Partnerships in Promise

by E.K. Caldwell
News from Indian Country

Throughout history, the relationship between indigenous people of this continent and the formal education system has been oppressive and demeaning.

Beginning with the boarding schools and mission schools of the 1800s, Native students have been subjected to humiliation and forced assimilation, being propagandized by the values of an education system that has consistently misrepresented and maligned Native people.

The resulting confusion in identity and self esteem has become inter-generational, and most Native students today continue to struggle with these issues as they make their way through the contemporary education system, from primary school through college. The dropout rate remains unusually high.
BIA schools are staffed primarily by non-Native teachers who continue to present curriculum that is inaccurate and filled with stereotypes. Native teachers within those systems are many times perceived as “adversarial” when they struggle to redesign curriculum to reflect a Native perspective.

At the university level, many of the “historical experts” in the Native studies domains are non-Native and continue to define who is “qualified” to teach Native studies, based on criteria in which Native people have had little input or decision making.

That is not to say there has not been some progress, particularly in the past two decades, as Native people have made as active effort to have more control over curriculum that relates to indigenous history and culture.

There are more high school and college graduates from Native communities. There are more tribal colleges than ever before and in some areas of the country tribes, such as the Akwesasne Mohawks, have developed their own tribal primary and secondary schools. There is also the progressive and culturally based Chief Leschi School in Washington state. The number of tenured Native professors in universities has increased. In areas where tribal peoples have substantial numbers, there has been some increase awareness.

But the struggle is far from over, and in most public schools on this continent, Native curriculum is a brief and usually inaccurate course of study that begins around Columbus Day and ends with Thanksgiving pageants with students dressed as colonists and Indians, complete with paper feathered head bands and Pilgrim hats. The focus generally remains on the idea that there “used to be Indians”.

Imagine what would happen if they had access to the most updated computer technologies and could use these technologies as part of a true cultural exchange that could result in improved self-identity and self-esteem for all the students (and teachers) involved.

Imagine what it would be like if mainstream schools and Native schools had access to an accurate, multi-media Native curriculum that would reach both Native and non-Native children with positive realities while they were young and at the peak of their learning time.
Imagine what it would be like if
mainstream schools and Native schools
had access to an accurate, multi-media
Native curriculum that would reach both
Native and non-Native children with
positive realities while they were young
and at the peak of their learning time.

Cradleboard

A frame designed for the benefit of children

Sound like some futuristic pipe dream? Fortunately, it is not. It is the vision of The Cradleboard Teaching Project and it is becoming a reality, building partnerships in promise, and looking towards a brighter future of accurate and culturally sensitive education.

The Cradleboard Teaching Project is presented by the Nihewan Foundation for American Indian Education, a non-profit corporation founded in 1969 by Buffy Sainte-Marie.

Best known as a musician/songwriter/artist, she has a long term interest in education and hold a degree in Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts.

In the five years she spent working as a performer on “Sesame Street,” it was always her hope to convey that a Native people are alive and real and living in the contemporary world.

The Cradleboard Teaching project concept evolved over a period of years as Sainte-Marie toured extensively as a musical artist. “It’s a concept that comes out of the good luck of being an artist and entertainer who is actually a teacher. Show business didn’t make me rich and famous, but it did give me the opportunity to travel and to get to know many Native people, and I’ve been very impressed. Year after year, I saw our people and our kids and saw mainstream people and their kids. I saw the interest in and the ignorance of Native culture is the same at age seven as at age seventy. For 35 years I carried that around in my head, thinking about it, and talking about it”

About ten years ago, when her son’s fifth grade teacher at Island School in Hawaii came to her and asked for help in developing a better “Indian Unit” for her class, Sainte-Marie agreed to help her.

As they worked together, the possibilities of school partnerships for a more interactive and exciting kind of learning evolved into the original vision of the Cradleboard Teaching Project.

An avid user of computer technology, Sainte-Marie began seeing the potential of utilizing this technology as a communications tool between schools and between cultures, and in 1990 began partnering classes at Island School with classes of Indian students in Saskatchewan, Canada.


By 1993, with no funding at all, she was helping Native and mainstream schools establish communication through the Internet.

The results encouraged continued development of the Cradleboard Project and when Valorie Johnson (Seneca), of the Kellogg Foundation heard about the project, she contacted Buffy Sainte-Marie and invited her to present her ideas to the Foundation.

Sainte-Marie seized the opportunity and with the help of former Project Director Harold Tarbell (Mohawk), they wrote the original proposal. Kellogg gave them a major grant for the two year pilot project. This made the crucial difference.

“The project concept,” explains Sainte-Marie, “”is really a very simple idea. Like the cradleboard for which we are named, the Cradleboard Teaching Project is a frame, designed for the benefit of children, flexible in use, protective and decorative, and usable far beyond its source of origin. In our cradleboard, we carry education.

“Some teachers worry that they will have to reinvent the wheel or build a huge curriculum. That’s not it at all. It’s about tapping into excellent resource materials and community resources that already exist and have been around for a long time
“These materials have remained obscure and inaccessible to distant schoolrooms unless you’re a traveler in Indian Country.

“We put them in one place where teachers can get access to them. We’re hoping to help teachers maximize their time. Our main goal is empowering children.

