Knowing Your Way Around Lakota Culture Native American Lesson Plans

By Jennifer Allen


One of the most important things you might want to bear in mind is that these people have a strong tradition of passing down their stories in an oral form, and this is how they keep track of their history and beliefs. It might be something that is difficult to wrap your head around if you are not familiar with this kind of thing and are more used to finding information by going online or reading it in a book, so you will want to learn as much as you can about their oral traditions when you're on the lookout for Lakota culture native American lesson plans. That way, you will have a better idea of what you should be looking for and you will be able to tell what might not be a good fit for your situation.

When Europeans were first starting to settle all across North America, a place where there were many native people already living, they didn't consider the way that they did things to be civilized. For that reason, in the cases where they didn't simply try to eradicate these indigenous people, they tried to assimilate them. This is a nice way of saying that they tried to force these people to live and do things in the same way that they did over in Europe, which in effect was a process of erasing these people's way of life completely.

A great thing to keep in mind is that although these people have endured more than their fair share of setbacks, they have a way of life that has managed to survive a long time. It is still thriving to this day, in fact. Just knowing this can really show you how well an oral tradition works.

If you want to hear some great stories that these people have to offer, it is good to visit with them in the wintertime. It's good to let your students know this. It is also good to make sure that they understand why this is traditionally the case.

When you hear something over and over again, you tend to remember it better. That is certainly the idea behind the way these people keep track of their histories. By repeating the same tales, the elders can get every detail into the young ones' heads.

Besides keeping track of their stories and histories orally, there are also times where records of the year's events are kept in the form of pictorial diagrams. The problem with these, unfortunately, is that as it is with so many other forms of physical record-keeping, they can be destroyed. This fact was exemplified by the destructive European settlers, who decimated many historical artifacts that can never be recovered.

It is amazing how far back their histories span. This can really make you think twice about the effectiveness of an oral tradition. This one has certainly lasted.

One great tale is that the first people to come to this world came too early. They were tricked into doing so, and this was their demise. They were transformed into the animals we now today call buffalo.




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