One of my favorite places in the Pacific Northwest is the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture located at the University of Washington in Seattle. At the moment there is a special exhibit on display featuring an amazing collection of textiles from around the world. The show is called Weaving Heritage: Textile Masterpieces from the Burke Collection and includes some fabulous examples of woven textiles from Mexico, Hopi, Navajo and the Pacific Northwest. If you are as interested in Native American cultures and Mexico as I am, you will run to see this wonderful exhibit.
Archive for the ‘ethnic American history’ Category
Native American medicine wheel
As part of my ethnic American history curriculum, I introduce the students to the art of Native American healing traditions. I love teaching this material, because most of them, at their age, really don’t know anything about the culture and history of our nation’s native tribes.
We discuss the concept of the Native American life-force, called ni by the Lakota and nilch’i by the Navajo, which is viewed as an integral part of the healing process. From this perspective, the patient’s family, community and greater environment must all be taken into account when creating a healing paradigm for the patient. This represents a great contrast for my students, who are used to modern medicine’s view of each body part and person as discrete units that must be viewed individually in order to be treated appropriately.
Some of the students definitely shy away from our discussions of this alternative form of medicine, but many actually get into it. I always feel like it’s certainly worth it to explore the many aspects of Native American culture with the students – you never know how one student will be influenced by material of this sort!
I had the opportunity recently to go to an African-American film festival here in the Pacific Northwest, and it was a real eye opener. I happen to be a history teacher, and I teach a course on ethnic minorities in American history. So, my interest in ethnic film isn’t coming from left field. While watching some of the films, I realized that this could really be a great way to teach history! Lightbulb!
I love those “aha” moments when curriculum seems to come together and come alive in the classroom. The next day, I heading into my ethnic American history class with a short movie clip to see how it would go over. The students loved it. They enjoyed getting a visual of the African-American culture that we were discussing and they love the medium of film.
It was a great addition and I’m looking forward to finding some other great African-American movie clips to show them in class.