Arizona’s First People: How North American Colonization Changed the Native American Landscape and Way of Life

Abstract

Both non-Native and Native students in Arizona are curious about what life was like for the Indigenous peoples of North America where the United States now exists. How did the Native peoples live before the arrival of Western influences with its explorers, colonists and settlers? There are many romanticized and fictional versions of what this may have looked like, but it is more appropriate to look at both solid, peer reviewed research and to consider oral histories carefully passed down by tribal groups from generation to generation. These tribal histories have been retold with the cultural expectation of adherence to detailed accuracy. Since third grade standards focus mainly on the history of Arizona Native American groups, this curriculum will limit the amount of information from the rest of North America to build a picture of how the Native and colonial groups’ actions and viewpoints affected the ways of life of past and present Native Nations in Arizona today.