Connecting the Past and the Present: Celebrating North Carolina’s American Indian Heritage

To gain an understanding of American Indian and Ancient North Carolinians prior to the great changes wrought by the arrival of European settlers, students will begin by studying archaeological work done in the state since the 1980s, especially centering on the virtual exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History entitled North Carolina’s Earliest Peoples and European Contact and the University of North Carolina’s Research Laboratories of Archaeology virtual museum, Ancient North Carolinians: A Virtual Museum of North Carolina Archaeology. From information gathered through these online resources, students will make connections between artifacts and how they might have been used to create a framework for understanding daily life for American Indians. The second part of the project will focus student attention on several key areas of American Indian life in North Carolina, to include foodways, health, dance, spirituality, games, and other topics related to day-to-day existence. Students will work in research groups, using their findings to: create working three-dimensional models, host cooking demonstrations, teach a traditional game, showcase interviews with tribal representatives, or other creative projects that provide hands-on, practical illustrations of a key aspect of their chosen research concentration. Students will showcase their interactive projects in an open house to allow the larger school community to join in the atmosphere of learning.