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The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian provides educators and students with new perspectives on Native American history, cultures, and contemporary lives. Most Americans have only been exposed to part of the story, as told from a single perspective through the lenses of popular media and textbooks. NK360° provides educational materials and teacher training that incorporate Native narratives, more comprehensive histories, and accurate information to enlighten and inform teaching and learning about Native America.
NK360° challenges common assumptions about Native peoples—their cultures, their roles in United States and world history, and their contributions to the arts, sciences, and literature. NK360° offers a view that includes not only the past but also the richness and vibrancy of Native peoples and cultures today. Bring Native perspectives into your classroom and explore our online inquiries below that reveal rich and diverse cultures, histories, and contemporary lives of Native peoples.
Learn more at https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360
This online lesson provides Native perspectives, images, documents, and other sources to help students and teachers understand how the 17th century fur trade brought together two cultures, one Native and the other Dutch, with different values and ideas about exchange. Examine these differences to determine whether the exchange that took place on Manhattan in 1626 was really a land sale or not.
This digital inquiry helps students and teachers understand an important and difficult chapter in United States history. Explore the vast scope of removal and its effects on many Native Nations.
Explore the intentions, motivations, and outcomes of two treaties: the 1851 Horse Creek Treaty and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.
Examine the difficult choices and consequences the Pawnee Nation faced when entering into treaty negotiations with the United States. Explore two Pawnee treaties to learn more about why some treaties fail.
Examine the difficult choices and consequences the Pawnee Nation faced when entering into treaty negotiations with the United States. Explore two Pawnee treaties to learn more about why some treaties fail.
Learn about an important campaign to secure the treaty rights and sovereignty of Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest. Explore the many actions Native Nations took to address injustices.
Engage with perspectives from Native American community members, images, objects, and other sources and explore four case studies about the relationships that help to create a sense of belonging for Native Peoples of the Northern Great Plains.
Examine important connections between foods and cultures for Native People of the Pacific Northwest. Discover how Native Nations of the Pacific Northwest take action to protect and sustain salmon, water, and homelands.
The Inka Empire thrived in South America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This lesson highlights Inka-period engineering accomplishments that allowed the Inka to manage their vast and disperse empire, and how their legacy has relevancy in the present day. Explore a variety of sources to investigate how the need to feed and provide water for millions of people across a vast territory led to Inka innovations in water management and agriculture. Many of these innovations are still in use today by indigenous communities in the Andes.
English Version: https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/inka-water/
Spanish Version: https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/inka-agua/
The Inka Empire thrived in South America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To support the empire, the Inka built a vast road system for transportation, communication, and integration. This lesson highlights Inka engineering accomplishments that allowed the Inka to manage their vast and disperse empire, and how their legacy has relevancy in the present day. Explore a variety of sources to learn about the engineering of the Great Inka Road system and the Q’eswachaka suspension grass bridge.
English Version: https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/inka-innovation/
Spanish Version: https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/inka-innovacion/
C3Teachers.org facilitates open collaborative conversations among teachers as they tinker with their own instructional practice as it relates to the C3 Framework.
If you are interested in offering more professional development opportunities, rethinking or redesigning your social studies curriculum, we’d love to talk.
