Grand Canyon - The Land that Shapes Us

The Land That Shapes Us program for grades 7-12 explores land use and rights at Grand Canyon National Park. Using a case study from the Grand Canyon, students investigate the historically tenuous relationship between the National Park Service and Grand Canyon's 11 traditionally associated tribes. The program incorporates multiple viewpoints, including those from indigenous tribal communities, the National Park Service, and early colonial settlers - as well as the perspectives of participants - on a journey to answer how we should balance the many competing interests for this iconic landscape. Students are asked to consider how the past influences the present and what actions can help affect positive change in the future. This video recording shows a ranger sharing the program with other environmental educators. This program is taught by Grand Canyon Park Rangers via Distance Learning and exemplifies the following principles:

• Throughout the program, the educator provides opportunities for active involvement by asking participants to reflect on their own experiences, answering questions out loud or in the chat, and responding to journal prompts. Through these exercises, students have the opportunity to engage with or actively manipulate materials or ideas and engage with the educator.

• The program makes content accessible and optimizes student learning through the use of multiple modalities, including images, maps of indigenous territories, descriptions of hiking on trails in the canyon, a video interview with a member of the Hopi tribe and an audio recording from a news story of the 100 year anniversary of Grand Canyon National Park. 

• The educator emphasizes place throughout the program. She encourages learners to reflect on certain places that are special and important to themselves before describing the ways that the Grand Canyon is special and important to many indigenous tribes. By emphasizing the unique attributes of the Grand Canyon and ways it has been meaningful to different groups of people, the place-based focus may help students develop attachment to and new understandings about the place.
• The educator utilizes social-ecological connections by explicitly describing the ways humans and ecological systems interact. This program details various ways different people used the land. For example, indigenous people valued the Grand Canyon as a sacred site while other groups, such as miners and the tourism industry, profited from the natural resources and unique landscape.