Montana: Stories of the Land

Chapter 11 - The Early Reservation Years, 1880 - 1920

Educational Trunks

To Learn A New Way from the Montana Historical Society. Created by Salish educator Julie Cajune, this trunk explores the reservation, allotment, and boarding school periods as experienced by Montana Indians.

Takeaways

Inspired by reading specialist Tammy Elser, who was in turn inspired by SKC graduate Taylor Crawford, we've created a "Takeaway" bookmark for every chapter of Montana: Stories of the Land. Before starting a chapter, print and cut out these bookmarks and distribute them to your students. Ask them to use the Takeaway to summarize the GIST of what they learn from reading assigned sections of the chapter. Remind them that they don't have much room, so they'll need to think before they write down the most important idea they want to take away from the section. Learn a little more about the GIST strategy.

Even though we've created Takeaways for every chapter, we don't recommend you have your students complete a Takeaway for every section of every chapter they read. That would be exceedingly tedious. However, used appropriately, they can be a useful tool for encouraging reflection and teaching students how to summarize information.

Websites and Online Lesson Plans

"Picturing the Past: Understanding Cultural Change and Continuity among Montana's Indians through Historic Photographs" is a flexible two-day learning activity that challenges students to examine historical photographs while considering issues of cultural change and continuity over time.

OPI has model middle school and high school IEFA lesson plans on boarding schools.

"A Beautiful Tradition: Ingenuity and Adaptation in a Century of Plateau Women's Art" offers a classroom study unit based on women's beadwork and tied to Indian Education for All Essential Understandings.

The Internet Archives has digitized all of the Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior from 1863 through 1938. Access these full-text, machine searchable documents here.

"Indian Boarding Schools: Civilizing the Native Spirit" is a lesson plan from the Library of Congress that uses primary source material posted on the American Memory Project website.

Stan Juneau's "History and Foundation of American Indian Policy" (2001) is a useful and accessible overview of the ways federal Indian policy has impacted Montana tribes.

The Indian Land Tenure Foundation has excellent information on allotment and its consequences, including a video. At the Indian Land Tenure Foundation you can also access free lesson plans.

Marquette University has digitized photographs and articles from The Indian Sentinel, 1902-1962, fundraising magazine published by the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions that talked about the church's evangelization efforts (including boarding schools.) If you direct students to this material, you may wish to use it as an opportunity to have them analyze bias and intent (since this material was obviously created from a specific point of view to support a specific purpose.)
 

Videos or DVDs

Chapter 4, "Dislocation/Relocation" (17 minutes) and Chapter 2 "Homesteading" (17 minutes) of Montana Mosaic: 20th Century People and Events. (Check your library. OPI donated a copy of this DVD to every public school in Montana. The DVD is also available as streaming video.)

Why Save a Language, Regional Learning Project - 27 minutes 

Possible Fieldtrips

Chief Plenty Coups National Historic Landmark, Pryor. (Related IEFA lesson plans are available.)

People's Center, Pablo

Alignment to Content Standards and Essential Understandings Regarding Montana Indians (EU)

Tests and Answer Keys