Children and tweens from North Alabama are gaining knowledge on Native American culture and history this summer at the Florence Indian Mound Museum, as Andrea Tinker explains.
The institution is hosting the Young Learners Series, where students can explore the early history of the Shoals through short lessons and hands-on learning exercises. Each month will feature a practice that relates to Native American culture. Participants will explore the history and cultural meaning behind each practice while engaging in an activity related to that topic.
Ana Peeples, the museum educator and museum service coordinator at the Florence Indian Mound Museum said the series, as well as the museum, is important to both Native American and Alabama history.
“Florence Indian Mound Museum is a site with a ceremonial mound that is over 1,700 years old, and it is the homeland site of the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, the Creek and the Seminole people, prehistorically,” she explained.
“So, over 1,700 years ago, it was all the Southeastern people, and it was built during the Woodland Era. It’s one of the first mound sites here in North Alabama that was built where people probably used it, not to live on, but for ceremony and to maybe meet or congregate,” Peeples continued. “Today, we work with the Cherokee and the Chickasaw Native American tribes to continue to preserve it.”
The Young Learners Series began in 2018 as one of the first programs the museum implemented upon opening. The program has conducted lessons on rivers, houses and foods that Indigenous people eat in their culture.
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