Moon of the Crusted Snow

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. What are some of the main problems people face when services they depend on are disrupted?

Teaching Suggestion: Discuss students’ past experiences with power and other service outages, including preparations that can be made and workarounds that can be employed. Add “What if?” scenarios to further complicate matters—e.g., What if cellphone service is out too? What if roads are impassable due to rain or snow? What if service isn’t restored in a month? A year?

• “Millions of Texans Still Reeling From Water Disruptions After Last Week’s Brutal Arctic Blast” is a USA Today news report about the hardships people faced when a winter storm disrupted services.
• “What Would Happen in an Apocalyptic Blackout?” is a long feature article from BBC Future on the ripple effects of prolonged power outages.

2. What are cultural healing and cultural reclamation? How do these ideas relate to Indigenous cultures?

Teaching Suggestion: Discuss whether citizens and governments today have a responsibility to right past wrongs committed toward Native people. What are the pros and cons of non-Native people involving themselves in cultural reclamation?

• “Tired of Waiting for Canada, Native Peoples Reclaim Their Culture” is a Christian Science Monitor article about efforts of First Nations people in Canada to reclaim their cultures.
• “Reclaiming Lost Indigenous Culture Will Require Both Societal Change and Forgiveness” is a Hamilton Spectator column about the challenges Indigenous people face in restoring the cultural identities of their communities.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

Write a journal entry about representations of Indigenous cultures in your experience. Were these representations accurate? How do you know? What factors might contribute to creating accurate representations of cultures other than one’s own?

Teaching Suggestion: Prior to journaling, invite students to provide examples of childhood encounters with Indigenous cultural ideas or artifacts. For example, did their school have a Thanksgiving program with stereotypical costumes for Indigenous people? Did they have a dreamcatcher hanging in their room? Students with Indigenous background may benefit from writing journal entries about cultural stereotypes, othering, or racism they encountered growing up. How did those incidents affect their identification with their culture?

• “What It Means to Grow Up Native American” is a news article including video interviews with two young Native American women about the importance of their culture and traditions.
• “Some Representations of Native Americans Erase Their History” is a Washington Post article that links controversies over public statues to the broader issue of how white society distorts Native American history.
• “American Indians: Still a Stereotype to Many Children” is a New York Times article from 1974 that can provide additional historical background on stereotypes held by white people about Native Americans.