Trail of Lightning

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What do you think our world will look like in 50 years? Why? What present-day conflicts or challenges might already be shaping the world of tomorrow? Are there any heroes, stories, or cultural knowledge you or your elders have now that might be useful to future generations? How does Indigenous Futurism seek to answer these same questions?

Teaching Suggestion: This activity may work best as a group or think-pair-share exercise leading to a class discussion. Time limits may reduce tangential discussion. Students may benefit from a teacher modeling the activity or sharing examples of how the world has changed since childhood and the heroes, knowledge, and skills they grew up with that young people today may not know due to time, cultural changes, or technology. Before answering the final question, allow students to explore the resources below. Emerging readers and English language learning (ELL) students may benefit from pre-highlighted and annotated transcripts or copies of the resources below.

• This podcast from Portland State University explores the Indigenous Futurism movement.
• This article by Monica Whitepigeon defines and clarifies the Indigenous Futurism movement.

Short Activity

Grace L. Dillon, who coined the term “Indigenous Futurism” in the anthology Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (2012), has argued that Indigenous people already live in a post-apocalyptic world, a perspective Roanhorse builds on in Trail of Lightning. Using the interactive timeline provided for research, locate an event or policy that could support Dillon and Roanhorse’s views and prepare a short presentation to educate the class about how this event or policy relates to Dillon’s and Roanhorse’s perspectives.

Teaching Suggestion: As discussion of colonialism involves trauma, students may benefit from content warnings, reminders of preestablished Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) strategies, and difficult discussion protocols, and emphasis that the purpose of the activity is to understand the Indigenous history and rationale behind a key perspective informing the novel. This activity works best in small groups or pairs and then shared with the class. To prevent overlapping topics, consider assigning groups to investigate within different eras or disallowing repeated topics. For increased textual applicability, consider instructing students to prioritize widespread federal policies such as residential schooling and Diné (Navajo)-specific events such as The Long Walk.

• This interactive timeline created by Dr. Karen L. Waters and Dr. Danica Brown (both members of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) offers an overview of the European colonization of what is now the United States.
• Teachers may find these guidelines from the University of Michigan useful for facilitating sensitive discussions.

Differentiation Suggestion: ELL students and emerging readers may benefit from preselected, highlighted, and annotated texts on key events. Graphic organizers for reporting may help students requiring organizational support. To include more learning styles, consider allowing for multiple mediums in presentation, such as prerecorded videos, dramatization, or visual arts components, in addition to lecture-style presentations.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

Think of your neighborhood, school, or other familiar location. Then, write a descriptive paragraph about this location, briefly noting its history, claim to fame, and who or what inhabits this space now. Next, imagine this same place 100 years from now. In another paragraph, describe how and why this location might change in that time, including who might now occupy the space and why.

Teaching Suggestion: Because of the abstract and speculative nature of the prompt, students may benefit from viewing the images of Times Square in the resource below, discussing the changes they see over time, and then speculating about how Times Square might look in the future before tackling this prompt on their own or in groups.

• This blog from the New York City library offers visual representations of how and why the iconic Times Square has changed over time.

Differentiation Suggestion: This activity can be modified to include more learning styles by allowing for visual representations of the location, dramatic storytelling, or lyrical and poetic interpretations, or by turning the activity into a class discussion of a shared location or a partnered activity to complete as written or in addition to other recommended modifications. Graphic organizers or sentence frames may benefit students with attentional, organizational, or executive functioning differences. Students with aphantasia may find it challenging to visualize the future of their chosen space. These students may benefit from having some preselected visual references to draw from.