National Theme:

Across all regions, this theme seeks to recover aspects of local American history that could otherwise be undervalued or misunderstood by future generations. Teachers and students identify a particular occasion when members of a community were disenfranchised in ways that may have suppressed or obscured records of their cultural heritage. When studying American communities through the lens of this theme, learners typically read literature associated with such groups' communal stories, visit public history sites, study changes in the local landscape, and gather additional records of cultural experience (e.g., oral histories, photographs, public documents).

One Local Application: Reexamining the Cherokee Removal (Click here to sample the Georgia team's applications of this theme.)

The Georgia team's initial application of this national-level theme involved "Reexamining the Cherokee Removal," including studying the causes leading up to the historical event, its effects on the land and cultural practices in northwest Georgia, and its impact on members of the Cherokee nation, from the 1800s until today. Participants read texts such as Diane Glancy's Pushing the Bear and Robert Conley's Mountain Wind Song, alongside primary historical documents from the era of the Removal. They visited public sites such as New Echota (the former capital of the Cherokee Nation), and they contributed to the writing of a new play about events in Georgia leading up to the Removal.

 

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