Traditional Literature- LOVE it

Perhaps my favorite genre of literature is Traditional Literature.  I don't know why, but the stories that have endured through countless retellings long before the invention of the printing press speak to something deep within me.  Traditional literature encompasses sacred texts, mythology, fables, fairytales, "Mother Goose", and pourquoi tales.  These stories are from all over the world, and frequently share story motifs.

Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell would argue that these stories spring from the collective unconscious of humanity.  Jung developed the idea of archetypes, or patterns of plot and character that appear frequently throughout these tales.  Folklorists, Sociologists, and Psychologists have spent their entire academic careers cataloging and studying these archetypes.  They would argue that understanding the language of traditional stories help us to understand ourselves and others around us.

I would agree.  These stories help us orient ourselves in the world.  Some of the stories are taken quite literally by listeners, and others are dismissed out of hand as being the stuff of kindergarten.  My perspective is somewhere in the middle.  I am not much of a literalist, but I do appreciate the deeper truths about the nature of being human that are revealed within these stories.

I had the luck to come across a modern (well, within the last century) account that had all the earmarks of a traditional story in the following book:  Challenge To Survive, History of the Salish Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation vol.3 (1840-1870).  The story was initially published in 1947, and has been included on pages 65-68 of this book, which should be on every library shelf in Montana.

In this "Medicine Story," a child is either abandoned or lost in the woods, and is cared for by a wise mother and her two lovely children.  The child journeys with the mother for some time, until they reach familiar territory.  The child at some point bends down to drink some water, and when she looks again, finds that her protector is not a woman at all, but a Grizzly Bear with two cubs.  The bear speaks to the child, and assures her that she has nothing to fear.  The Bear also lets the child know that she will grow up to be someone who helps many children.  The child then makes her way back to her people, and indeed grows to become a valued midwife, thereby helping all the children of the village begin their own journey.

My retelling is a poor substitute for the original version told by Pierre Pichette.  Pierre was a Salish historian, and the child referenced in the story was his own Grandmother, Mary Sdipp-shin-mah!  This wonderful, mystical story will stay with me.  I love the way the story establishes a human relationship with the Grizzly, and describes the journey and hardship the child undertakes in order to find her own place in the world.  I can't wait to share the story with my students, who would perhaps like to illustrate, record themselves reading, or simply listen and be astonished.

Every year, teachers have students research animals and write reports. I have a couple of students who are doing nonfiction reports on bears right now.  I can't help but think that the research will be more gratifying if the kids discover stories where the animals they have been learning about have a role.

Flathead River book reveals tiny treasures

An interesting tidbit I want to share with my students RIGHT NOW....

I was perusing one of the books purchased for our Indian Ed collection: 

"The Lower Flathead River, Flathead Indian Reservation".  A significant portion of the book consists of a description of the flora, fauna, and geology of the area.  I was looking for excerpts that might be of interest to my kiddos when I stumbled across this bit.

I had noticed that our pet library rat seems somewhat incontinent.  She occasionally leaves tiny drops of urine here and there. I had suspected that it was a form of scent marking, but hadn't had this thought confirmed.  It makes the children snicker, and I tell them that she only pees on people that she wants to remember.

Now I can amaze the kids even further.  I know one can obtain ultraviolet light wands to check rental units for pet urine,  I think I will try to find one and see if Parsnip the rat leaves a visible trail as well.  I can share the idea of raptor vision picking up on the 

ultraviolet trail that is invisible to humans.  I can see this little paragraph blossoming into an incredibly cool science fair project for some rat or raptor enthusiast!

Why Does Everything I Read Make Me Hungry?

I've been reading some interesting books from our library on the history of the Salish tribes, The Challenge To Survive series.  While the books as a whole wouldn't work for young children, some of the excerpts would be of interest.  For example, in book 2, Johnny Arlee relates the story of how horses were acquired by the tribe.  The humorous detail that I have come to expect from Johnny shines through.  What a master storyteller he is!

The books have interesting cultural tidbits relating to harvesting, hunting, and cooking throughout.  For me, I can really connect with these sections, I suppose because I love food so much!  Also the passages speak to the forager in me.  My husband and I love the wild bounty that living in Montana provides us.  He is the hunter in the fall and collector of morel mushrooms in the spring. Both of us spend considerable amounts of time in the summer picking wild berries.  Company is always so pleased when we have elk stroganoff with wild morels, accompanied by a garden salad with wild chokecherry vinaigrette dressing.  For dessert:  huckleberry pie!

We have never done anything with bitterroot or camas, however.  I'm a little afraid to!

From Encyclopedia Britannica:
"Elaine Nelson McIntosh, a dietitian and food historian, suspects death camas may have been to blame for the illnesses that plagued the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805. Food was scarce and the group was suffering from malnutrition. The Nez Perce tribe offered the travelers fish and bulbs of a plant they believed were blue camas. At the time, the plant wasn’t in bloom, making it hard to differentiate between it and its evil cousin. Soon after, the group fell violently ill for weeks. They ate their dogs to sustain themselves for the rest of the expedition."

IEFA LiveBinder

I've been developing a LiveBinder in order to collect Indian Education For All resources that I like.  I hope this will be a continually growing tool.  Perhaps it might even be helpful for someone other than myself!

