Do we know the original people's of the lands we live on today, and that our families have lived on elsewhere in North America?

 

The Place-based Portfolio provides a learning experience and a visual and historical record of the intersection of Euro-American colonization and settlement and the existence of the original  Peoples, whom we know call American Indians. These histories are fundamentally intertwined; U.S. history without Indigenous history lacks a key dimension. The Portfolio examines this at the personal and family level.

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A central point of the project is to help the Pitzer community learn about our collective history, to help demystify our history, and to think critically about where we are and why we don't know more about the history of place(s) and Indigenous peoples.

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Students have researched the places of their own family histories, and have provided a narrative of their family as well as of the original peoples, as well as interactions over time. Collectively this provides a fuller picture of where the Pitzer community is coming from, and the experiences that our histories tell. All of these histories impact ourselves and our lives together today.