Official JAG competency wording: Differentiate between opinion and fact
Category: Communications
Source themes: critical thinking, media literacy, reasoning skills
Source: JAG Competencies Descriptions.docx.
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Reviewed OSEU and Wolakota interview connections
K107 — Differentiate between opinion and fact
Explore K107 · Who Gets to Tell the Story - Joseph Marshall III - OSEU 5 · OSEU 5
Reviewed teaching connection (Supporting): Joseph Marshall III describes comparing oral accounts with archaeological evidence. This offers a source-grounded context for reasoning, checking claims, and evaluating conclusions; the historical account remains attributed to him.
Updated for Proposed August 9, 2024: Comparing oral histories with outsiders’ written histories directly supports revised 5.3. Original JAG–interview approval retained.
And it gets back to who's in control. It's that simple. Who gets to write the books, who gets to tell the stories now, that's called our history. And I think a good example is something that happened at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in 1983, 1984. Up to that point, the white historians had a tendency, a strong tendency, to go along with or discount some of the oral stories that our side told about how the battle progressed and how it came, you know, how it ended. The famous last stand where Custer and the 7th Cavalry went out with a blaze of glory, both guns blazing as it were. In 83 and 84, there were grass fires that went through that area. And officially, there's only two sites that are designated, one on the far south and one on the north side where the visitor center is and then there's a site on the bluffs above the river. And if you've ever been there, the river just meanders and it's flat river bottom on one side and big hills on the other side. But the grass fire went through there. And what it did was uncover a lot of metal artifacts, belt buckles, boot buckles, shell casings, round lead balls, all kinds of things. And archaeologists went in there and cataloged every one of those things. And there were hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. And they located, they carefully recorded what each one was, where it was, and they spent a lot of time doing that. And then they identified what each of those artifacts were. An incoming round ball was usually an Indian, from an Indian weapon, because the cavalry was using a specific kind of weapon that could be easily identifiable. So they could tell what might have been an outgoing fire and incoming fire at any given area. And as they did their research and as they correlated all that information and then compared it to the military version of the battle and the Lakota Cheyenne version of the battle, they found out that the artifact distribution coincided more, much more, with the Lakota Cheyenne version of the battle. And it really gave that oral story, that oral sense of our way we're keeping our stories and our history much more credibility in our eyes. It's still an uphill struggle, but it's, you know, no system is infallible. But it was still, it still worked, because we, you know, that discovery of the artifacts just affirmed what our ancestors have been telling us all these years. So oral history is important. I mean, it should still be an important part of the process, and now it should be, start with the family, saying, okay, this is who we are as your parents, and this is who your grandparents are on both sides. Doesn't matter how you feel about them or whatever, this is who we are. This is where we came from. This is what they did for a living. They were in the Army, they were in the Navy, whatever they did, they were school teachers, whatever. Go back as far as you can, because that's the easiest way to give that child that sense of identity and that footing so that you can walk with that knowledge all the time. And that's where oral history can really, really serve a purpose. It's not just for the collective, it's more for the individual, or should be.
Learn About: What evidence does Joseph Marshall III describe, and how was it compared with different accounts?
Learn From: When accounts disagree, what evidence would you want before making a conclusion?
05 Wolakota Project Video Transcripts and URLs.docx · WP-0143; video x_DEYcLoxuY; passage containing: they carefully recorded what each one was, where it was. Teaching interpretation is separate from official wording and the interviewee’s account.
K107 — Differentiate between opinion and fact
Explore K107 · Oral Tradition- Victor Douville - OSEU #5 · OSEU 5
Reviewed teaching connection (Supporting): Victor Douville describes revising his approach to balance oral tradition and written learning and attending to language meanings. This supports K107 by inviting students to distinguish source evidence from assumptions about a source.
Updated for Proposed August 9, 2024: New connection to the overall current understanding. No specific OSEU standard alignment is claimed. Original JAG–interview approval retained.
Oral tradition is one of the things I grew up with. My intention was to learn as much oral tradition as I could. And I found that also once I learned about that, then I'll go to the next step, which is to look at the other side, which is the written side, which is reading books to be able to balance those. The first mistake I made was to rely on written sources. When I was going to school, I read when I came to teach at the university in 1970. And by 1980, I began to realize that I'm going about it the wrong way. I should be able to set the oral source as the foremost. I've been doing the other one, written sources. I couldn't find any written sources back then, so I switched the other way and found that oral sources also lead to interpreting words, semantics and etymology, which is looking at the root words. And there you can find the true meaning of it.
Learn About: What details in this passage support the speaker’s account of oral and written knowledge? What would you need to hear in the full interview before interpreting it?
Learn From: How could you distinguish source evidence from assumptions about a source? Use a fictional or classroom example if you prefer, and explain which part of the speaker’s account informed your approach.
05 Wolakota Project Video Transcripts and URLs.docx · WP-0028; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vuk8Lzojaj0; opening passage. Teaching interpretation is separate from official wording and the interviewee’s account.
K107 — Differentiate between opinion and fact
Explore K107 · More Valuable than Money - Victor Douville - OSEU #6 · OSEU 6
Reviewed teaching connection (Supporting): Victor Douville contrasts tribal and government perspectives on treaties and describes education in relation to land exchange. This supports K107 by inviting students to separate the speaker’s interpretation from independently checked facts.
