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Home and Homelands Educator Guide

Black and white photo of a woman of Chinese origin in a dress. She is holding a baby. Next to her is a boy of Chinese descent in a white shirt and pants. They are on a city street with a brick building in the background.
Ou Shee with sons, Lincoln and Wallace, in 1931 in front of East Yong Kick, Apartment #507. Student’s can use Ou Shee’s oral history interview to think about immigration and homeland in United States History.

Personal collection of Ou Shee and Art Wing Eng’s family photo album

Home and Homelands is a virtual exhibition that highlights stories of women who worked to create and protect their homes during challenging times in US History. Each individual or group represents a different national park in the Pacific West. Many of the stories were inspired by objects and testimony that offers personal insight into these women's efforts. Unpacking the layers of their experiences helps us better see a common theme in American history and the human experience: How do we make a home?

These stories are for teachers hoping to incorporate diverse histories into their teaching of US History. This guide is intended to provide students with questions and tools to engage with themes of home and homeland across time periods and standards. Activities can be done individually, or in whatever combination works best for your classroom and your students.

Teacher Tip: The articles in this exhibition cover a wide range of stories. Teachers may allow students to choose a story that is compelling to them and explore resources based on their interests, then report back to the class in some form (short oral presentation, written reflection, or jigsaw). This could lead to further research if desired. Teachers may also choose one story relevant to their curricular goals and have all students read the same story. In that case you may want to add questions to direct students towards specific pieces of information. Modifications for each option are noted within specific activities.

Essential Question:

What is your home? What would you do to protect it?

Situating Home and Homelands in the Curriculum

This guide is intended for 6-12 grades. Teachers should scaffold and modify based on your students.  

Teacher Tip: The following standards are skills based and will help students practice literacy and historical thinking skills. Because of the range of stories, this section does not link to US History Content Standards. Activity 1 and Activity 2 contain suggested readings for specific content areas. However, teachers can use the framework and resources to meet a wide range of content standards. 

Black and white photo of a house made of wood with a sloped roof, and an outbuilding with wood and other objects piled against it. Superimposed in the lefthand corner is a brown comb fragment. Superimposed in the righthand corner is two pieces of a glass
The photo is thought to be the Ballard Family Homestead. This comb and peppersauce bottle fragment plausibly belonged to Alice Ballard, giving archeologists and historians glimpses into her life. Alice Ballard’s story shows a different narrative about homesteading in the 19th century.

NPS Collections/Santa Monica Mountains. Ballard Homestead image courtesy the Russell and Huse Families.

Inquiry Questions:

How did women in different time periods define and protect their homes? What does that tell us about the value of “home” in American history and society?

Activity 1: Home and Homeland Case Study

Have students choose (or choose for them) an article from the Home and Homelands Exhibition. For the reading chosen, students can answer the following questions using details and quotes from the text.

Teacher Tip: Historians use “resistance” to signify a wide range of actions. Sometimes resistance looks the way we expect: slave rebellions, civil disobedience, or protests. Often, it can be smaller, everyday actions like slowing down work, continuing to speak a native language, or even surviving in the face of oppression. Use Question 5 to think about how resistance can be big or small, obvious or subtle.

Recommended Readings by History Content Standards

The following articles are recommended to cover particular History Content Standards, according to the UCLA National Center for History in the School's "United States History Content Standards for Grades 5 -12"

Reading Questions:

  1. Who is the central person/people?

  1. What is their home? How do they create their home? How is their identity tied to understanding of their home?

  1. What conflict arose around their home and homeland?

  1. Were they able to stay in their home/homeland? Why or why not?

  1. How did the person defend or try to resist the threat to or their removal from their home?

  1. What event(s) in American history is this story related to? How does this person/people’s experience add to or change your knowledge of this time in American history?

  1. How does this story add to or change your understanding of home in the United States?

Activity 2: Primary Source Analysis

Historians use primary sources to gain a better understanding of the past. With many of the stories from Home and Homelands, only a few primary sources are available that reveal these women’s experiences. What can you learn from looking closely at these sources?

The exhibit features two types of primary sources which students do not always get a chance to use, given the emphasis on print sources. Depending on the time and curricular standards, encourage them to dive into an analysis of either a historical object or an oral history—or both!

Option A: Analyze Historical Objects

Objects are often an overlooked, but important primary source for historians. Objects give us insight about the people who made them, used them, and cared for them. Think about the things in your backpack or in your room. What stories do they reveal about you?

Still from a video of a woman bent over a wooden bench with a white cloth draped over it. She is sitting on a woven mat. She holds the cloth in place. Her other hand has a rectangular wooden instrument.
Kapa beating is a centuries old Polynesian practice for creating a textile out of the bark from the paper mulberry plant. Reviving this practice is one way that women like Didi Krause and Phoa Kanaka’ole connect with their roots and preserve their homeland.

