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UNIT 20: Federal Indian Policy Series

The Federal Indian Policy Series

Eight era research sites. One publication. This unit, you assemble every website from Units 12 through 19 into a single multi-page series with unified navigation, shared design, and a homepage that presents them all.

📜 7 Stages
ðŸŠķ Intermediate
⏱ïļ 45–60 min per stage
The Assembly Unit

Federal Indian Policy Series: Unit 20 of 19

This is the assembly unit. Each era has its own research site. This unit builds the homepage and unified navigation that ties all eight together into one published series.

Unit 11 · Treaty-Making Unit 12 · Removal Unit 13 · Reservation System Unit 14 · Allotment & Assimilation Unit 15 · Reorganization Unit 16 · Termination Unit 17 · Self-Determination Unit 18 · Nation Rebuilding Unit 20 · The Series

The Big Idea

Units 12 through 19 each produced a standalone research website about one era in federal Indian policy. Eight sites. Eight eras. Each one built on the same design system. This unit builds the ninth page - a publication homepage that ties them all together.

The homepage is called The Federal Indian Policy Series. It presents all eight era sites in an editorial layout with navigation that links to each one. Readers can start at any era and move through the full series. Your work becomes a publication - not just a project.

The new CSS patterns in this unit are design tokens (variables you define once and share across every page), mobile-first media queries, fluid typography with clamp(), and grid-template-areas for named layout regions. These are the techniques professional developers use to build design systems.

By the end of this unit, you'll be able to say "I can..."

  • Build a publication homepage that links to eight separate research websites
  • Use design tokens to share consistent colors and fonts across multiple pages
  • Apply mobile-first CSS so your layout works on phones and desktops
  • Use clamp() for typography that scales fluidly with screen size
  • Create a grid layout with named areas using grid-template-areas

What You'll Build

A publication homepage for The Federal Indian Policy Series - the ninth and final page in your era research collection.

A centered hero. A horizontal-scrolling era navigation. An editorial stack presenting all eight sites. An about section. A footer. Everything linked and connected.

When you finish this unit, you'll have built nine websites about Native American history and published them as a single digital series. That's something that didn't exist before you made it.

You researched eight eras of federal Indian policy. This unit presents that work to the world.

Your learning path

The 7 Stages

Stage 1 The Foundation Design tokens + scrolling nav + hero Stage 2 Mobile First All 8 era entries, min-width queries Stage 3 The Scale clamp() fluid typography Stage 4 The Motion Hover motion + translateX() Stage 5 The Layout grid-template-areas + about section Stage 6 The Polish scroll-margin-top + site footer Stage 7 The Series Relative paths + series complete
Let's Begin

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Sources

Unit 20 is a publishing and architecture unit. The historical content lives in Units 11 through 18, each of which carries its own full source bibliography. The CSS concepts taught here draw from the W3C specifications, MDN Web Docs, and the web development community's documented best practices. The design token approach is grounded in the CSS custom properties specification. The mobile-first philosophy originates with Ethan Marcotte's Responsive Web Design (2011) and Luke Wroblewski's Mobile First (2011). The publication design references editorial tradition: dark archival palettes and Playfair Display headings draw from print publication design conventions that predate digital media.

CSS Specifications & References

  • MDN Web Docs: CSS Custom Properties (Design Tokens) , developer.mozilla.org. The W3C CSS custom properties specification defines the --property-name: value syntax and the var() function. The MDN reference covers scope, inheritance, fallback values, and the use of :root for global custom properties accessible across an entire document. Design tokens are an application of this specification: named decisions rather than raw values.
  • MDN Web Docs: clamp() , developer.mozilla.org. The clamp() CSS function accepts three arguments: minimum, preferred, and maximum. When the preferred value is expressed in vw units, the result is a fluid value that scales linearly with the viewport width between the minimum and maximum bounds. The function is part of the CSS Values and Units Module Level 4 specification and is supported in all modern browsers.
  • MDN Web Docs: grid-template-areas , developer.mozilla.org. The grid-template-areas property assigns named regions to a CSS Grid container using a string-based ASCII-art syntax. Child elements reference these regions by name with grid-area. Named areas make layouts self-documenting: the template string describes the visual arrangement of the page regions.
  • MDN Web Docs: scroll-margin-top , developer.mozilla.org. scroll-margin-top defines the scroll snap area offset from the top of an element. When used on sections targeted by anchor links, it ensures the browser stops scrolling before the element's top edge, accounting for fixed elements like navigation bars that would otherwise overlap the heading.
  • MDN Web Docs: How the Web Works , developer.mozilla.org. The section on file paths explains the difference between absolute and relative URLs, the meaning of ../ for navigating up one directory level, and how browsers resolve relative paths in HTML files. Essential reference for Stage 7's cross-file navigation work.

