Abstract
The common narratives of history focus often focus on settlement and colonization. These stories often focus on the destruction of natural resources and the historic trauma of Indigenous who used and preserved them for thousands of years. The story of the Menominee, a Native nation, in southeast Wisconsin, offers a counternarrative of success. Using primary sources and the scholarship of Wisconsin-based activists, historians, and educators, this article explores the civic actions Menominee needed to protect their sustainable forest and how these lessons can be used to teach environmental stewardship in elementary classrooms.
Author Biography
Kate Van Haren
Kate Van Haren is a fourth and fifth-grade social studies and literacy teacher at Pittsville Elementary School in Wisconsin. She is also a doctoral candidate at Penn State University. Her research interests focus on exposing young learners to themes of anti-oppression and civic engagement. In addition to teaching children, she helps create a professional deployment that challenges educators to question their own social studies education backgrounds and create a curriculum based on critical literacy and counternarratives.
Recommended Citation
Van Haren, K.
(2023).
Looking down, up, forwards, and backwards: telling the story of the Menominee sustainable forest.
Occasional Paper Series,
(50).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.58295/2375-3668.1477
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons, Educational Methods Commons, Environmental Studies Commons