IEFA Elementary

Teaching Tribal Sovereignty

Teach it?  I can barely spell it.
I have been combing the "Interwebs" for teaching materials that will help students understand this key idea in IEFA.  Most of the resources are geared toward older students, which I suppose makes sense.  For younger kids, I think some of the current events topics that are frequently in the newspaper might lead to a good discussion, especially the controversial ongoing drama at the National Bison Range. Even that might be too political to understand.
In the lower grades, I think it is helpful for the students to first grasp that various tribes have very different traditions, which is evident in a examination of picture books containing different stories from different tribes.  I have been teaching "Fire Stories"  to my 3rd graders, and have found this site with several different stories of how mankind acquired fire.
I visited a site "Indian-Ed Washington State"  that looked like it would be a rich depository of teaching resources, but when I clicked on the items, I just got a "404 errors".
Our state Office of Public Instruction should be a great resource, but it's not easily navigable AT ALL.  I entered "sovereignty" in the lesson search box, and received exactly one lesson (High School Level) for my efforts.  The link for the Small School Alliance teacher plans is also dead.  Obviously, the OPI site needs an overhaul!
I have no problem with the "Challenge To Survive" series, and they are parked with reverence on the library shelves in the 970.004.  It's just difficult to conceive of how they will work into my teaching yet.  Today, OPI sent my library yet another IEFA resource book that I'm afraid will never get read.  The intended audience is adult, like most of them are, and frankly, busy teachers don't have the time to sift through them trying to mine for relevant teaching materials.
This is why most of the teachers in elementary depend mightily on folklore to try and meet IEFA standards.  It would be great if more child-friendly, high quality materials (like the Johnny Arlee stuff) were shipped to us instead of obscure, longwinded works.

Connected To Everything

Connected To Everything is a short story from the prestigious Teaching Tolerance magazine. the short, powerful narrative reveals a mother's pain as she must try to comfort her children after a forced move. The speaker is an unnamed Salish woman leaving her tribal home in the Bitterroot Valley for the Flathead Reservation in the Jocko. In just a few paragraphs, the author captures the importance of place in her writing, clearly delineating the many ways the character is connected to her homeland. 

In my full-title school, many (if not most) of my students have had lives disrupted with frequent moves.  My students will probably readily identify with the experience of being uprooted.  Students could take segments of the piece and arrange them into a "Found Poem" as a close reading exercise, similar to the "Word Mover" tool that can be found on the ReadWriteThink site.  The Word Mover tool uses Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, but the "Connected To Everything" story uses equally powerful words, and would be more easily understood by my students.

The students would enjoy the process of seeking out the most powerful segments, copying, pasting, arranging and formatting.  Along the way, they would learn valuable text editing skills too!

For older students and adults, the short film The Worst Thing They Ever Done offers a sobering overview of how the Indian Allotment Act affected the residents of the Flathead Reservation. The testimonials of Tribal elders echo the sentiments of the speaker in Connected To Everything, and illustrate the pain and injustice inflicted upon the tribe. The film does end on a positive and hopeful note, as much of the lands are slowly being regained by the Tribe.

i was trying to find a segment that might be used with young learners.  I am thinking that the segment at about 12:00 might work to accompany the Connected To Everything piece, as it really drives home the idea that the indians "were not the visitors"  although they were made to feel as if they were.  The map above shows the regrettable loss of native lands due to the allotment act.

Native American poetry

The recordings from Heart of the Bitterroot are exactly what I needed to help inspire my young poets. The students can listen for the use of common poetic devices, such as repetition, breaks, and imagery.

The recordings also show the children how powerful a reading can be when paced properly and enhanced with background music. This collection will be a great model for them when they record and publish their own original work.

Each year, I have my students use Audacity, a free audio editing program to record their poetry readings. We then publish the recordings as podcasts as well as putting them on MP3 players for checkout from the library. It's a great project which addresses numerous Common Core standards.

The Legend of the Bitterroot

My 3rd grade classes are just beginning a unit on the Salish. I somehow hadn't seen theJohnny Arleebook aboutthe Bitterroot legend, so I intend to share this with the kids immediately. Until I get a print copy, it's great to have the book published in digital format. I also love an ebook, because i can use my digital projector so the whole class can read together and admire the illustrations.

I only have them for half an hour each week, so my lessons have to be "fast and furious". I thought it would be neat to have the students make a Bitterroot plant model to "fix the story" in their minds. Online, I found a coloring page, but no actual ideas for creating a model. I am thinking that I could do something with pipe cleaners and tissue paper, perhaps making the tuber with layers of masking tape???

Stories of Fire

Snow is blanketing the ground this week. It's the perfect time of year to tell stories that help define our human relationship with fire.

Almost every culture has interesting accounts of how people obtained fire. In Ancient Greece, Prometheus steals it from the gods and delivers it to mankind. I use a version found inD'Aulaire's Book of Greek Mythologyto read to the children.

In some Native folklore, Coyote, Raven, or some other animal was responsible for bringing fire. I am lucky to have several beautifully illustrated picture books in the library collection, including Rainbow Crow, Coyote Steals Fire, and How Beaver Stole Fire(from our own local Salish tribe)

In the library the third graders will be hearing a number of fire stories, as well as playing a traditional Native game called "FireKeeper". I would like to have the visitthis siteto read more Native fire stories, and perhaps illustrate and/or retell one that particularly resonates. (Not all stories are intended for young listeners, so if one is intending to use this site, link to each story individually!)