There There

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Urban Indigeneity”

In this activity, students will build on Tommy Orange’s image of urban Indigenous life in the Bay Area by researching and presenting on other urban areas with Indigenous communities.

Indigenous Americans can be found everywhere in the United States, whether they were relocated as part of the American government’s efforts in the mid-to-late 20th century or if they moved there on their own. Each community and its events are specific to the individual tribe or tribes that live in a space as well.

Split into groups based on your teacher’s instruction. Then, you will be assigned one of the following cities to research:

• Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
• St. Louis, MO
• Tulsa, OK
• Anchorage, AK
• New York, NY
• Tucson, AZ
• Albuquerque, NM
• New York, NY

Once you have been given your city, research the following questions:

• Using Native-Land Digital, determine what tribal nations lived on the land where these cities are. Then investigate what happened to these nations.
• What Indigenous communities are still in these cities, and what tribal nations do they belong to?
• Find at least one community organization that serves a tribal community in your assigned city. What are its goals? If noted, why were those goals chosen? How does it work to preserve Indigenous traditions?

To avoid homogenizing Indigenous people, it’s important to recognize that each Indigenous nation has specific cultural traditions. However, you can also pay attention to intertribal activities and how tribal members work together.

Then, as a group, share what you found with the class. Notice similarities between tribal affiliations, activities, and initiatives among your classmates’ city and the one your group researched.

Finally, reflect in your notebook on what the development of the United States has meant for Indigenous communities and what community organizations today might do in order to address the long history of tribal erasure.

Teaching Suggestion: To push this activity further, you might encourage students to think about what they can do next in order to better understand or be an active participant in honoring tribal people’s experiences.

Differentiation Suggestion: For shy students, allowing them to do a podcast could give them similar presentation experience without having to stand up before the class.