So, of course it’s not just a picture this week, it’s an entire video. But Ryan Red Corn’s project was inspired by the pictures of photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis, according to NPR. Not only are the subject’s smiling, you will too.
Archive for the ‘Native studies’ Category
An important meeting took place last week on the campus at the University of Montana. Missoulian reporter Chelsi Moy has the story:
For years, the University of Montana has worked to recruit higher numbers of American Indian students, but Montana’s tribal college presidents suggested a different approach during a visit to campus Friday.
Recruit Native American professors, staff and researchers first.
“If you can see people who look like you in the classroom and have had the same experiences, the classroom is more acceptable,” said Richard Littlebear, president of Chief Dull Knife College located on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana.
Nearly all of the tribal college presidents from Montana’s seven Indian reservations attended the daylong meeting.
UM President Royce Engstrom invited his fellow presidents to Missoula so he could develop relationships with other higher education leaders in the state, learn more about tribal colleges and look for areas where UM and tribal colleges can collaborate, he said.
Teachers on and around reservations in Montana are singing the praises of a program implemented to beef up and make more interesting elementary science classes.
The Big Sky Science Partnership partners schools, Tribal communities and universities to help bring color and substance to science. As Ann Cantrell of the MSU news service reports, teachers involved receive tools from the program. The increased attention to science has inspired some teachers to get very creative.
Teacher Dora Hugs of Pryor invited Crow elders into her classroom to tell science-related stories about stars.
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The program is a collaboration of Montana State University, the University of Montana and Salish-Kootenai College, the lead collaborator. It trains science teachers on or near reservations in the state and is funded by a five-year, $4.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation. In addition to the original NSF grant, which was awarded in the fall of 2006, the program received a total of $900,000 in supplementary funding from the NSF Math and Science Partnership in 2008 and 2009.
“The Big Sky Science Partnership is doing great things,” said Elisabeth Swanson, director of the project at MSU. “It works with teachers to help them feel more comfortable teaching physical sciences. It also helps teachers connect traditional science knowledge with topics that are culturally relevant, and to use inquiry-based teaching methods.” Inquiry-based teaching invites students to explore subjects by posing, investigating and answering questions, putting students’ questions at the center of the curriculum.
Indian leaders from the Crow Reservation watch during part of a May ceremony to celebrate the new Payne Family Native American Center on the campus of the University of Montana. Photo by KURT WILSON/Missoulian
Dedicated barely six months ago, University of Montana’s new Payne Family Native American Center is set to receive a premier environmental award on Friday. A a 12:30 p.m. public ceremony in the University Center Ballroom is planned.
The Pacific Northwest International Section of the Air & Waste Management Association is presenting the center with its Environmental Achievement award, according to a UM press release.
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The building, which houses the University’s Department of Native American Studies, American Indian Student Services and related campus programming, is expected to receive LEED Gold certification.
As part of its Climate Action Plan, UM has made a commitment that all new buildings on campus meet the certification requirements of the U.S. Green Building Council to be at least up to the LEED Silver rating. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
“The University of Montana is pleased to receive this prestigious Environmental Achievement award that highlights the LEED certification features of The Payne Family Native American Center,” said UM President Royce Engstrom. “The center is a wonderful example of the University’s commitment to sustainability, as well as its commitments to Native American education.”
A memorial honoring Native Americans overlooks the Corner on the University of Virginia campus. Yet few Native students are enrolled. (Cavalier Daily photo)
“No Native American faculty members have ever been tenured, and the University lacks a Native American department [or] programs at the University. There is no office and no phone number to call,” 2009 University alumnus Anthony Lopez, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, tells the school’s Cavalier Daily newspaper, here:
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It is particularly embarrassing for the University that other Virginia schools — including Randolph Macon College, the College of William & Mary and Virginia Tech — already offer Native Studies majors or minors, [AISU Programming Chair Chelsea] Hicks said. The AISU — which was founded in April 2007 as the first active American Indian organization on Grounds — believes this lack of a Native Studies program has damaged the University’s credibility with prospective American Indian students and faculty, she said.
In fact, there generally has not been a large American Indian community on Grounds.
Marcus Martin, interim vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity, says more Native students are beginning to enroll. Last year, there were 31, compared to just five in 2005.
Gwen Florio
Here’s a story from one of our favorite publications, High Country News, on one of our favorite subjects, literature. We’ll take it as a sign that the week is off to a good start.
In this review, Emily Underwood takes a look at a new book, “In Beauty I Walk: The Literary Roots of Native American Writing.”
The book examines traditional creation myths, stories, songs and poetry to modern short stories and plays, Underwood writes. She doesn’t shy away from what she calls the “inherent problems of critiquing Native literature through a Eurocentric lens.”
It is an issue, she says, one that sometimes makes the analyses in “In Beauty I Walk” feel stilted.
But the fact that the book includes so many rarely published selections, as well as the likely pleasure of encountering old favorites, makes us think we’ll be taking a peek inside pretty soon.
Gwen Florio
American Indian Learning Center detail (UMD photo)
It’s a good-news sort of day at Buffalo Post.
Following on the heels of the possibility that the Wakpa Sica Reconciliation Place in South Dakota may be completed comes the news that the University of Minnesota-Duluth wants to build a new American Indian Learning Resource Center.
The plan for a single 19,000-square-foot building makes sense. UMD has had an American Indian Studies Department for more than 35 years now, and claims more Indian staff and faculty per capita than any other university in the United States, according to this BusinessNorth story, which covers busi-ness news in northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin.
In 2005, the school enrolled 125 American Indian and Alaskan Native students in Native-centered medicine, education, social work and other fields, BusinessNorth reports. But its programs are both crowded and scattered all around the campus.
The school seeks $6.7 million from a state bonding bill for the new center. Ideally, it will go on campus near the Wild Ricing Moon Sculpture and a pond that’s being used for wild rice research.
Again, that’s appropriate, given the historic importance of wild rice in the diet of area tribes.
Michael Laverdure, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa in North Dakota, is the liaison for the project’s cultural aspects.
Gwen Florio