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. In North America, the Ojibwe are one of the largest tribal nations among present-day Indigenous peoples with roughly 320,000 members across the United States and Canada. Are you familiar with the Ojibwe community? What do you know about their culture and practices?

Teaching Suggestion: Students’ knowledge of the Ojibwe – also known as the Chippewa – may be sparse. If students cannot answer the questions, they can deepen their knowledge of the Ojibwe by reviewing the links below and investigating additional resources they discover on their own.

• Eddie Benton-Benai, a member of the Ojibwe trip, shares the legacy of his people in the video “Ojibwe History“ created by PBS.
• The Milwaukee Public Museum offers this overview of Ojibwe history on their website.

Differentiation Suggestion: For those students who might have trouble absorbing the Ojibwe-specific terminology and phrases, you may want to pre-teach students a list of challenging vocabulary from the book. This vocabulary could include specific words/phrases in the Ojibwe language (refer to this