English · Lycée général (C1 to C2), Bac pro (B1 to B2)

Session 1: Whose land? Before the colonies

Read one step, do it, then move on.
Step 1

Recap check

Recap check
  1. What do you already know about Thanksgiving?
  2. Name one English-speaking country in the Americas.
  3. What does the word colony make you think of?
Answer key
  1. A national holiday in the United States, on the fourth Thursday of November.
  2. For example the United States, Canada, Jamaica.
  3. Settlers, a distant king, land taken from other people: all answers are discussed.
Step 2

Objectives

Step 3

Documents

Key document

The word colony comes from the Latin colonia, a settlement of farmers on conquered land. The English colonies of North America were founded on the homelands of many Native nations: the Powhatan in Virginia, the Wampanoag and the Narragansett in New England, the Lenape around the Delaware River, and many others. The National Museum of the American Indian reminds teachers that the Wampanoag had been in contact with European explorers, traders and enslavers for nearly one hundred years before the English settled at Patuxet in 1620.

Read the source: NMAI, Rethinking Thanksgiving · NMAI, Harvest Ceremony study guide

"The “First Thanksgiving” as a national story is incomplete and inaccurate."
National Museum of the American Indian, Native Knowledge 360
Step 4

Task 1

Describe the painting: who is in the foreground, who is in the background, who stands, who sits?
Step 5

Task 2

What relationship between settlers and Native people does it suggest? It was painted almost three centuries after the event: can we trust it?
Step 6

Task 3

Read the key document and list the Native nations it names.
Step 7

Gap-fill worksheet

Word bank: colony homelands Wampanoag painting settlers
  1. A is a settlement ruled by a distant country.
  2. The colonies were founded on the of Native nations.
  3. The English settled at Patuxet, on the land of the .
  4. Ferris's was made almost three centuries after 1621.
  5. The came from England.
Answer key
  1. colony
  2. homelands
  3. Wampanoag
  4. painting
  5. settlers
Step 8

Homework

Write six lines describing the Ferris painting, then two lines explaining what it leaves out.
Answer keyModel answer: In the foreground, settlers serve food at a long table while Native men sit on the ground. The scene looks calm and friendly. It was painted around 1912. It leaves out the epidemics, the land question and the point of view of the Wampanoag.