National Park Service Haleakalā National Park Iʻe kuku and Kapa Making Workshop

Recommended Material Culture Objects by History Standards

Material Culture Analysis Questions:

  1. What do you see when you look at the object? Try to look beyond preconceived notions-what material is it made from? What shape is it? Do you notice any markings, writing, etc.?

  1. What can you infer from the object about its purpose? About the way it is made? About the way it was used? Use details from Question 1 to support your answer.

  1. How does this object represent home? What details in the construction, appearance, or use of the object support this connection?

  1. The historian who wrote about the object in the article drew conclusions from the object as well as additional research. What did they say about the object? What were they able to learn that we wouldn’t have known from written sources alone?

Option B: Oral History Analysis

In the last fifty years, historians have increasingly recognized the value in non-written testimony and sources. This has led to more perspectives in the historical record and different types of history, since people talk through an event differently than they may write it down-if they write at all. Recognizing spoken sources has also been vital for honoring the historical traditions of Native Americans and other groups who have been keeping history this way for a long time. What stories does your family tell that they haven’t necessarily written down? How can we preserve that memory?

Teacher amd Student Tip: To learn more about ways to use oral histories in your own research, check out the episode of Talking with the Past on Oral Histories.

Recommended Oral Histories by History Standards

Oral History Analysis Questions

  1. Who is the speaker (interviewee)? What is their relationship to the event(s) described?

  1. How does the speaker describe what happened? What facts do they remember? What emotions do they add?

  1. How does the person relate the historical event to their feelings about home? What details or quotes support this relationship?

  1. The historian who wrote the article used the oral history to tell a larger story about the historical event and the meaning of home. What conclusions did they draw from the oral history? What were they able to learn that we wouldn’t have known from written sources alone?

Extension:

There are other great primary sources like diaries, poems, mele, and songs in the exhibit. Ask students to pick one and analyze what they learn from that source compared to other types of sources? How do the different primary sources give us new information or a better understanding of the emotions and perspectives of people in the past?

Activity 3: Comparing Stories

Sepia photo of woman of Japanese descent in wire rim glasses and a dark kimono. Sepia photo of woman of Japanese descent in wire rim glasses and a dark kimono.

Left image
Rev. Haruko Takahashi, minister and founder of Konko Mission of Wahiawa, and Honouliuli internee. Find her story and her poems under the theme of Resistance.
Credit: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i/Konko Mission of Wahiawa Collection

Right image
Elizabeth, soon after her return from Carlisle Indian Boarding School, ca. 1910. Read her story, hear her oral history and listen to her language under the theme of Resistance.
Credit: NPS Collections, NEPE-HI-2931.

These stories were all chosen because they illustrate the complex ways that women in the United States have made, protected, or lost their homes. They demonstrate the relationship between individuals and large historical forces. Thinking about the ways these women’s stories are similar and different helps us better understand how different people assert themselves against powerful groups and institutions.

Choose two stories that are interesting to you. Compare the situations of the people involved and how they responded to threats to their homelands. What can we learn about them?

Teacher Tip: This activity can be done in pairs or in small groups. If students selected their own articles for the Introductory Reading, allow them to find a partner/form a group that chose different stories. If assigning the readings, choose 2 or 4 and have students read different articles and share back based on the content-specific Introductory reading.

Students could also create a Venn Diagram or another type of graphic organizers to compare the stories they explore.

Student Hint: Try to go beyond basic facts about ethnicity or geography and into underlying institutions of power, decisions, or methods of resistance, etc.

  1. What do these two people/groups of people have in common? What is different?

  1. What challenges did each person/people face around their homes?

  1. How did each person/people respond to their challenges? What influenced their response?

  1. What can we take from each person’s experience? Can you draw any conclusions or lessons from learning about these two stories together?

Activity 4: Further Research

These stories, while powerful, are just one aspect of a larger and complex history about what home has meant in United States History. Students may want to research these stories and events further. All stories are tied to a National Park, which is linked at the top of each article. This is a good place to start. Encourage students to find out more and present their findings back to the class through a research paper or an oral presentation.

Concluding the Lesson(s):

Using what you learned from the stories you read and discussed, how have different people defined and fought for their homes in the US? How does that impact your understanding of home?

Teacher Tip: This could be a short exit ticket on a post-it or notecard or a longer essay or personal reflection depending on the time and scope of the lesson.

Home and Homelands Exhibtion was made possible through the National Park Service in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation.

This guide was created by Alison Russell, a consulting historian with the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education. It was funded by the National Council on Public History’s cooperative agreement with the National Park Service.

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Last updated: December 19, 2024