Lesson 2: You Are Living on Sacred Land

This lesson is best suited to high school students and will take approximately 50-60 minutes to teach. Students will begin this lesson by visualizing the expansiveness of Native Nations’ land and territories to broaden their knowledge of the Native nations in their area. Next, students will use critical reading skills to answer comprehension and analytical questions while engaging with case studies. Students will identify the challenges that arise while protecting sacred land and Native territories against corporate entities. Each case study will present a Native nation’s sacred site and then present a corporation that has threatened the physical site. Students will consider the physical and spiritual importance of the sacred site, what threatens it, and what we can learn from the conflict. This lesson will allow students to grapple with the topics of what makes something sacred and how sacred sites are threatened by government action and inaction. After this lesson, students should be able to delve into the emotional and spiritual relationship that different communities have with sacred spaces, including their own sacred spaces.