During the summer, we were lucky to have four amazing students take part in the course––Carmella Hatch, Claire Parrish, Sam Link, and Sammy Jackson. Carmella and Sam are TLAM alums, both were in the spring class and have attended Convening Great Lakes Culture Keepers. Claire and Sammy, though, were new to TLAM and the Growing Great Lakes Culture Keepers project.
The first week of class provided general background into tribal communities and cultural institutions. We asked everyone to read Treuer’s Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask, and, depending on their previous experience, Patty Loew’s Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal, or Loew’s Seventh Generation Earth Ethics: Native Voices of Wisconsin.
In the second week, we went deeper into to Indigenous pedagogy, with readings like:
- Gross, L. W. (January 01, 2010). Some elements of American Indian pedagogy from an Anishinaabe perspective. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 34, 2, 10-26.
- Brant-Castellano, M. (2000). Updating aboriginal traditions of knowledge. In G. J. S. Dei, B. L., Rosenberg. (Eds.). Indigenous knowledges in global contexts, pp. 21–3). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- Harris, H. (January 01, 2002). Coyote Goes to School: The Paradox of Indigenous Higher Education. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 26, 2, 187-96.
- Kirkness, V. J., & Barnhardt, R. (May 01, 1991).
- First Nations and Higher Education: The Four R’s–Respect, Relevance, Reciprocity, Responsibility. Journal of American Indian Education, 30, 3, 1-15.
It’s important that we remember not just the political, legal, and economic differences of tribal communities, but also the complexity and depth of Indigenous epistemologies.
But since this class was project based, we tied in exhibit design quickly, with readings from Brown and Power’s Exhibits in Libraries: A Practical Guide. By doing so, we could see that learning about tribal communities was not only valuable for good partnerships, but a critical elements of exhibit development.
Audience must come first. Community must come first.
It was the third week, though, when we really got down to business, thinking about exhibits and outcomes based planning and evaluations and learning from experience of Michael Edmonds of the Wisconsin Historical Society, who recently created an amazing traveling exhibit on Freedom Summer.
We’ll post Sam Link’s recollection shortly.
-Omar