Updated for Proposed August 9, 2024: New connection to the overall current understanding. No specific OSEU standard alignment is claimed. Original JAG–interview approval retained.
The student must know the content, as we understood them, not as the government understood them. Because when the treaties were first made, that's what the government said. The court said they have to understand the meaning from the tribal's perspective, not from the government. They reneged on that. So now we have to know the contents of them and find out how we're funded. Because we had to give up about 100 million acres, but we brought them to court, our initial lawyer that handled Black Hills case, and then the 40 acres of unceded Indian country, that they gave away 40 million acres in order to get us on DACA for 60 million. So we have to understand that, how those treaties progressed, and what do we get from them? We get education. We get a lump sum for that. And for every 100 people, we should get a doctor. And then for every 40 students, we should get a classroom.
Learn About: What details in this passage support the speaker’s account of treaty perspectives? What would you need to hear in the full interview before interpreting it?
Learn From: How could you separate the speaker’s interpretation from independently checked facts? Use a fictional or classroom example if you prefer, and explain which part of the speaker’s account informed your approach.
05 Wolakota Project Video Transcripts and URLs.docx · WP-0032; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KNlQKQtR8A; opening passage. Teaching interpretation is separate from official wording and the interviewee’s account.
K107 — Differentiate between opinion and fact
Explore K107 · Addressing Misconceptions - Dr. Sherry Johnson & Dr. Nadine Eastman - OSEU #7 · OSEU 2
Reviewed teaching connection (Supporting): Sherry Johnson and Nadine Eastman challenge assumptions about government checks and generalizations from a few tribes to all Native people. This supports K107 by inviting students to distinguish a generalization from supported evidence.
Updated for Proposed August 9, 2024: New connection to the overall current understanding. No specific OSEU standard alignment is claimed. Original JAG–interview approval retained.
How we ended up all where we are at, how some of our initial tribal members ended up in Canada, how some people ended up in Pearl Creek, and just the push from the federal side, how all of that occurred. So that's our real history and where we ended up migrating and being pushed. And it also, I think if people in, all the students in the state had an understanding, a better understanding, they wouldn't think, first of all, that we get free money, because all of us went to school, and I'm telling you, some nonnative students would say, you get money every month from the government. Well, we all wished we got money every month. We wouldn't have been so poor, had we. But it wasn't true, and you couldn't even argue that away, because so many people believed it then, and so many people believe it now, still today, in this year.
Learn About: What details in this passage support the speaker’s account of challenging stereotypes? What would you need to hear in the full interview before interpreting it?
Learn From: How could you distinguish a generalization from supported evidence? Use a fictional or classroom example if you prefer, and explain which part of the speaker’s account informed your approach.
05 Wolakota Project Video Transcripts and URLs.docx · WP-0082; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0CaFednqVk; opening passage. Teaching interpretation is separate from official wording and the interviewee’s account.
K107 — Differentiate between opinion and fact
Explore K107 · Why Isn’t This Taught? - Whitney Rencountre - OSEU #5 · OSEU 1
Reviewed teaching connection (Supporting): Whitney Rencountre recalls learning more history in college and his family’s relocation following flooding by the Big Bend Dam. This supports K107 by inviting students to separate remembered experience from claims needing other evidence.
Updated for Proposed August 9, 2024: New connection to the overall current understanding. No specific OSEU standard alignment is claimed. Original JAG–interview approval retained.
Growing up on the reservation on Crow Creek, you know, I didn't learn a lot about the history of our ancestors. I didn't learn a lot of what took place of this, you know, the information that's in this curriculum that you're talking about. In fact, I didn't learn about that until I went to college. I mean, I learned, I learned the basic information from my grandparents and you can see and you can tell how our lives used to be long ago. You know, we used to live, you know, in Fort Thompson, we used to live by the river. You know, we used to use so much of that, but then when the Big Bend Dam came, it flooded us and so we had to move up to another place.
Learn About: What details in this passage support the speaker’s account of history and relocation? What would you need to hear in the full interview before interpreting it?
Learn From: How could you separate remembered experience from claims needing other evidence? Use a fictional or classroom example if you prefer, and explain which part of the speaker’s account informed your approach.
05 Wolakota Project Video Transcripts and URLs.docx · WP-0094; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5eYs5lE5TQ; opening passage. Teaching interpretation is separate from official wording and the interviewee’s account.
Human Shaped Learning connection
Chapter 9: Creating a Culture of Curiosity
Reviewed teaching connection: Reviewed connections: K107. Invite students to generate questions and choose one to investigate using the interview evidence.
Human Shaped Learning with Front Matter.docx · Ch. 9, actual manuscript pp. 71–77; Why Curiosity Matters
Chapter 21: Embracing the Complexity of Human Development
Suggested teaching connection: Suggested teaching connection for flexible participation, based on K107 competency. Offer flexible pacing and varied ways to participate, respond, and demonstrate learning.
Human Shaped Learning with Front Matter.docx · Ch. 21, actual manuscript pp. 153–159; chapter opening and conceptual discussion
Plan with these recommendations and select more HSL chapters.