Jaimie Park, a MSU Law student 2L and NALSA member, was accepted to NARF’s summer clerkship program for the summer of 2009. She’ll be working in the Anchorage office.
Congratulations to Jaimie!
Education
More on Where Margaret Wente
Margaret Wente’s 10-24-08 column in the Globe and Mail espouses that aboriginal American contributions to contemporary society are generally overstated and that there was a vast developmental chasm separating Indian and European cultures at the time of first contact. She seems enamoured with Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard’s forthcoming text that apparently “knocks the stuffing out of the prevailing mythology that surrounds the history of first peoples.”
That line has stuck with me for the last several days. As an Ojibwe raised in the U.S., I’ve always felt that the Anishinaabek and other first peoples were ignored or at least de-emphasized by the vast majority of North American history texts, especially those most influential in K-12 education. I suppose, for me, the concept of a North American historical mythology congers up a totally different set of ideas that it does for Margaret. I do like the idea of knocking the stuffing out of an historical mythology. I think that is what William Cronon attempted to do with the publication of “Changes in the Land” and Ojibwe historian George Cornell has worked at throughout his career, as with his contribution to “People of the Three Fires”; like Lakota-Ojibwe scholar Patrick Labeau attempts with “Rethinking Michigan Indian History”; and Richard White with “The Middle Ground”.
I haven’t yet read Widdowson and Howard’s book that Wente is so impressed with, but I have a feeling my people are in their piñata. I hope when the piñata busts, there is an outpouring of Aboriginal and non-aboriginal response that sounds nothing like the prose of Margaret Wente. However, I am way ahead of myself; I’ll reserve judgement of the new book until it is published and I can give it a careful read.
I have read Hayden King’s response article to the Wente column. King provides an important counter to the misinformation strewn throughout the original column.
North Dakota Supreme Court Upholds Denial of Unemployment Benefits
In this case, a teacher who often vented about her personal law suits against Indian tribes was fired and denied benefits. She did other things, too.
“American Indian Education” Reading and Signing — Saturday 1-3 PM
On October 25, I will be reading from and discussing my book, “American Indian Education: Counternarratives in Racism, Struggle, and the Law,” at Everybody Reads bookstore, located at 2019 Michigan Avenue, Lansing, Michigan.
The website for the reading is here. And the link to the my book page is here.
Oklahoma Ottawas Get Tuition Deal with Kansas Ottawa University
Ah, finally some justice resulting from the Ottawa University land fraud (book link)….
From Indianz:
Members of the Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma will get free tuition, room and board at Ottawa University in Kansas under an agreement finalized last week.
The tribe gave 20,000 acres for the school nearly 150 years ago. In return, the school promised to educate tribal members. “We believe that expanding this agreement is in keeping with the Ottawa spirit and honors the heritage of this institution and its relationship with the Ottawa Tribe,” university president Kevin C. Eichner told The Kansas City Star.
Get the Story:
Ottawa Indian Tribe members to get free tuition at Ottawa University (The Kansas City Star 10/22)
Fluent Anishinaabemowin Teacher for Sutton’s Bay Schools in Leelanau County
Wanted: Fluent Anishinaabemowin Teacher for Suttons Bay Public Schools and the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. Teacher will be employed half time by Suttons Bay public Schools to instruct a Level 1 class at the high school level, a beginning class at the middle school level, as well as some foundation language experiences at the elementary level.
The ideal candidate will help develop the high school curriculum, which will grow in the following year into a two-year course sequence. The applicant must be a first speaker of the Odawa or Ojibwe dialects of Anishinaabemowin. The applicant must write in the double vowel system and speak the dialect of Manitoulin Island or the North Shore of Ontario. The applicant should have training in the Total Physical Response methodology of teaching the language, and should have a minimum of three years experience teaching Anishinaabemowin. The teacher must know the cultural aspects of the language and the worldview inherent in Anishinaabemowin.
NYTs: Article on Arapaho Language Preservation
From the NYTs:
RIVERTON, Wyo. — At 69, her eyes soft and creased with age, Alvena Oldman remembers how the teachers at St. Stephens boarding school on the Wind River Reservation would strike students with rulers if they dared to talk in their native Arapaho language.
“We were afraid to speak it,” she said. “We knew we would be punished.”
More than a half-century later, only about 200 Arapaho speakers are still alive, and tribal leaders at Wind River, Wyoming’s only Indian reservation, fear their language will not survive. As part of an intensifying effort to save that language, this tribe of 8,791, known as the Northern Arapaho, recently opened a new school where students will be taught in Arapaho. Elders and educators say they hope it will create a new generation of native speakers.
Pigeon Family in Documentary about Basket Weaving
From the Grand Rapids press via mLive, by Rick Wilson:
Students help weave film featuring Potawatomi family, basket-making
by Rick Wilson | The Grand Rapids Press
Monday September 29, 2008, 8:26 AM
Connor Zautke, 11, weaves a black ash basket as Kitt Pigeon, left, offers instruction and a cameraman documents the moment.
ADA TOWNSHIP — Rachel Swem conceded it’s pretty cool to be in a movie. But she also understands she’s part of a larger picture.
The 11-year-old sixth-grader and schoolmates at Forest Hills Goodwillie Environmental School spent much of last week as a backdrop for a documentary video conceived to provide a window into the struggles of West Michigan American Indian families trying to find their place in a society dominated by people of European descent.
Steve Pigeon demonstrates basket-weaving techniques at the Goodwillie Environmental School in Ada Township.
The documentary centers on the Potawatomi family of Steve and Kitt Pigeon and the ancient tradition of basket-weaving that has been kept alive in their family for generations. Continue reading
Sherman Alexie in the Classroom
Turtle Talk favorite Sherman Alexie is in the news again, this time as the focus of a textbook for high school English teachers. From Jodi Rave at the Missoulian. H/T Indianz.
Native insight: Textbook guides teachers on author’s racial messages
It ain’t easy being Indian. So says one of America’s premier Native writers of contemporary Indian life.
To help explain the racial complexities that permeate Sherman Alexie’s work, a textbook for teachers, “Sherman Alexie in the Classroom,” was recently published to help educators explore Native Americana in modern times, stories often told by Alexie with an acerbic twist.
To wit, says Alexie: “I rooted for John Wayne even though I knew he was going to kill his niece because she had been ‘soiled’ by the Indians. Hell, I rooted for John Wayne because I understood why he wanted to kill his niece. I hated those Indians just as much as John Wayne did.”
So why would an Indian hate Indians?
English literature professors and teachers Heather Bruce, Anna Baldwin and Christabel Umphrey explain this paradox in “Sherman Alexie in the Classroom,” a high school literature series published by the National Council of Teachers of English. The text examines Alexie’s provocative body of work, ranging from poetry and novels to film scripts.
Turtle Talk 