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Lesson Plan 3: A Web of Life
OBJECTIVES
Students will:
- learn about ways different American Indians view animals
- analyze quotes of American Indians talking about their relationship to animals
- learn about what various American Indians tribes are doing today to bring the buffalo back (optional)
MATERIALS
BACKGROUND
Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide excerpt
By Carolyn Gilman (chapter 5)
The Indian men and women of the plains were in constant conversation with their world. Keenly attuned to the nuances of weather, growing things, and animal behaviors, they saw the purposeful action of consciousness all around them. Their sense of "personhood" extended far beyond humans. Animal people, plant people, sky people— all communicated and interacted with humans. They were beings in their own right...
There were several ways in which animals acted as teachers. Indian children were taught to practice intense observation of them, to know their habits and minds. This was partly a practical skill, for the hunter who achieved identity with the quarry was a better provider. But just as important, only by such study could a person learn right living. "Let a man decide upon his favorite animal and make a study of it," Brave Buffalo, a Lakota holy man, said around 1914. "Let him learn to understand its sounds and motions. The animals want to communicate with man, but...not...directly— man must do the greater part in securing an understanding." Animal behavior was like a sacred text— to be studied, interpreted, and analyzed for meaning.
OPENING
Ask, "Are American Indians naturalists?"
Review the definition of a naturalist from the last lesson.
Ask students how they think information about animals was shared within and among American Indian tribes two hundred years ago.
PROCEDURE
- Have students read the American Indian quotes. Some of these are available in video footage.
- After students read or listen to the above, have them answer the following questions. The teacher may want to have students do a written assignment answering the questions and/or lead a class discussion.
- in what ways are the American Indians naturalists?
[they carefully observe animals and study their movements.]
- what about the animal world do the American Indians notice?
[what animals eat, how they interact with their environment, their tracks.]
- how do the American Indians speakers see themselves in relation to wild animals?
[brothers and sisters with all living things, animals are relatives.]
- After discussing student opinions and answers, ask them to imagine how American Indians classify animals. (You may want to review with students the Linnaean classification Lewis was trained to use.) Have them draw pictures or sketches of their ideas.
- Then read the following excerpt from Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide, by Carolyn Gilman (chapter 5):
"Indian society was not hierarchical, and they did not imagine nature that way. Instead, they saw the natural world as a webwork of relationships. Animal people who shared with humans and helped them ranked as kin, and were addressed as 'grandfather' or 'brother'."
Post the following quote at the front of the room:
"Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web he does to himself."
Chief Seattle, 1855
Discuss briefly what this could mean.
- Listen to the following quote:
VIDEO:
And as he [William Clark] approaches the island they [American Indians on the Columbia River]
leave. They get in water vessels,... I hate to use like stereotypic, like canoe words, but they
get in what would have been called a canoe, and they go away from where he's coming. He follows
them, and he makes his way down river. He also pauses for a while to wait, and while he's paused,
he shoots what he calls a common crane out of the air. Now the crane had done nothing to him, but
he shoots it nonetheless, to collect it as a specimen.
Bobbie Conner, Cayuse-Nez Perce, 2002
Ask students, "How does the speaker feel about Clark shooting and collecting a crane to be taken back east as a specimen?" Ask students to imagine what all of the different tribes must have thought when they observed Lewis and Clark and the men killing in order to collect animals along their journey?
Have students compare their drawings to the Linnaean classification system that Lewis was trained to use. Provide a Linnaean classification chart to show the students.
Afterward, ask students if they believe people today generally understand as much as American Indians understand about the interconnectedness of nature, how one plant or animal is dependent on another, and how human beings are dependent on everything for life.
- Read the following:
Indian people have a different relationship with everything around them because we spent a lot of time with the animals, not looking at them as a different entity but looking at them as part of who we are. So if this animal got sick over there, you watched, you knew you had to watch whatever that animal was doing, because it would affect you. If your environment was sick your people would be sick. It was all the same, all integrated into one. Like trees their roots grow way down into the earth and you can't separate them. That's why when we lived here everything we did we had to do for future generations.
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Lakota (Sioux), 2002
Ask students how LaDonna Brave Bull Allard connects the health of animals in the environment to the health of people. How does this connect to ideas of conservation and the future?
Discuss answers in class. (May need to review and define Environmental Conservation as background if needed.)
Have students listen to American Indians speak about the loss of habitats and animals that are important to them.
