Original Man Walks the Earth
Ask students if they know other stories about wolves.
If students need prompting, ask if they know the story “Little Red Riding Hood.”
Are the wolves in those stories similar to the one in “The Three Little Pigs”?
Now tell students they are going to hear an Anishinaabe story about a wolf.
Make sure students know that the Anishinaabe are a group of culturally related First Nations peoples living in central Canada and the United States, including the Algonquin, Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Oji-Cree.
If you have a copy, read them the story “Original Man Walks the Earth” from the book The Mishomis Book. If not, you can play this video instead, starting from 3:50 and going to 5:40, or read from the transcript at that site.
Ask students:
How is the wolf in the story (Ma’iingan) different from wolf in “The Three Little Pigs” or “Little Red Riding Hood?”
Ma’iingan is a friend and even a brother to humanity in this story, while the wolf in the other stories is seen as being dangerous.
Why do you think the Anishinaabe might have seen wolves so differently from the European people who wrote those other stories?
Highlight:
Part of Anishinaabeg culture is the idea that all living things owe something to all other living things. That makes it harder to see any animal as being totally “bad” and animals are seen as teachers.
Historically, the Anishinaabeg did not raise small animals such as chickens, so they were less likely to see wolves as a danger to their food supply.
Like many other Indigenous nations, the Anishinaabeg actively looked after the resources they used. Because wolves help control the population of deer, which the Anishinaabeg hunted (and many still hunt today) they could have been seen as helping to do this.
Be careful to avoid and immediately correct any negative stereotypes about Anishinaabe or Indigenous people that treat them as being “primitive” or living in the wilderness.
Make sure students understand that they lived in large communities and carefully looked after the resources that they used.
Once students have made their masks, have them mingle and introduce themselves to one another in character as their avatar. Once they have done this, instruct them to return to their seats and initiate the following discussion:
- Let’s talk about your avatar. Is its personality similar or different to yours?
- How did you feel when you were going around the room as your avatar? Did you behave differently than you would have if you had just been going around the room as yourself?
- For those of you who have used avatars on the Internet, is your avatar like you or different?
- What kinds of things does your avatar do that are like you?
- What kinds of things does it do that are different?
Now project the Image Slider in the student chapter Introduction to Avatars or have students access it. Ask students if they recognize any of the characters on the screen and identify any that they aren’t able to name:
“Steve” and "Alex" from Minecraft, a player avatar from Pokémon Go, a player avatar from Animal Crossing. and "Astro Bot" from the game "Astro Bot."
Ask students how these characters are like each other and how they are different. Affirm all the students’ answers but make sure that one key similarity is mentioned: all of them are characters whom you control in a computer game.
Introduce the term “avatar”: a character that stands for you in a computer game. Point out that an avatar is something like a game piece in a board game, such as Monopoly or Snakes and Ladders (since it’s how you “move” and do things in the game) and also something like a Hallowee’en costume (since you get to choose what you look like.) An important difference between avatars and costumes, though, is that when we see someone in a costume we usually know who they are and what they really look like: when we see someone’s avatar in a game, that’s usually all we know about them.
Point out that in some games everyone starts with the same avatar and you can learn or buy the ability to change it (as in Minecraft ), in others you have to play one or a small number of characters (like in Astro Bot) and in some you get to pick what your character looks like, but only from the options the game gives you (as in Animal Crossing and Pokémon Go).
