NEA: The Best on the Net: Native Americans

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The Best on the Net: Native Americans

by Walter McKenzie, Education World

This page highlights the best on the Web sites on the Internte for teaching about Native Americans. These resources should help you work timely themes into your lessons.

The Cherokees of California
http://www.powersource.com//cocinc/default.html
Look here for a number of resources on Cherokee culture, from language and recipes to music and literature. The Cherokee Syllabary offers a Cherokee pronunciation key, the Cherokee alphabet, and more. Recipes from the Cherokee Cookbook are simple and appealing enough to make for or with your students. The Cherokee Research links let users explore the lineage and present-day descendants of this proud people. Teachers could base a unit study of Native Americans, featuring the traditions, history, and language of the Cherokee people, on this site.

Flags of the Native Peoples of the United States
http://hometown.aol.com/Donh523/navapage/index.htm
The flags of more than 100 groups of Native American people, from the Abenaki of New England to the Zia Pueblo of the Southwest, are catalogued here. Text that accompanies the flag images includes information about the symbolism of each flag and the people it represents. Users can also find information about native peoples of Canada and Australia.

Zitkala-Sa: Old Indian Legends
http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/ReadingRoom/Fiction/Zitkala-Sa/
The University of Maryland brings together this collection of native tales as told by Zitkala-Sa. Each story is presented with descriptive detail and reflects the values of Native American culture. The plain text format allows quick loading and easy-on-the-eyes reading. You will enjoy making use of such stories as Iktomi's Blanket, the Badger and the Bear, and the Warlike Seven with your students, both as cultural documents and examples of traditional tales.

Native American Culture
http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/schools/argylems/lessons/lessons.shtm
Jay Savage of Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools designed this two-week unit for eighth graders. Cross-curricular explorations in social studies, language arts, and technology skills occur in a constructive, open-ended format that allows for student interests and abilities. Students conduct online research, create a table of information gathered, analyze literature, and use Native American techniques to create an original piece of art. Great teacher support, resources, and rubrics for assessment make this a site you'll want to visit!

Native American Links
http://www.ameritech.net/users/macler/nativeamericans.html
If you're looking for a directory of all kinds of resources to use in your classroom study of Native Americans, this site may be very helpful. Links to clip art, folk art, clothing, crafts, recipes, games, art and music, projects, and listings of tribes are all offered here for quick reference. These resources are ideal for elementary school kids and can be easily adapted for older students as well!

Native American Nations
http://www.nativeculture.com/lisamitten/nations.html
Native American Nations is the most comprehensive listing of tribes online. Succinct descriptions of each group and links for further research make this especially valuable for student research. Heavily text-based with lots of scrolling through alphabetical listings, the site is best suited for middle schoolers and beyond.

Native Tech
http://www.nativetech.org/
Highlighting accomplishments in Native American technology and art, this fully searchable site offers lots of information about beadwork, bird feathers, pottery, games, clothing, metalwork, plants, quills, tools, weaving, food, and literature. Message boards and interactive forums round out this extensive collection of materials.

Native Pre-Contact Housing
http://www.kstrom.net/isk/maps/houses/housingmap.html
This site allows users to examine more than a dozen different types of Native American structures in North America. From MainMenu, users can search more than 300 Web pages. MainMenu also leads to menus of independent topical sections. This site is a useful tool for teachers of all grades who wish to introduce students to Native American studies.