Indigenous Tudors: How did Indigenous peoples encounter the Tudors in the Sixteenth Century?

Indigenous Tudors: How did Indigenous peoples encounter the Tudors in the Sixteenth Century? - Evidence and Interpretations - Lesson 1/5
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The Tudor dynasty looms large in our curriculum and broader British history. As well as marking a period of great religious change, the Tudor period was also marked by sustained contact with the Americas. As part of the Teaching Indigenous Histories and Perspectives in Schools project, teacher partner Nik Caldwell has created an enquiry focused on Indigenous presence in Tudor England with the advice of Stephanie Pratt (Crow Creek Dakota and British/American), Caroline Dodds Pennock, Kerry Apps and other members of the TIHPS team.

Through a series of case studies, this evidence-based enquiry introduces students to the Indigenous peoples who came, or were forcibly brought, to England in the sixteenth century. From the ‘Brazilian King’ at the court of Henry VIII to an anonymous Inuk man brought to England in 1576, Nik’s enquiry asks how these stories of encounters have been shared, from whose perspectives these stories of Indigenous travel have been written, and for what purpose accounts were produced.

An overview of the scheme of work, and Nik’s thinking, can be downloaded via the University of Sheffield’s online repository ORDA.

Teachers may wish to adopt this full enquiry, or embed selected case studies into pre-existing topics on the Tudors or the first British Empire. The content of each lesson is as follows:

  • Lesson One - Introduction to the enquiry and Inuit life past and present

  • Lesson Two - An Inuk man in London, 1576

  • Lesson Three - Kalicho, Arnaq and Nutaaq in Bristol and London, 1577

  • Lesson Four - A ‘Brazilian King’ at the court of Henry VIII

  • Lesson Five - Manteo and Wanchese in Elizabethan London and the Roanoke Colony

All of the lesson resources (worksheets and PowerPoint) can be downloaded via the University of Sheffield’s repository ORDA.

To download all the resources at once, click the ‘download all’ button next to the red ‘cite’ button. 

To download or view resources individually, click on the resource thumbnails to open a preview of each worksheet and PowerPoint. To download worksheets and PowerPoint presentations individually, click the download icon next to each thumbnail.

For any queries related to these resources, or the project in general, please contact Kerry Apps, the TIHPS Research Associate - K.L.Apps@sheffield.ac.uk

Kalicho and Arnaq

John White’s images of Kalicho, Arnaq and Nutaaq © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Teaching Indigenous Histories and Perspectives in Schools is a collaborative project which offers support, resources and training to improve the teaching of Indigenous American histories and perspectives in UK classrooms by working with educators, academics, and Indigenous partners. Inspired by the work of Professor Caroline Dodds Pennock, TIHPS is funded by the University of Sheffield’s Knowledge Exchange fund. Project partners include the Schools History Project, the Centre for Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies, Incomindios UK, and King Edward VII School, Sheffield.