Children and tweens from North Alabama are gaining knowledge on Native American culture and history this summer at the Florence Indian Mound Museum.
The institution is hosting the Young Learners Series, where students can explore the early history of the Shoals through short lessons and hands-on learning exercises. Each month will feature a practice that relates to Native American culture. Participants will explore the history and cultural meaning behind each practice while engaging in an activity related to that topic.
Ana Peeples, the museum educator and museum service coordinator at the Florence Indian Mound Museum said the series, as well as the museum, is important to both Native American and Alabama history.
“Florence Indian Mound Museum is a site with a ceremonial mound that is over 1,700 years old, and it is the homeland site of the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, the Creek and the Seminole people, prehistorically,” she explained. “So, over 1,700 years ago, it was all the Southeastern people, and it was built during the Woodland Era. It’s one of the first mound sites here in North Alabama that was built where people probably used it, not to live on, but for ceremony and to maybe meet or congregate,” Peeples continued. “Today, we work with the Cherokee and the Chickasaw Native American tribes to continue to preserve it.”
The Young Learners Series began in 2018 as one of the first programs the museum implemented upon opening. The program has conducted lessons on rivers, houses and foods that Indigenous people eat in their culture.
“We kind of fluctuate as a curriculum, and we're able to adapt to the number of children that we have,” Peeples said. “[If] we have a small group, we get to do a little bit more involved activities, and we may have a little bit more extended time to read a story or something like that. When we have the larger groups, we end up doing just better role group activities.”
During the lesson this month, set for Saturday, July 20, students will study Native American storytelling. The Young Learners Series previously covered this topic in November with a focus on Southeastern tribes. Peeples said, this time, students learn about the Southwestern tribes.
“For this class, we are reading the creation stories of the Dene people, or the Navajo people, as some might know them as, and also the Hopi people. We're going to be reading those stories aloud, and then we'll do an activity,” she explained.
Each session students learn from the Young Learners Series focuses on an aspect of Indigenous people’s history and culture. Peeples said the program also incorporates local history into Native American culture in the lessons.
“Much of the Chickasaw story happened in the Quad Cities in Lauderdale County and Colbert County. You have a lot of local history that you might learn that you haven't learned in other places,” she explained.
Peeples said non-Indigenous people should learn about Native culture because of the land Americans live on.
“Whether you come from Native American heritage or the European settler heritage, you're still on Native American land. It's a part of your life from the day you're born. It doesn't have to be complicated, like reading an academic historical article. It is as simple as just recognizing that we're in relationship with the Earth,” Peeples said.
The next lesson in the Young Learners Series is set for Saturday, July 20 at 10 a.m. at the Florence Indian Mound Museum. For more information and a full calendar of events, visit the Young Learner Series website.