Design & Methodology References

  • Marcotte, Ethan. Responsive Web Design. A Book Apart, 2011. The foundational text for modern responsive CSS. Marcotte's fluid grids, flexible images, and media query approach established the vocabulary and practice that mobile-first CSS built on. The shift from max-width (desktop-first) to min-width (mobile-first) queries is a direct evolution of the principles in this book.
  • Wroblewski, Luke. Mobile First. A Book Apart, 2011. The argument for designing for the smallest screen as the baseline, then enhancing for larger screens. Wroblewski observed that the constraints of mobile screens force design decisions that improve the experience for all users. Unit 20's mobile-first CSS approach is a direct application of this principle: the mobile layout is the default; desktop is an enhancement.
  • W3C CSS Custom Properties for Cascading Variables Module Level 1 , w3.org. The W3C specification defining CSS custom properties. The formal description of scope, inheritance, and the cascade behavior of custom properties provides the technical grounding for understanding why :root is used for global design tokens and how custom properties propagate to child elements.

Era Unit Sources

  • The historical content presented on the Federal Indian Policy Series homepage draws from the eight era units. Each unit carries a full source bibliography covering primary federal sources, Supreme Court opinions, academic scholarship, and Tribal nation references. For sources on any specific era, see the index page for that unit: Unit 11, Unit 12, Unit 13, Unit 14, Unit 15, Unit 16, Unit 17, Unit 18.

Educational Standards

This unit aligns with computer science, social studies, and Indigenous education standards across MN, ND, and SD. Click a panel to expand.

