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Friday, October 12, 2007

Contributions (a sampling)

I use this list as an "answer key" to reinforce some of the contributions discussed in readings I assign. You could use it in a "Jeopardy" type game (give the answer/explanation and have folks come up with the item on the top line). I print out sets of cards with just the on word "answers." Small groups then mull over the cards, select, and hold up the card they think is the answer.

GOVERNMENT - Iroquois Confederacy, Iroquois Kaianerekowa, or Great Law of Peace
In 1988, the US House of Representatives and the Senate passed a resolution expressing recognition that the American federal system has roots in this political system.

MEDICINES - quinine
Native People provided this first effective treatment for malaria

Native People offered a pharmacy that contributed much to modern medicine in the form of aspirin-related extracts, laxatives, painkillers, antibacterial medicines, petroleum jelly, and much more.

MEDICINE – cataract removal
Aztec surgeons were skilled at using obsidian scalpels, which were sharper than metal knives, for surgeries like this kind for the eyes.

MEDICINE – prescriptions
Over the centuries, groups of Native Americans throughout the Americas developed standard treatments, for example, the Anishinabe used pictograms to write these on strips of bark.

MEDICINE – syringes
Some North American Native healers administered medicine beneath the skin by making these from hollow bird bones and small animal bladders. European physicians did not use similar devices until 1853.

NATURAL RESOURCES - oil, ore, water, timber, rubber
A natural resource which lay on and under Native lands.

NATURAL RESOURCES - gold and silver
A source of major economic and trade expansion in Europe which eventually led to the Industrial Revolution in Europe.

FOOD - Pineapple
As Christopher Columbus traveled, the Arawak people greeted him with this food from the island which became associated with hospitality.

FOOD - corn, tomatoes, beans, peanuts, potatoes, and chili peppers.
A food that is of Native American origin

FOOD - 60%
The percentage of food eaten in the world today that is estimated to be of Native American origin.

FOOD – chewed (chewing gum)
The Aztec used the latex from the sapodilla tree called “chicle,” North American indigenous people used licorice root and spruce sap, what did they do with it

INVENTIONS - Hamaca (ha-MA-kah)
An Arawak word for a sleeping net made of cotton and suspended on both ends.

INVENTIONS - Barbecue/Barbacoa
While Europeans were using fire to cook raw meat, the Arawak were slow roasting meat with seasoning. They used Palmetto (Allspice) leaves spread on a wooden rack over a fire and was the typical method for cooking. This technique of slow roasting well-seasoned fish and wild game on a wooden grate (frame of sticks) over an open fire was called what?
Connection to Fourth of July

INVENTIONS – “abacus”
The Aztec invented a device called a nepohualtzizin that used dry corn kernels as counters to calculate transactions in the market-place. The Inca calculated using a counting board with compartments.

INVENTIONS – needles (with eyes)
This was first invented about 8000 B.C. by people living in what is now Washington State who used bone. People in the Andes made them from copper between A.D. 800 and 1100 for a type of knitting.

INVENTIONS – gold plating
South American metalworkers invents this electro-BLANK that used chemicals between 200 B.C. and A.D. 600. Europeans did not independently invent it until early 1800s.

BUSINESS – 25%
The percentage of the total gaming (casino) operation in America that is owned by Native Americans.

BUSINESS – 90%
The Seminoles derive what percent of their tribal budget from gaming, but they are diversifying. In December 2006, they bought Hard Rock Café International for $965 million.

SPORTS – lacrosse
Team could number in the hundreds and playing fields were form 500 to half a mile long.

ARCHITECTURE – pyramids
South American people used their working knowledge of plane and solid geometry to build these in 3000 B.C., well before the more well-known ones in Egypt.

HEALTH – shampoo
Balsam is a plant used by indigenous people as this kind of cleaning product.

HEALTH – deodorant
The Aztec used copal and balsam to as this kind of product in order neutralize odor. People of the Plains stored sweetgrass with their clothing.

HEALTH – plumbing, daily bathing
The Olmec built stone channels to bring water to their cities between 1700 and 400 B.C. Much later, the Aztec did the same. The Incas used copper pipes to carry hot and cold water to bathhouses. What was the purpose of this invention?

REFERENCES
Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World by Jack Weatherford
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
Stereotypes
The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative by Thomas King
“The Great Law of Peace" by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield from American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Fall, 2004.
“100 Amazing Indian Discoveries” by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield from American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Fall, 2004.

AND, you might want to do "reverse contributions" to show what what the Native Americans received from Europeans. Here are some examples:
  • An interesting summary of Columbus's four voyages with a connection to the 2010 Lunar Eclipse on Solstice, and his contribution of "ship worms" to Europe.