Native Americans In The Past

How Important are Native Americans in the Past, Present, and Future? Many people in today’s world do not realize just how important Native Americans were to our country many years ago and they definitely do not realize the impact they have made in our present time. This is why I made the title “How Important are Native Americans in the Past Present and Future.” This lack of knowledge in regards to Native American impacts is largely caused by the school systems in our country. They tend to leave out all of the things that the Native Americans were apart of as well as did for the people in our history. For my class, I want my students to no longer have that lack of information about the impact that the Native Americans made to their ancestors
The two events I will focus on are slavery and the civil war. When these two topics are brought up in a discussion most people do not think how Native Americans were involved, their first thoughts involve black and white people. However, I want my students to no longer have that idea and instead begin thinking that Native Americans were most definitely involved in both of these events. In schools, students are not taught that the first slaves were actually Native Americans, they are just taught of the Triangular Trade involving Africa and it’s people. Europeans quit using Native Americans as slaves when they realized that the Native Americans knew the area much better than they did so it made it easy for them to escape. In the classrooms students are only taught that the civil war involved the north and the south, however this is not the case. Many Native Americans in the north, joined the war because they were hoping that the freedom of the slaves would also make the people respect them as well. They also do not mention that many of the places where the war took place, was actually the homelands of the Native Americans. I am hoping that by explaining these things that my students will begin to look at history slightly differently and begin to think of how Native Americans
Their lands were taken away from them, they lost much of their freedom and rights, and they also were made slaves of their own land and homes. My second assignment would be to have the students look at the different maps on pages 13, 14, and 16 that are in the book, “Why you Can’t Teach United States History Without American Indians,” and compare them. The first one shows where the Native American tribes were at the time when the Europeans arrived. The second shows the Spanish and French coming into the United States. The last one shows the colonies and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. I would have them look at each map because they can see that as time passes the Native Americans’ land slowly disappears, which is caused because the new people come in and just take over completely. In the book it states, “Textbook maps.. deny Indian borders and territorial sovereignty.. if Indians had no borders then they had no claim to land, and Europeans were not transgressing Native nation’s domains.” This shows that just because the Native Americans did not have borders that their land was not actually ‘their land.’ Which basically shows that it was just taken away from them by the new people. After they have looked at the maps I would