The Indigenous Family of North America

Pick any date from 1600 to 1800, subtract 60, and start with that date as the birth year of a 60-year-old Indigenous person living in the Northeast, Southeast, or Southwest. Tell your life story, making references to the most significant historical events decade-by-decade that occurred during that person’s lifetime. Explain the role of the family in the culture of the Indigenous tribe you choose, and the impact of historical events on that family. You may choose to be a male or female, but in the paper you must explain the role of both genders. Discuss the pressures and challenges your family faced in your lifetime, how you faced them, and what you thought about them.
Use one of the Columbia Guides to the American Indians as your source. These books provide excellent ethno-historical overviews for the three regions, as well as timelines and glosseries of terms and people. You will be graded on how well you make use of these sources.
Obviously, you cannot document in great detail the family culture and historical circumstances of every tribe, so build a narrative that tells what happened to a person of a tribe as best you can using the appropriate Columbia Guide to the American Indians. Provide page numbers for all information you find in these sources. Showing me (your reader) where you got your information is the very essence of scholarship, and you will be graded on your documentation. Document your sources using Chicago Style (Humanities) footnotes or MLA Style.
You do not have to do any research beyond the Columbia Guides, but you may do so, as long as you document your sources. Try to avoid sources that are written by amateur historians, and try to find sources written by professional historians or tribal historians. Such sources include the National Archives, National Park Service, etc. You will get more credit for using good sources from the Library webpage. You will find more sources on American Indians if you search the system for ASU, WCU, and UNCA, because both of those other schools have American Indian Studies programs. Do not use any juvenile sources, which simplify complex realities for the perspective of children and adolescents.

Last Completed Projects