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Native America: A Teaching Module Goal: to foster critical awareness of cultural identity issues, using the conflicts between the dominant Euro-American culture and Native American cultures as a test case. Materials: Brochures, ads, textbook materials, standard histories, visual images. Outline: Such a module might begin with a very specific image or series of images. To encourage research, students might be asked to bring to class their own images of the American Indian, drawn from popular media or even from their imaginations. This opening gambit would be followed by provocative material: images such as those found in the brochures or illustrations provided in this module, or filmed imagery from popular movies, a sampling of which appears in the filmography. An investigative segment could follow: historical texts, both secondary and primary, along with texts spoken by natives and Euro-Americans. The segment could continue with more ambitious investigation of popular media imagery, including movies, television shows, popular novels, and tourist materials. A fitting ending would move from the specifics of this historical conflict to larger questions about cultural identity of minorities within a majority-culture nation. Models of resistance and accommodation, of legal guardianship and economic self-sufficiency, could serve as a few examples students might follow on their own.
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