This document aligns the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian Native Knowledge 360 Essential Understandings and Concepts with the Bodmer collection at the Joslyn Art Museum. The Essential Understanding and Concepts provide a framework for understanding the Native American perspective on the history, culture, and art of the Plains Indians as represented in the Bodmer collection.

Educators can use this document to identify the Bodmer work that will help them teach the themes and concepts.

Indigenous people of North America have been subject to many interactions with others. Sometimes these interactions caused loss and were detrimental to the survival of Indigenous ways of life. Rising from these interactions, the Indigenous people used what they learned and the artifacts they confiscated to create items of resilience and survival—adapting weapons and tools of the settlers/military to create items such as clubs, cutting utensils, and regalia for celebrations. Since different tribal nations resided in different homelands, the timeline of these interactions and the nature of the visitors created a difference in style which helps to identify the nation from which the regalia and tools came.

Interactions between the Europeans and the Indigenous peoples led to the creation of policies that devastated the way of life for the Indigenous peoples. Values, culture, and understanding of the land are not the same for the Indigenous people and the Europeans. These policies, acts, and laws were created by the settlers and did not account for the needs, rights, and lifestyles of the Indigenous peoples. These policies aimed at gaining material wealth, land, and resources for the settlers while decimating the lives and spirits of the Indigenous peoples.

After contact with Europeans, Native tribes changed. This lesson plan gives a face to the many tribes encountered as Prince Maximilian traveled throughout the West and focuses on Karl Bodmer’s portraits of the many native tribes they had contact with.

This inquiry causes students to consider the geographic concept of “place” through a detailed examination of the Mandan people and, specifically, their Earth Lodges. Place refers to the conditions at a location, the features, processes, and human actions that make the location meaningful. Students need to learn to use information about the land, climate, economy, politics, and culture of a place to understand human beings’ relationship to it. Students will examine details that demonstrate how the Mandans’ homes reflected their relationship to their place. Students will also be challenged with using their historical thinking skills to evaluate the credibility of our information about the Mandan Earth Lodges.