaties/
⟐ Tribal Legacy Project This Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Tribal Legacy Project archive contains hundreds of hours of videos, imagery, and stories.
https://lc-triballegacy.org/wp/