Honoring Our Ancestors Unit - Grade 2

Honoring Our Ancestors: Sierra Valley Wel-mel-ti

Grade 2 Curriculum Unit 

Lessons

Carmelita as a young girl, sitting on a rock.

Lesson 1 - Carmelita Evans DeLucchi: Preserving Wel-mel-ti Culture and Traditions Through Oral History
Marvin Sam in a suit, around 18 years old.

Lesson 2 - Marvin Sam: Changes for Land Mean Changes for Traditional Foods
Wilbur & friend on day out in Riverside. Wilbur Smith as a stylishly dressed high schooler, hanging out with a friend.

Lesson 3 - Wilbur Smith: Wel-mel-ti Values Across Places, Cultures, and Changes
Unit Core Themes: History, Cultural Strengths, Relationship to Place, Cross-Curricular Integration

 

Unit Summary

 

This unit introduces students to the Northern Washoe Indians, or Wel-mel-ti, who lived in Loyalton, California, and throughout the Sierra Valley. 
Students will benefit from this rare example of Wel-mel-ti perspectives on an important time and place, through the tangible stories of actual Wel-mel-ti people, shared by those individuals and their family members. Too often, Native American voices have been missing from the social studies and historical records taught in U.S. schools. This has led to a warped understanding of American peoples’ history, present, and future together, and allows erasure and negative stereotypes to harm Native students. 
Through the following lessons, all students have the opportunity to 1) learn some California history and Sierra Valley Washoe values and traditions, 2) build vocabulary and strengthen reading comprehension, critical thinking, and discussion skills, and 3) increase their empathy and feelings of belonging in the classroom. 

 

Download Honoring our Ancestors Unit

 

4 Generations: Carmelita Evans DeLucchi (bottom center), her daughter, Bernadette DeLucchi (top right), granddaughter, Kellie Harry (top left), and great-grandchildren, Kylie (left) and Jace Harry (bottom right). Photo courtesy of Kellie Harry.
4 Generations: Carmelita Evans DeLucchi (bottom center), her daughter, Bernadette DeLucchi (top right), granddaughter, Kellie Harry (top left), and great-grandchildren, Kylie (left) and Jace Harry (bottom right). Photo courtesy of Kellie Harry.

Unit Learning Goals

Students will:
  • Name the Tribal group and place described in the unit
  • Describe the 3 Wel-mel-ti individuals featured in the unit
  • State how each individual represents/represented aspects of Wel-mel-ti culture
 
 
  • State how each individual made a difference in the world or in the lives of others
  • Compare and contrast the lifeways of these current and historical Native American people with their own cultures/experiences
  • Understand and begin to apply new vocabulary for the topics
 

Teacher Background

 

I grew up listening to my grandmother Carmelita’s stories about life in the Sierra Valley. This oral tradition was more than entertainment -- the specific knowledge and values passed from elder to child have sustained our Tribes in challenging environments for many thousands of years. So, I always paid close attention, knowing it was my responsibility to practice what I’d learned and continue to pass it on to the next generations.

 

Elders in the tribe also had special status and wisdom that they accumulated as they grew older. They were the keepers of the fire, and they taught the Washoe traditions that they had learned from their grandparents. For this reason, the old ones were treated with great respect. No one ever passed by an elder without saying something, and during a feast, elders were always fed before anyone else.” (Dodds, 2009, p. 10)

 
The oral tradition was becoming harder to maintain by the time Carmelita was born in the 1930s. This is a reason the knowledge she’s shared is so precious, and a reason my family and I are now sharing some of that knowledge in written form and with other teachers. By the turn of the 20th century, European-American settlers had pushed most Washoes off their homelands, and the U.S. government had taken many Washoe children away to the repressive and abusive Indian boarding schools. This disconnection from the land and our families disrupted Washoe oral history and cultural teachings, including traditional practices like hunting, gathering, fishing, and healing.
The three bands of Washoe (Northern, Southern, and Eastern) had always lived in different areas around Lake Tahoe, with some differences in customs and dialects. Some of the ancient knowledge of the Sierra Valley Northern Washoe -- who we are in relation to the world, how and why we do things – has been maintained only within families like Carmelita’s, and is unknown to younger generations of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada & California. So, as an adult, I interviewed my grandmother on topics she wanted to share about before her passing. These lessons are based on her account, with additional perspective from some family members and supplementary documents.
Because the Loyalton area Wel-mel-ti are no longer living there, Carmelita, her brother Wilbur Smith, and her cousin Marvin Sam are honored in these lessons. It is important to their descendants to pass on their teachings to future generations of Sierra Valley residents and California students, for a complete understanding of history and place, and pride in the attributes of the Sierra Valley Washoe people.
 
–Kellie Harry, with Jesse Blackburn