Elakha. Phtot courtesy of the Elakha Alliance.
Overview
Lesson 1: Introduction to Relationships between Humans and the Environment
Lesson 2: Sea Otters and the Food Web
Lesson 3: Sea Otters, A Keystone Species
Lesson 4: Native Americans and the Sea Otter
Lesson 5: Dangers to Sea Otter and Responsibility of People
Extending the lessons/References
Lesson 4, Day 1
Suggested Strategies
Hopefully, a guest speaker can attend this day and talk to your class.
Alternatively, ASK CTGR OR ELAKAH ALLIANCE FOR ANY RECOMMENDATIONS ON AGE-APPROPRIATE VIDEO.
Lesson 4, Day 2 (or Day 1 if no guest speaker or video available)
Standards
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
EL.03.RE.32—Ask questions and support answers by connecting prior knowledge with literal information found in, and inferred from, the text.
GEOGRAPHY
SS.03.GE.01—View and draw simple maps and pictures to locate, describe, and show movement among places.
CD Segments to Play
Background
A Reservation is an area of land that the U.S. government created in exchange for homelands ceded (traded) by a Treaty. A Treaty is an agreement, like a promise, that the U.S. government made with the Native American Tribes throughout the country. The reason for the Treaties was so that American citizens could build houses and create towns and states which eventually led to the United States of America. The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde originally had over 13.5 million acres of homelands, and there were 26 different tribes that all spoke differently. (Pass out the map and show the students the original homelands and point out the Reservation land.)
Native American Tribes lived in areas of land commonly referred to as homelands. They did not believe that they owned the lands, but that they were caretakers of the land. In addition, there were areas of land that the tribes would travel to hunt and gather their foods and medicines; these lands are referred to as usual and accustomed areas.
The United States wanted tribal lands for themselves. Many Native Americans died from fighting with the military and with the settlers. They were also starving to death because as the settlers arrived and began making homes and towns, the traditional gathering areas to get food were being destroyed and the wildlife and fish were being overhunted and their habitat (place they lived) ruined for the new houses and towns and farms. The tribal leaders were trying to make the best decisions to save their people, so while they didn’t want to sign the Treaties, they had no choice but to do so.
Back in the late 1800s, if you were a Native American, you were not treated very well by the new settlers. The tribal leaders and headmen of the various Tribes would let these people who did not sign any treaty to live on their Reservation. As a result, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde has a mixture of many, many tribes.
For these coastal tribal members, the sea otter was an extremely important part of their culture. Even for the non-coastal tribes, sea otter pelts were something that they traded for. For some tribes, only their headmen (like a chief) or their medicine people (like a doctor) were able to wear sea otter. So, the sea otter robes were beautiful and warm robes and only very important people could wear them. The coastal tribes would also trade sea otter for things they needed. A long time ago, different tribes had different items available that other tribes didn’t have. For instance, salmon was a trade item for tribes that didn’t live near rivers where salmon migrated. And sea otters were traded to people who didn’t live near the oceans.
The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde are considered a sovereign nation, which is like a separate country (like Canada). They can make their own rules for who can be tribal members (citizens) and what happens on their Reservation. The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde have created many different offices to help them govern their tribal members and their Reservation. One of their offices is the Natural Resource Department. The people who work in this office also work with state and federal agencies in managing the natural and cultural resources off of the Reservation.
Suggested Strategies
In preparation for today’s lesson, go to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (CTGR) website at HYPERLINK “http://www.grandronde.org/culture/ikanum/”http://www.grandronde.org/culture/ikanum/ and print out the ceded lands map.
Activities
1. Discuss
Ask if anyone knows what an Indian Reservation is.
To help the students understand the concept of “usual and accustomed areas,” use a large city park as an example. It would be helpful if you could use a park in the area that your students are familiar with. The area of the park which holds the playground equipment is the area that the children normally play in (like the Tribes who lived in their homelands). But, the children might also go to a far corner of the park to play baseball, or go to a different part of the park to have a barbeque or take a hike. These areas of the park are like the usual and accustomed lands that the Tribes would go to for hunting, fishing, etc.
2. Mapping exercise
Now point out the Grand Ronde Reservation which is the very small shaded area. This is the area of land that the Tribes had to move to when they signed the Treaty which ceded their homelands of over 13.5 million acres of land.
Ask: Do you think the Tribes made a good trade?
Looking at the map, the ceded homelands were not close to the ocean where the sea otter lived. There were many smaller tribes such as the Clatsop and Tillamook Tribes which were part of the Grand Ronde Reservation, but they didn’t sign treaties.
