“Remember Kinzua!” developing a history and conflict resolution curriculum

Abstract

“Remember Kinzua!” is a cry that went up in the 1960s after the Army Corp of Engineers built a dam that flooded one third of the Senecas' Allegany reservation in violation of the oldest U.S.-Indian treaty still in effect. Kinzua Dam became a symbol for Indian activism, but as the years pass and post-Kinzua generations reach adulthood, the cry is losing some of its power. The Native American Program (NAP) of the Syracuse, New York School District decided that students, both Native and non-Native, needed to learn about Kinzua and about collaborative conflict resolution in order to prevent future tragedies like Kinzua from taking place. This article is a reflection on work that we did with the NAP to develop a curriculum to accomplish these ends. In particular, we focus on the use of fully scripted dialogues as an innovative pedagogical tool for teaching Native history and basic conflict resolution skills.

Citation

Wulff, B. and Blancke, B. (2002), "“Remember Kinzua!” developing a history and conflict resolution curriculum", Coy, P.G. (Ed.) Consensus Decision Making, Northern Ireland and Indigenous Movements (Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Vol. 24), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 363-407. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-786X(03)80030-7