Day 1 Step 1: Land Acknowledgement & Essential Question

Duration: 5 minutes

Implementation:

Lead the class through a land acknowledgement as appropriate to your specific context. If your school district or school has a land acknowledgement, it may be helpful to show this to your students as a model to preview what will be covered in this lesson.

Introduce the essential question to the class:

• Who are the Indigenous people of the land I live on, and what is my relationship to them and the land?

Resources/Materials:

• Slides 2-5

Assessment: Class discussion

Day 1 Step 2: Vocabulary

Duration: 15 minutes

Implementation:

Have students read/write the vocabulary words and the definitions. Then, have students draw an example related to the words.

Before the lesson, take the time to review the information regarding terminology provided by the National Museum of the American Indian: (Terminology) to be prepared to explain to students.

Resources/Materials:

• Slides 6-8

• National Museum of the American Indian: Terminology

Day 1 Step 3: Warmup

Duration: 25 minutes

Implementation:

Ask students: “What are places around the U.S. or the world that you have heard of before?”, and record their answers on the white board or poster paper. Then, have students use the Native Land Digital map to identify the names of the Indigenous groups who belong to the land of the places you have heard of before.

After students have completed the Native Land map activity, explain that in this lesson, they will be learning about the Indigenous people of the land they live on and what a land acknowledgement is. Explain that they will watch an example in the video Land Acknowledgement for Children.

Show the video Land Acknowledgement | Molly of Denali, and have a discussion with students afterward about the land acknowledgement that the children in the video created.

Lead the students in discussing these questions:

• What does the word “acknowledge” mean?

• How can we acknowledge the [insert Tribe/Nation name] people as the stewards of this land?

• How can you make sure that people know that the [insert Tribe/Nation name] people are still here? What is the difference between the words:

  • “are” and “were”

  • “take care of the land” and “took care of the land?”

• What dreams and hopes do you think the [insert Tribe/Nation name] people have about the land and their community?

Resources/Materials:

• Slides 9-14

• Native Land Digital

• Land Acknowledgement for Children

• Land Acknowledgement | Molly of Denali

Assessment: Class discussion

Day 2 Step 4: Land Acknowledgement and Review

Duration: 5 minutes

Implementation:

Lead the class through a land acknowledgement as appropriate to your specific context.

Review the following with students as a warm-up to the rest of the lesson:

• What did you learn from the videos from yesterday?

• What vocabulary did you learn from yesterday?

• What questions do you still have from what you learned yesterday?

Resources/Materials: Slides 15-17

Assessment: Class discussion

Day 2 Step 5: AAPI Perspectives Clip

Duration: 30 minutes

Implementation:

Play the AAPI Perspectives Interview Clip with Vickie Taketa. As needed, pause to check for student understanding throughout the clips. Then, lead the students in a discussion with the following questions:

• When Vickie was a child, what did she remember about the land in the valley?

• How did the land change as Vickie was growing up?

• What happened to farming families as the land changed while Vickie was growing up?

• What does Vickie notice now about the land today?

• If you could talk to a [insert Tribe/Nation name] member right now, what questions would you have for them about what has happened to the land in the valley in the past and today?

Play the AAPI Perspectives Interview Clip with Loc Vu. As needed, pause to check for student understanding throughout the clips. Then, lead the students in a discussion with the following questions:

• Loc Vu recounts what life was like under French colonialism in Vietnam. How would you describe colonialism in your own words?

• What happens to the people and the land when fighting and warring occurs?

Resources/Materials:

• Slides 18-22

• Vickie Taketa Oral History 1

• Loc Vu Oral History

Day 2 Step 6: Discussion & Reflections

Duration: 25 minutes

Implementation:

Using the sentence frames (based on the work of Britt Hawthorne), lead the students in creating a class land acknowledgement.

After the class collectively agrees to the wording of the land acknowledgement, lead the students in answering these questions:

• Why are land acknowledgements important?

• The next step beyond a land acknowledgement is “land back.” What do you think this might mean?

• Now that we have written a land acknowledgement as a class, what actions can we do next with this information?

• For this last question, it may be helpful to play this video for students to think of some ideas: “Indigenous land acknowledgements, their purpose, and how to make them meaningful”

A possible extension for this lesson is to take the students’ ideas for action items and support them in executing these actions. Examples can include: reaching out/writing a letter to the Indigenous tribe of the land your students live on, creating a land acknowledgement poster to be displayed around the campus, participating in local action items specifically requested by the Indigenous tribe if the land your students live on (e.g., letter writing to elected officials).

Resources/Materials:

• Slides 23-25

• What is a Land Acknowledgement? Here’s How to Start

• Indigenous Land Acknowledgements, Their Purpose, and How to Make Them Meaningful Video

Assessment: Class Land Acknowledgement