Montana: Stories of the Land
Companion Website and Online Teacher's Guide
Chapter 2 - People of the Dog Days
Chapter 1 - Montana: Where the Land Writes History
Chapter 2 - People of the Dog Days
Chapter 3 - From Dog Days to Horse Warriors
Chapter 4 - Newcomers Explore the Region
Chapter 5 - Beaver, Bison, and Black Robes
Chapter 6 - Montana's Gold and Silver Boom
Chapter 7 - Two Worlds Collide
Chapter 8 - Livestock and the Open Range
Chapter 9 - Railroads Link Montana to the Nation
Chapter 10 - Politics and the Copper Kings
Chapter 11 - The Early Reservation Years
Chapter 12 - Logging in the "High Lonesome"
Chapter 13 - Homesteading This Dry Land
Chapter 14 - Towns Have Lives, Too
Chapter 15 - Progressive Montana
Chapter 16 - Montana and World War I
Chapter 17 - Montanans on the Move
Chapter 18 - The Great Depression Transforms Montana
Chapter 19 - World War II in Montana
Chapter 20 - Building a New Montana
Chapter 21 - A People's Constitution
Chapter 22 - Living in a New Montana
The Bering Strait Controversy
Teachers should be aware of the controversy between archaeological interpretation of history and traditional knowledge. Specifically, many Indian people disagree with the Bering Strait theory. Most tribes believe that they originated in their homeland, not in some foreign continent. This issue is addressed in OPI's Essential Understanding Regarding Montana Indians 3: "each tribe has its own oral histories, which are as valid as written histories."
Given the intense feelings around this debate, this chapter might be a good place to explore with your students how we know what we know. There are three equally valid ways to learn about the lives of ancient people:
1) from oral histories of contemporary people, which provide information, histories and ways of understanding passed down through orally instead of in writing;
2) from archaeology, the scientific study of physical remnants of human activity in the past; and
3) from anthropology, the study of contemporary people and cultures who may live most like the ancient people lived.
Until recently the oral traditions of Indian cultures have been overlooked and undervalued by non-Indians. This is one reason that, as OPI puts in Essential Understanding 6, "histories are being rediscovered and revised," and that "History told from an Indian perspective conflicts with what most of mainstream history tell us." (Another reason, of course, has to do with subjectivity and point of view.)
Another useful framework to explore this potential paradigm shift might be the idea of the "canon" - the body of knowledge widely accepted to be true. In the study of history and other disciplines, knowledge included in the canon is taught as fact.
As people learn new things about our world, the canon changes. Sometimes new knowledge leaps ahead, and it takes the canon a while to catch up. For example, in the fifteenth century most people thought that the sun revolved around the earth. Even after Copernicus (1473-1543), and other scientists figured out that the earth revolved around the sun, it took many years for this knowledge to be accepted into the canon and to be taught to others as fact.
Some facts that may help us learn more about human history are not included in the canon, and so they are not taught. Sometimes beliefs are so strong they prevent people from seeing evidence that is there. This was true of astronomy in Copernicus's time. Is it true of the archaeology in our time?
