The Night Watchman

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Brainstorm historical fiction titles that students are familiar with. What did they learn about the time period in the novel or story?

Teaching Suggestion: As students think of titles, point out to them the historical events that they learned about and prompt them to think of at least one fact they learned through this piece. Students can also bring up movies, songs, or TV shows that narrate stories about the past.

• LitHub presents ten authors on why historical fiction is important.
• The National History Education Clearinghouse, TeachingHistory.org, includes this article on why historical fiction should be used in the classroom.
• Scholastic Books offers this article on how teachers can use historical fiction, and why they should.

2. What do students know about Indigenous American cultures? Ask students to name tribes that they are familiar with. Why is it important to differentiate between tribes?

Teaching Suggestion: Use this as a moment to introduce students to terms like “Indigenous” and “Native American” and to help them think about how they can speak respectfully and avoid stereotypes about Indigenous peoples. Additionally, in considering different tribes, push students to avoid thinking about Indigenous cultures as a monolith.

• The National Museum of the American Indian lists 10 Essential Understandings About American Indians that can be useful as you prepare to teach Erdrich’s novel. The museum also has a guide to using the best terminology.
• The Zinn Education Project offers some resources for starting a conversation about Indigenous peoples’ history.

Short Activity

Beginning with a land acknowledgment can help students understand the concrete impact colonization has had on Indigenous peoples. Watch this video on land acknowledgments and then give students information about the local tribes that once inhabited (or still live on) the land where the school is. As students reflect on the video, ask them to consider these questions:

• How can we honor the land we’re on?
• Why is it important that we acknowledge who was here before?

Teaching Suggestion: Note that The Night Watchman will push them to think differently about a legislative action and the version of history that they might have learned. Help students to start thinking about how history has been written by and for a primarily European audience. Additionally, once the class starts reading The Night Watchman and reaches Barnes’s Chapter X conversation with Thomas about the rights of Indigenous peoples, encourage students to think back to this activity.

• The Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility provides several resources on creating a class land acknowledgement.
• This map created by Native Land Digital can help to determine who was on your land before you were, showing which tribes had which areas and which treaties contributed to their removal.