  • OSEU.SS.H.2 , Federal Policy and Self-Determination (All Grades): Students will analyze how federal policies affected the sovereignty, land base, and self-determination of Tribal nations over time. (Unit 20 is the synthesis point for this standard across the full curriculum. Students who have built eight era websites have traced the arc from Treaty-Making through Nation Rebuilding, documenting removal, allotment, termination, and the legal recovery of self-determination through firsthand code. The publication homepage they build in Unit 20 asks them to frame that arc in their own words, in a series introduction section visible to anyone who opens the site. The student name and summary that appears on the homepage is their authorial statement about the full history they have documented.)
  • OSEU.ELA.W.1 , Research Writing (All Grades): Students will produce research-based writing appropriate to task and purpose. (The series introduction section in Stage 1 is a short authored text framing the full eight-era arc. The about section in Stage 5 includes a researcher bio and credentials. The researcher summary in the era entries of Stage 2 are student-authored descriptions connecting each era to the whole. These writing tasks ask students to synthesize across eight units of historical content and present it in a published format. The writing task in Unit 20 is integrative rather than research-generative: the student is the author of the series, not just a researcher within it.)
  • OSEU.SS.C.1 , Identity and Culture (All Grades): Students will understand the cultural practices and governance traditions of Indigenous peoples and how federal policy interacted with them. (The Federal Indian Policy Series homepage asks students to name all eight eras in sequence and write brief summaries connecting each to the others. A student who can do this accurately has internalized the full arc of federal Indian policy and its relationship to Tribal sovereignty and culture. The act of publishing that knowledge as a multi-page website, rather than answering a quiz question, creates a different relationship to the material: the student is now the author of a permanent, accessible historical record.)
  • CSTA 2-AP-13 (Grades 6–8): Decompose problems and subproblems into parts to facilitate the design, implementation, and review of increasingly complex programs. (Unit 20 is the most complex project in the curriculum by file count: nine HTML files, one shared CSS file, and all the relative paths connecting them. The decomposition task is architectural: understanding which problems belong to which file, how shared CSS works across multiple pages, and how relative paths encode the directory structure. Students who can explain why the nav links in unit-20/index.html use ../unit-11/ while the same links in unit-11/index.html would use just ../unit-12/ have decomposed the path problem into its components.)
  • CSTA 2-AP-17 (Grades 6–8): Systematically test and refine programs using a range of test cases. (Stage 7 explicitly instructs students to copy their final code to a real index.html file and test every link in a browser. This is the first systematic cross-file link test in the curriculum. Students who click all 24 links, verify that each opens the correct era unit, and confirm that the back navigation works are conducting structured integration testing. A single wrong ../ count causes a 404. Finding and fixing path errors is a real debugging exercise with a clear failure mode and a clear success state.)
  • CSTA 3A-AP-16 (Grades 9–12): Design and iteratively develop computational artifacts for practical intent, personal expression, or to address a societal need. (The Federal Indian Policy Series is a computational artifact with genuine public value. A student who publishes all nine pages of the series has created a free, accessible, student-authored reference on federal Indian policy history. The artifact is not an exercise. It is a publication. The design choices across nine units, dark archival palette, editorial typography, Playfair Display headings, Prussian blue tokens, form a coherent visual argument about the gravity and importance of the history being documented.)
  • ISTE 6b , Creative Communicator: Students create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix digital resources into new creations. (Unit 20 asks students to take eight original works they built across eight units and assemble them into a single authored publication with a homepage they designed, a series framing they wrote, and navigation that creates a coherent reading experience. This is curation and editorial design, not just code. The student who writes the series introduction and authors the era summaries on the homepage is making editorial and curatorial decisions about how the full arc of federal Indian policy history should be presented to a reader.)
  • MN CS K-12 6.2.1 / 7.2.1 (Grades 6–7): Use a development process to plan, design, and iteratively develop computational artifacts. (Unit 20 is the most process-intensive unit in the curriculum. Building the publication homepage requires planning the navigation architecture before writing a single HTML element: what sections will exist, what anchors will they use, how will the nav link to each one? The seven stages represent an iterative build: foundation first, then content, then typography, then motion, then layout, then polish, then final paths. Students who work through the stages are following a professional development process of iterative enhancement rather than trying to build everything at once.)
  • MN CS K-12 8.3.1 (Grade 8): Use computing devices and digital tools to create original works. (The series homepage is an original work in the full sense: student-authored text, student-selected design decisions within the provided system, and a published nine-page site connecting eight months of historical and coding work. Minnesota students building this unit are publishing original research about the federal policies that shaped the eleven Tribal nations in their state.)
  • MN Social Studies 8.4.4.18.1 (Grade 8): Describe the origin, development, and impact of major federal policies affecting American Indian people in Minnesota. (The series introduction section in Stage 1 asks students to write a brief framing text for the full arc of federal Indian policy. A student who can write a coherent series introduction has internalized the origin, development, and impact of major federal policies across eight eras. The act of writing for a public audience, not answering a test question, is a higher-order demonstration of this standard than a written response on an assessment.)
  • MN ELA 8.3.3.1 (Grade 8): Use technology to produce and publish writing that demonstrates command of the conventions of standard English. (The student-authored content in Unit 20 is published on the homepage of a multi-page website. The series introduction, the researcher bio, and the era summaries are all visible to anyone who opens the student's published series. That publication context is an authentic reason to write carefully, accurately, and clearly. The audience for the writing is not a teacher assigning a grade but anyone who visits the student's site.)
  • ND Indigenous Studies , History and Government (All Grades): Understand the historical and political relationship between the United States government and Indigenous nations of North Dakota, including contemporary Tribal governance and development. (North Dakota students who complete the full Federal Indian Policy Series have built eight websites documenting the history of Standing Rock, Spirit Lake, MHA Nation, Turtle Mountain, and Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate across all major policy eras. The Unit 20 publication homepage assembles that documentation into a series. For North Dakota students, the publication is a record of their states' own history, authored in their own words and published in their own code.)
  • ND CS 6.E.1 / 7.E.1 / 8.E.1 (Grades 6–8): Create artifacts by applying existing knowledge of computing concepts and practices. (Unit 20 applies the full knowledge base from Units 01 through 18: HTML document structure, CSS layout, custom properties, responsive design, typography, grid, and relative file paths. No new concept in Unit 20 requires building from zero: design tokens extend Unit 08, mobile-first extends Units 10–18, clamp() extends Unit 16 and 17, grid-template-areas extends Unit 04, scroll-margin-top was introduced in Unit 17. Every new concept in Unit 20 is an extension or deepening of something already learned. That is not review. That is what mastery looks like.)
  • ND CS 9-12.E.3 (Grades 9–12): Design and iteratively develop computational artifacts for practical intent, personal expression, or to address a societal need. (The Federal Indian Policy Series is a free public resource about Indigenous history for any student, teacher, or community member with internet access. A North Dakota student who publishes the full nine-page series has created something with genuine community value: an accessible, student-authored account of the federal policies that shaped every Tribal nation in North Dakota, built on primary sources and presented in a professional publication format.)
  • OSEU Standard 1 , History (All Grades): Understand the history of the Oceti Sakowin and other Indigenous peoples, including contemporary governance and policy. (The Federal Indian Policy Series, assembled in Unit 20, is a complete documentation of the policies that shaped the Oceti Sakowin across eight eras. South Dakota students building this series have written research on Tribal nations across their state: the Oglala Lakota Tribe, Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Crow Creek, Lower Brule, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, and Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe. The publication homepage they build in Unit 20 is the cover page of that body of work.)
  • OSEU Standard 3 , Sovereignty and Government (All Grades): Understand the sovereign status of Tribal nations and how federal policy shaped governance structures across different eras. (The era entries on the publication homepage each ask students to write a short summary connecting the era to the concept of sovereignty: what the federal government did, what Tribes lost or retained, what was recovered. A student who can write accurate, specific summaries for all eight eras has demonstrated mastery of this standard across the full arc of federal Indian policy, not just within a single era.)
  • SD CS 6-8.AP.M.1 (Grades 6–8): Decompose problems and subproblems into parts to facilitate the design, implementation, and review of increasingly complex programs. (The relative file path problem in Stage 7 is a decomposition exercise. The student must understand: What directory am I currently in? What directory do I need to reach? How many levels up do I need to go? What is the folder name of the target? Each question is a subproblem, and the correct path is the assembly of all four answers. Students who can explain each component of ../unit-11/index.html have decomposed and solved a navigation problem that underlies every multi-page website ever built.)
  • SD CS 9-12.AP.A.2 (Grades 9–12): Create clearly named variables that represent different data types and perform operations on their values. (Design tokens in Unit 20 are named variables at the CSS level: --bg-main, --text-light, --font-heading. These names encode intent: --bg-main is the main background color, not just a hex value. Students who can look at a :root block and explain what each token represents, why it is named the way it is, and what would happen if its value changed are demonstrating variable literacy that transfers directly to JavaScript, Python, and any other language they encounter after this curriculum.)