VIDEO:
Actually I think the interesting thing about, like I say, where I was born and raised on the Willopaw is to listen to the stories that my elders have told me. And not only the tribal elders, but all of the elders in the community. It's very interesting to talk to any and all the elders; you can learn so much from all of them. And they've talked about the fish runs that used to come up in the Willopaw, that it would be so thick that they would actually go out there with pitchforks and stand in the river and pitch the fish out until they had as many as they wanted, and then they would go home, and that was the end of it.
And it's sad now to see the river in the shape that it's in. There's still a sustainable run of fish in the river, but most all of the wild stock is gone, and it's been replaced with hatchery stock. And the hatchery stock obviously is not as strong as what the wild stock was. So when you get the big temperature fluctuations in the water, they can't handle that as well as the wild fish used to be able to. And they're more prone to disease, because the wild fish had built up immunities over the years and had gone through all this on their own, basically.
Ray Gardener, Chinook
VIDEO:
My little grandsons now, they're just little guys, four and five, and my two sons take them out. Every year they go on a hunting trip, and that trip is especially to take the little ones with them. And when they go, they talk about how this brother, this moose or the elk or the deer, is sacrificing himself to give to us. And so whenever they make a kill, they teach the boys to pray. They pray and they thank the creator, and they give thanks to the brother that has sacrificed [himself], or the sister, to give us food, to give us clothing, and they teach them the songs.
Lee Bourgeau, Nez Perce
VIDEO:
The continuity of the tule mats, the bulrush— the tules are still here, the animals, most of them are still here. There are some that have been decimated— the sage grouse, some species of salmon. The time that they [Lewis and Clark] came through, the reasonable estimates are probably between sixteen and twenty million fish came up that river home to our tributaries and drainage systems. And now a million to five million, people think is a lot. Abundance was a different measurement then. Our well-being was measured differently then.
Bobbie Conner, Cayuse-Nez Perce
VIDEO:
My mother used to tell me that the salmon were so thick, that they could almost walk across the river on the backs of the salmon. And she said when she was young, it would be the place of the man to ride their horses up the stream, up the river and club the salmon and then the women would come behind with sacks and pick up the salmon that had been clubbed. And then they would dry them for their wintertime. And I never thought I would see that. But about three years ago, my husband took me down by the hatchery up at Leechem Creek, and the fish were just thick coming in, trying to get into the hatchery. There was a little part of the river that came off of the main part of the river, and it was probably about, oh, maybe fifteen feet wide, and it was just full of salmon. And I just told my husband, I never thought I would see what my mother had seen. I don't know, I was really glad I got to see that. It's just like bringing history back.
Martha Franklin, Yakama
VIDEO:
I always think of one of our chiefs that said, "Mother earth is our mother, and we need to take care of her so she can take care of us." And I think that, you know, that I think first of all there needs to be respect for self, respect for the environment which includes all of the animals and the fish and all the living things that provide us with what we need and the land itself and all that grows on it.
Lee Bourgeau, Nez Perce
- Ask Students:
- What do they think after listening to the American Indian speakers?
- How does the loss of a species affect American Indians today? How does the loss of a species affect all people today?
- What can be done about the loss of species and habitats?
CLOSING
Ask students what new information they learned about American Indian views of animals.
OPTIONAL RESEARCH PROJECT:
BISON STUDY PROJECT
Break students up into groups, each group researching a different topic.
Topics:
- Lewis and Clark and bison
Find Lewis and Clark journal entries documenting bison encounters and summarize what Lewis and Clark wrote about bison and how they interacted with bison.
- Bison conservation; populations today and in the past
Research the bison population in North America. Include estimates one thousand years ago, two hundred years ago (the time of Lewis and Clark), and today. Make a prediction for the year 2203.
Explain what factors have led to declines or increases in bison populations in n. America.
- Bison natural history and biology
Research the life of a bison and its role in an ecosystem.
Create a Bison Field Guide describing a bison's habitat and habits to share with the class.
- American Indians and bison
Research the role of bison in American Indian tribes that Lewis and Clark encountered.
Give students time to investigate the following web sites (and others) to learn about American Indians and bison and the status of bison in our country today:
Sierra Club
www.sierraclub.org/lewisandclark/species/
Smithsonian National Museum of American History, "Tracking the Buffalo" activity
www.americanhistory.si.edu/hohr/buffalo/index.html
Intertribal Bison Cooperative
www.intertribalbison.org/
American Indians and the Environment
www.cnie.org/NAE/conservation.html
Have each group present a ten-minute presentation to the class. Encourage the use of audio-visual materials and creative ways to present the information they found.
[PRINTABLE VERSION]
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