U & D

Essential Understandings & Essential Questions

Major Concept: Worldview (belief systems)

Essential Understanding: Wabanaki worldview is rooted in respect for the interdependency of life.

Essential Questions:What is worldview? What is the Wabanaki worldview?

How do Wabanaki people show respect for the interdependency of life through stories, coexistence, consensus and conservation?

What has changed and remained the same about Wabanaki worldview over time?

Major Concept: Wabanaki Culture: Ways of life and cultural practices

Essential Understanding: Wabanaki culture is informed by the Wabanaki worldview passed on through generations.

Essential Questions:How are Wabanaki cultural practices and products connected to their beliefs and values?

How does the environment shape cultures? How does/did it shape Wabanaki culture?

How and why have cultural practices changed and remained the same over time? How has the Wabanaki worldview been passed on through generations?

Major Concept: Unequal Power

Essential Understanding: Unequal power relationships have lead to historical injustices, stereotyping, prejudice, racism, and genocide of Wabanaki people.

Essential Questions:

What is power and who has it?

How and why do ethnic groups become de-humanized by racism?

What were/are the power relationships between Wabanaki and Euro-Americans?

Major Concept: Land-Based Economics

Essential Understanding: Pre-contact Wabanaki economic systems were complex, integrated, and sophisticated.

Essential Questions:

What is an economic system and what did Wabanaki economic systems look like prior to contact?

How did pre-contact Wabanaki economic systems integrate people and communities and utilize resources in sophisticated ways?

What aspects of pre-contact Wabanaki economic systems exist today?

Major Concepts: Economic Change

Essential Understanding: Interactions with Europeans changed the land and the ways in which Wabanaki peoples were able to control their economic systems.

Essential Questions:

What was the European economic system and how was it different from pre-contact Wabanaki systems?

How did interactions with Europeans change the Wabanaki economic system?

How did people organize communities and utilize resources?

How did power shift from Wabanaki peoples to Europeans?

Major Concept: Economic Independence

Essential Understanding: Economic self-sufficiency is crucial to the continued survival of Wabanaki peoples.

Essential Questions:

Why is it crucial for Wabanaki communities to be self-sufficient?

What challenges do Wabanaki communities face in achieving economic self-sufficiency?

How is economic self-sufficiency a critical part of tribal sovereignty?

Major Concept: Sovereignty

Essential Understanding: Sovereignty is critical to the independence and survival of Wabanaki peoples

Essential Questions:

What does it mean to be sovereign? What is the relationship between sovereignty and independence?
Where does tribal sovereignty come from?

How is sovereignty critical to the survival of Wabanaki people?

Major Concept: Diplomacy and Interdependence

Essential Understanding: Through diplomacy, treaties and colonization, Wabanaki peoples have had and continue to have interdependent relations with Native nations and others.

Essential Questions:How does Wabanaki diplomacy demonstrate interdependency?

What are treaties and how have they impacted Wabanaki peoples?

What is colonization and how does it continue to impact Wabanaki peoples?

Major Concept: Governance

Essential Understanding: Wabanaki tribal governments are independent, interdependent and sovereign and influenced by cultural traditions.

Essential Questions:

How are tribal governments structured? How are tribal governments independent and interdependent?

What services do tribal governments provide?

What issues do the Wabanaki tribal government deal with?

What were the cultural traditions of tribal governments and how do these traditions impact them today?

Major Concept: Worldview

Essential Understanding: Interpretation of the world through collective cultural traditions and historical shapes Wabanaki worldview.

Essential Questions:

How are people culturally and historically connected to the world?

What forms a culture’s worldview?

What is the Wabanaki worldview?

How has the lack of consideration for the Wabanaki worldview affected the history written about Native peoples in Maine and the Maritimes?

Major Concepts: Change & Continuity

Essential understanding: Wabanakis have maintained cultural continuity while adapting to the changing political, economic, social and physical environments.

Essential Questions:

How have Wabanakis maintained and changed their cultural and social traditions over time?

How have Wabanakis maintained and changed their political and economic traditions over time?

How have changes in the physical environment affected Wabanaki people over time?

Major Concept: Sustainability

Essential Understanding: Wabanaki people have shown cultural and physical sustainability throughout time despite massive changes.

Essential Questions: What strategies did/do the Wabanaki used/use and adapt to their culture while being impacted by the changing population around them?

Native ‘worlds’ were turned upside down after European exploration and settlement. What effects did these events have on Wabanaki people?
How have treaties and alliances (Native/Native) (Native/European) and governmental policies affected Wabanaki communities historically and presently?

Major Concept: Homeland

Essential Understanding: Wabanaki life sources and homelands are rooted in cultural traditions and beliefs.

Essential Questions:

What does territory mean to Wabanaki people?

What is a “Life Source” for the Wabanaki?

What is a Wabanaki homeland?

What Wabanaki cultural traditions and beliefs shaped/shape uses of resources/homeland?

Major Concepts: Geography and Human Interaction with Environments

Essential Understanding: The extent of Wabanaki territories has changed over time.

Essential Questions:

Where were Wabanaki territories prior to contact?

How did contact and colonization impact Wabanaki territories?

Where are Wabanaki territories today?

Major Concepts: Sovereignty and Control

Essential Understanding: Control over Wabanaki Territories is critical to the survival of Wabanaki peoples.

Essential Questions:

What does it mean to control or be sovereign over a territory?

How does controlling territory maintain Wabanaki communities and cultures?