Pick any date from 1600 to 1800, subtract 60, and start with that date as the bi

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 person’s life story. 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.
You may tell the story in first or third person, but in either case, you must document the facts contained in your story. Do not focus on the personal life of that one person, but rather on what happened to the entire group. Do not include any dialogue, because we do not know what they said to one another. Do include information about the culture and history of the tribe, and provide citations for the sources, down to the page number or film minute, of that information.
You can avoid using unfounded stereotypes about Indigenous peoples if you focus on using evidence from the anthropologists and historians who have documented factual information about Native nations. Some common stereotypical myths that you should avoid include:
–It is commonly said that Native Americans “used every part of the animal,” as evidence of their environmental consciousness. To the contrary, this reflects contemporary people’s environmental concerns. Hunter-gatherers used every part of the animal when they could, of course, but in order to survive, and because that is what they had to work with. They honored the animals doing so, mostly with rituals and ceremonies dedicated to the purpose. Modern environmentalists can find much to admire in Native culture, but should not ever think that Native people had the same concerns as modern environmentalists. They believed that non-human beings inhabited everything in Nature, and human beings were very small and powerless creatures in that web of Being.
–Stereotypes abound around religion. Often students will refer to Indigenous people worshipping the “Creator” God, or giving thanks to the Creator God, as if an overall god existed in Native cosmology. [Check yourself from ever saying “worshipping” to refer to Native peoples’ spiritual practices. They tried to communicate with, placate, and appeal to non-human beings, but they did not worship them in the Western sense.] An overall Creator God in the same sense as the monotheistic Judeo-Christian God did not exist in Indigenous cultures until introduced by Christian missionaries, when some Indigenous people adopted the concept. Creator Gods existed in most Indigenous group’s cosmology, but they usually had nothing to do with the everyday lives of Native people, who were more likely to call upon totem animal spirits with whom they had a personal relationship. Many peoples recognized a universal spirit that inhabited the World; the Northeastern peoples called this spirit manitou.¹ Manitou was an all-pervading spirit, more akin to the Chinese Tao than the Christian God. Once exposed to Christian missionaries, these meanings shifted to reflect a monotheistic personal God.
¹Kathleen Bragdon, The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Northeast. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), pp. 18-20.
Document your sources using Chicago Style (Humanities) footnotes or MLA Style. Above is an example of the Chicago Style (Humanities) footnotes you would use if use chose that formatting style. If you use MLA Style, put a parenthetical citation in the text at the end of the passage with the information, like this. (Getz, Unit 2) Document all information from the source where you found it, whether you put it into direct quotes or not. Showing me (your reader) where you got your information is the very essence of scholarship, and you will be graded on your documentation.
With these examples, you will be able to document all your sources using correct citations on all your papers. Your Works Cited page must have an alphabetized list of sources like these if you cited Bragdon and Getz above:
Bragdon, Kathleen. The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Northeast. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.