Montana: Stories of the Land

Chapter 22 - Living in a New Montana, 1970 - 2007

Educational Trunks

Contemporary American Indians in Montana. This trunk highlights the renaissance of Montana's Indian cultures and tribal efforts to maintain their identities and traditions.

Websites and Online Lesson Plans

"Mining Sacred Ground: Environment, Culture, and Economic Development on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation" is a learning activity designed to familiarize students with an important and contentious issue now facing Montana's native peoples: whether or not to develop their reservation's coal and coalbed methane resources. The goal of this activity is to challenge youngsters to better appreciate the complexities of promoting resource-based economic development when such action conflicts with traditional cultural values. By the end of the exercise, students should also understand that tribal members differ in their attitudes toward resource extraction. This dovetails nicely with Essential Understanding 1: there is "great diversity among individual American Indians."

Headwater News provides a daily snapshot of news and opinion in the mountain West.

The Working Group has created resources to accompany their video, Not in Our Town, about Billings residents' stand against racial and religious intolerance. 

Paper Candles: How Courage and Goodness Triumphed in an American Town is a play based on the story of Billings, Montana, written for elementary, middle and high school students. 

Montana The Magazine of Western History created a discussion guide for "Remaking the Wide-Open Town: Butte at the End of the Twentieth Century," by Brian Shovers, an article published in the Autumn 1998 issue. The article's full text (but not the pictures) is posted online.

PBS has created educator's web page (including a lesson plan) to accompany the P.O.V (Point of View) documentary, Libby, Montana.


NOVA created the classroom activity "Where Growth Meets Growth," about the wildland-urban interface. The activity accompanies its film Fire Wars, which focuses on the 2000 fire.

The Working Group has created resources for their film The Fire Next Time, a film about conflict in the Flathead Valley between the forces of economic development, environmental activism, and anti-government extremism. Teachers should also visit "Kalispell Speaks Out," which features Kalispell residents' reaction to the film.

MontanaPBS created the lesson plan "To Burn Or Not To Burn, That Is The Question: A Look At The Yellowstone Fires of 1988" to accompany the video Yellowstone Aflame: Fires of '88.

The Indian Education Division of OPI has many model lesson plans relevant to this chapter including ones on the structure of tribal sovereignty, self-determination, and language preservation.

The Indian Land Tenure Foundation has excellent information on allotment and its consequences, including a video - a portion of which is posted on OPI's Indian Education Department's website. At the Indian Land Tenure Foundation you can also access free lesson plans (registration required). (Be patient. The video, "Excerpts from American Indian Homelands," is slow to load.)

The Montana Arts Council offers resources for incorporating folklife in the classroom.

Videos or DVDs

Class C: The Only Game in Town - 88 minutes 

Not in Our Town: The Original Story - 27 minutes 

Butte Reborn: The Mining City In The 21st Century - 59 minutes

Chapter Five, "Ethnic Migration," (20 minutes), Chapter Nine, "A Clean and Healthful Environment," (23 minutes), Chapter Eleven, "The Arts and Humanities in Montana," (18 minutes), and Chapter 10, "The Anaconda Copper Mining Company," (16 minutes) of Montana Mosaic: 20th Century People and Events. (Check your library. OPI donated a copy of this DVD to every public school in Montana. The DVD is also available as streaming video.)

Back From The Brink: Montana's Wildlife Legacy - 120 minutes 

The Fire Next Time - 60 minutes 

Why Save a Language, Regional Learning Project - 27 minutes

American Indian Homelands: Matters of Truth, Honor and Dignity - Immemorial, Indian Land Tenure Foundation - 78 minutes (An 11-minute excerpt is posted on the OPI website.) (Be patient. The video, "Excerpts from American Indian Homelands," is slow to load.)

Tribal Nations: The Story of Federal Indian Law - 60 minutes 

Path to Eden, The Rural Landscape Institute - 26 minutes

Possible Fieldtrips

Berkely Pit, Butte 

Montana Historical Society, Helena 

Western Heritage Center, Billings 

World Museum of Mining, Butte
 

Alignment to Content Standards and Essential Understandings Regarding Montana Indians (EU)

Tests and Answer Keys