Buffy Sainte Marie learning alongside students at a Bronx, NY school.

Talk about reforming education.

"People who used to see Native American culture represented only in the fall as an exotic extra—just after we study dinosaurs and just before we study Columbus—now can study both science and the real deal about Native America."

That's the underlying philosophy that the popular American Indian singer, Buffy Sainte Marie (Cree), has used to launch her baby—the Cradleboard Teaching Project. The Project is believed to be one of the oldest and most complete Internet sites for obtaining culturally appropriate Indian teaching resources for both mainstream and Indian classrooms.

"As a teacher who was also a songwriter, I brought Indian issues to the attention of my own generation through my records," says Sainte Marie, who taught elementary school before her musical career took off. "Then, in the late 1970s, I became a semi-regular on Sesame Street for 5 years. I wanted little kids and their caretakers to know one thing above all: that Indians exist. We are not dead and stuffed in museums like the dinosaurs."

When her own son entered fifth grade, his teacher asked for help in presenting a more complex Indian studies unit in her Hawaiian classroom. "We looked at the available teaching materials and they failed," recalls Sainte Marie. "Lots of dead text about dead Indians."
"At first, I wrote up a simple corrected version of the material, and then this kept growing and growing," she remembers. "I just kept adding more and more information to this "little" Indian studies unit.�

A Need for Resources
Progress has been made in removing Indian stereotypes from school textbooks, and cultural sensitivity training for teachers has come a long way. But the fact remains that few American students ever hear real voices of Indians, and racist images of Indians often appear on the very baseball caps that they wear.

Sainte Marie began writing her lesson plans with those problems in mind. "Statistics show that the same inaccurate, stereotypical curricula about Native peoples that hurt Native Americans also produce mainstream adults with inaccurate or negative views about Indians," the Project's Web site states. "When a Native American child grows up, he and she will have to deal with both sides of this dilemma: absence of a strong self concept and inaccurate perceptions from others."

Deirdre A. Almeida, a professor of American Indian studies at Eastern Washington University, argues that three obstacles remain to providing better instruction about American Indians and Alaska Natives: inadequate attention to the issue from teacher-training programs, ongoing racist portrayals of Native Americans in the larger society (think Redskins football), and difficulties in locating sources of trustworthy materials.

The lessons presented within the Cradleboard Teaching Project are meant to fill in the gap for teachers in search of accurate information about Indian people and cultures. Along the way, these resources can help reduce the ongoing mainstream misperceptions of Indians.

Culture meets computers�

Tech Tools
Sainte Marie's involvement with technology (long before the late-1990s rage of Moby and other electronic music artists, she wrote and performed one of the first electro-beats) helped her turn the Indian studies units she wrote for her fifth grade son's class into a World Wide Web teaching tool.

The Saskatchewan-born Sainte Marie began her experiment in North Country. "I thought it would be fun to connect a First Nations (Indian) school in Canada with the [Kilauea, Hawaii] classroom of my son's old fifth grade teacher, Adrya Siebring. The kids exchanged letters and boxes of goodies with information about their Indian communities, their schools, and most of all themselves."

Having written culturally appropriate Indian studies units and learned that the Internet could provide positive interactions among classrooms, Sainte Marie was ready to take her plans to another level. In 1996, her Nihewan Foundation for Native American Education, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the education of and about Native American people and cultures, brought the Indian studies program to Mohawk, Cree, Ojibwe, Menominee, Coeur d'Alene, Navajo, Quinnault, Hawaiian and Apache classrooms in eleven states. Each of these classrooms has since partnered with a non-Indian class of the same grade level in on-line communication about their different communities.

Click on Buffy Sainte Marie to learn more about the Cradleboard Teaching Project and to explore some of the on-line curricula.

How to Cradleboard
The resources of the Cradleboard Teaching Project can be used in all kinds of classrooms—non-Indians, Indians and international educators and students can find something that fits their needs.

The core curricula are written by Sainte Marie and other Indian teachers. They cover a wide range of science and social studies issues from an American Indian perspective. The project offers curricula at the elementary, middle and high school levels in each subject area. Seven core lessons are available for no cost as online interactive units at the Cradleboard Web site. Sainte Marie hopes to soon offer even more of the units on-line.

Another resource consists of tribally specific study units, developed from participating Indian communities. These units can be used by Indian teachers, but also work with the core curricula for mainstream classrooms. For example, information about the Apache fiddle makes a good supplement to the "science of sounds" core curriculum.

Full-fledged Cradleboard classrooms (that register at the Web site) have the option of participating in private Internet discussion boards and chat rooms. This is Cradleboard's Partnering Program, which pairs an indigenous class with a non-indigenous class of the same age.

"Most schools are required to teach about Native American culture as part of American history, but don't know how. They are also required to offer instruction in new technologies," says Sainte Marie, who argues that participating in the Project can meet both goals. "Rather than simply surfing the net, the Cradleboard students engage in interactive dialogs with [a diverse spectrum of students] in other areas of the country."

"I am 13 years old and have been involved with the [Project] for 2 years," says Wentine (Mohawk), a middle school student. "I have learned about religions that I haven't even heard of before. We just can't wait to chat with our partner school again, and we are counting the days until we get to go down to visit them."

A Cradleboard sample page

Lessons for All
The Cradleboard Project's CD-ROM, "Science: Through Native American Eyes," brings the idea of education in a cultural context into clear focus. It is the first interactive multimedia CD to meet American National Content Standards for middle school science while addressing scientific concepts from within Native American culture.

In the CD's introductory quiz, one question begins, "The Army soldiers pursuing the Apache people couldn't catch them partly because of their easy-to-move lodges. What are these lodges called?" Later in the CD, we learn about the science behind the building materials that made this feat possible. (If you're wondering why the Army was chasing those Apaches in the first place, don't worry, that's fully covered in a social studies unit.)

The CD, available for purchase through the Web site, includes a video message from Sainte Marie citing some of the contributions that Indians have made to science. For example, rubber, tar, fertilizer and the world�s most accurate calendar were all inventions and discoveries made by Indians.

Noticing that only Sainte Marie's eyes are visible even when she is talking in the video, one might guess that she is trying to get the point of "science through Indian eyes" across in an artistic manner. But in reality, "It's a cheap way for us not to have to re-shoot the video if classrooms want to dub it into Indian or foreign languages," she laughs.

In a recent issue of MultiMedia Schools, reviewer John Drag, Jr., an assistant principal from Florida, gave the CD 5 out of 5 stars for installation, content, features, ease of use and product support.
"Science is exciting enough, but the addition of a multicultural component that includes historical aspects behind science concepts brings a whole new dimension to the classroom," says Drag. "This program does an excellent job in weaving together culture, history and the basic scientific concepts behind sound, friction, and lodge
construction."

New Support, New Projects
The project was originally funded completely by the financial success of Sainte Marie's musical endeavors. But with a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in 1999-2000 the Nihewan Foundation was able to distribute close to 2000 free copies of "Science: Through Native American Eyes" to underserved minority teachers and students in the U.S. and Canada.

Production for a second volume in the "Science" CD-ROM series is now underway, with funding from the Toyota U.S.A. Foundation. It will contain astronomy, botany, and ideas for careers in science for high school students of all ethnicities.

The small Project Cradleboard staff works largely on a volunteer basis. "I write lessons whenever I get the chance," laughs Sainte Marie. And then her "tech people" get right to work on posting the latest information on the Web site.

Now, what's the name of those easy-to-move Apache lodges? Wikiups, of course.

Resources

• Learn more about the Cradleboard Project

Rob Capriccioso is a staff writer for Connect for Kids.