Representing Wyoming during the Vietnam War

This month, we hear from a senator’s biographer about a time when the nation’s politics were nearly as split as they are now, but when U.S. Senate debates struck a far different tone.

Hawks, doves and differences

With the question of Vietnam deeply dividing both parties, Democratic Senator Gale McGee of Wyoming was a leading hawk—pro-war. At the same time, he favored a U.S. Senate committed to civil discourse and compromise, where all sides had room to air their disagreements. Read more at Rodger McDaniel’s article, Pro-war yet Pro-dissent: U.S. Senator Gale McGee of Wyoming.

For students and teachers

Also this month, we’ve added four new lesson plans for students and teachers. We hope these will help Wyoming educators comply with new state standards for teaching about Indigenous people in Wyoming and the West. School districts’ curricular changes will be in effect by fall 2021, so we assume most districts are now wrapping up that work.

Here are the four plans, all written by Mike Redman at St. Stephens Indian School on the Wind River Reservation:

Click here for access to a grid in which dozens of lesson plans on Indigenous topics, by WyoHistory.org and by Wyoming PBS, are banded by grade levels and columned by the specific standards, with links to the main categories of standards along the bottom row of the grid. This will make it much easier for teachers to find plans to fit the level they teach and the standards they need to meet. Clicking on any topic named in the cells of the grid takes the user directly to the lesson plan. Special thanks to Wyoming Humanities and to Christine Usry of the Natrona County School District, who prepared the grid.

Our digital toolkits of Wyoming history, a larger selection of lesson plans on a wide variety of topics aimed at secondary levels and above, connect Wyoming history with one of 12 overarching areas of U.S. history, from the Constitution through the Cold War to coal-rich Wyoming’s role in the nation’s future.

Calendar Events

Missoula Children’s Theatre’s “Johnny Appleseed” slated at Washakie Museum in Worland
Up to 31 students are needed for the show. Auditions are scheduled for Monday afternoon April 5, 2021; rehearsals run afternoons and evenings all week with the production Friday evening April 10. High school or adult volunteers are also needed to help direct. Click here for more information.

History Conference on Johnson County’s centennial ranches
The Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo is sponsoring an online Centennial Ranches Virtual History Conference on Saturday, April 17 from 6 -8:15 p.m. The event will celebrate three ranches in Johnson County. Click here to register; the link will be emailed to registrants the week of the conference. Donations will be accepted. For more questions, call the museum at 307-683-9331 or email educator@jimgatchell.com.

Cost: Pay what you want. Donations go towards educational programming at the museum. Sponsored by Jillian Smith, Real Estate, Big Horn Real Estate Associates. For more questions, please call the museum at 307-683-9331 or email educator@jimgatchell.com.

New Photo Exhibit at Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody
What Lies Beneath: Mysterious Vents of Yellowstone Lake features photos by Chris Linder of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from an underwater investigation of the lake’s thermal features. Exhibit opens April 24, 2021. Click here for more info. The Exhibit at the Draper Museum of Natural History runs through August 8, and again from October 2 through May 21, 2022.