“It’s not just about technology. We are not a ‘tech project,’ although we believe in utilizing technology to help the children to communicate as they study Indian culture together. Not only Native American children, but non-Native children, too.
“When children are small, they don’t seem to have the problems getting along between cultures like they do later in life. We have to realize that the power of communities and of our ancient People that our Elders refer to hasn’t gone away. It’s time we just sing our song together, with a very joyful voice.”

The Project is designed to run in two phases. In Phase I, Cradleboard will provide a basic curriculum that looks at common-alities among Native people. Areas such as: precolonial history, relationship with the federal governments, geography, contributions to society, Native government, social and cultural events, community life, and the word “Indian” are addressed.

Sainte-Marie has spent twelve years working on the Phase I curriculum, focusing on material that mainstream and BIA educators have over-looked

“It really bugs me to see things in text books like “cities grew up” and ‘corn became hybridized’, as if these things happened by themselves. My emphasis is on Native PEOPLE doing things, as actual subjects of sentences!”

Currently, Orbis Associates, a Washington D.C. non-profit Indian organization who has provided professional expertise to school systems in educational research, program administration and evaluation for over ten years, has been hired to expand the original curriculum.

Comprised of Gwen Shunatona (Prairie Band Potawatomi), Richard Nichols (Santa Clara Tewa Pueblo), and Anne Litchfield, Orbis will ensure that Cradleboard’s Phase I curriculum for grades 3-12 will meet National Content Standards.

Teachers at the elementary, intermediate, and high school level of the partnered schools will be provided with accurate books, videos, CD-ROMS, lesson plans and other supplementary teaching materials.

Phase II focuses on building relationships between the partnered schools and is more regionally specific, reflecting the history and culture of the Native school partnered with mainstream school. They exchange “goody boxes” of local information, optional e-mail, phone calls, tribe specific units, and computer Live Chat in a conferencing environment. This interactive connection is designed to be fun, and is focused on accurate information and cross-cultural friendships, resulting in improved self-identity and self-esteem for all participants.

Five pilot site partnerships have been identified, and although some established initial contact, during a February ‘97 educators inaugural conference in Seattle, the ongoing project had its major beginning in the 1997-98 school year. Participating schools include: Grade 5, Akwesasne Freedom School (Mohawk) with Boston Harbor School (Washington state); Grades 3 and 7, Bugonaygeshig School (Ojibwe) with Sidwell Friends School (Washington D.C.); Grade 4, Tahola School (Washington state) with Salmon River School (New York state); Grade 9, Rocky Boy High School (Chippewa-Cree, Montana) with Kula School (Hawaii).

The Cradleboard Project has generated such a high level of interest that a waiting list for potential partners has been developed for the 1998-99 school year.

Coordinating such a diverse curriculum among the pilot sites is no small task, and Cradleboard has hired Roberta Basch (Coast Salish) as the Pilot Site Curriculum Coordinator.

Basch will be responsible for interacting with teachers to assess their ongoing needs and to work with Native schools to retrieve their own tribally-specific curriculum so that is can be coordinated into the national curriculum and prepared for CD-ROM, websites , and/or private conferencing.

A third dimension to this unique educational vision is active involvement by tribal colleges as resource partners. Sainte-Marie comments, “We are very lucky to have the tribal colleges’ cooperation and look forward to working with their teachers in training.

“The role of tribal colleges as resource partners will probably never be the same twice. What they work on will be totally up to the partnered schools. It might be tech support, or of a more culturally specific nature, or they might provide books, tapes, or people.”

Schools will determine for themselves how long their partnerships will continue. Sainte-Marie is well aware of the designated “Indian Units” in mainstream schools that are usually between Colombus Day and Thanksgiving.

“With the mainstream schools we might only be getting a couple weeks at first. In that time we have to make as much impact as possible. It doesn’t have to be a huge curriculum at first. It just has to be good. Accurate. Enriching. Engaging. As interest increases, we will have more and more access.”

Long range funding will also play a crucial role in the Cradleboard Teaching Project. For a project of this magnitude, the one and half million dollar grant from the Kellogg Foundation is basically the seed money to get the Project on its feet. The Nihewan Foundation is working with other organizations to secure ongoing funding that will ensure the Project’s future.

And securing the Project’s future is a commitment the originators of Cradleboard have made to the future of the children, for that is what Cradleboard is really about.

Sainte-Marie summarizes, “The kids have to be active participants in what this project is about, because this is about empowering the kids. It’s not just about curriculum and technology. We consult with the kids and get their opinions about what somebody their age wants to know and how they want to be perceived.

“Native people suffer form being misperceived all our lives. One of our first tasks is to ask Native kids and teachers what they want others to know about themselves, their tribe, and Native American culture as a whole.

“Our kids have a lot to say. We also require that schools and parents and administrators are actively involved so the teacher isn’t all alone in the project, but it is important to let the children self-identify who they are as individuals and as Native American people as they participate in the Cradleboard Project.

“We want them to feel very good about themselves and their identities. We want them to see themselves as active participants in their own future.”

The Cradleboard Project is determined to turn on the lights in public education about the indigenous people of this continent - past, present, and most importantly for the children - the future.




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