Foreword

Linda E. Oxendine, PhD, Professor Emeritus, UNC Pembroke

Kim Blaeser, noted Ojibwe writer, observes in Stories Migrating Home (1999), that in the process of educating or training our young people, American Indians do not “instruct” but rather we “story” our children. I think most Indian people would agree. Teaching through oral tradition is a process of tribal education and has been since time before memory. Lessons in developing survival skills, explaining natural phenomena, understanding tribal histories and establishing moral values and acceptable behavior still are transmitted through the spoken word. Oral tradition is a time honored method which not only educates but also serves as a linkage through which tribal peoples can connect and reconnect with the members of their tribal communities. Common cultural knowledge becomes the glue bonding a people together while establishing and maintaining membership into the group. For Indigenous people, the most important purveyors of this cultural knowledge are our elders, those venerable tribal people of experience and wisdom who carry the responsibility of not only cultural transmission but community connection as well. It is their knowledge and teachings, their stories, that for centuries have sustained the unique world view of American Indian people and their communities. It is elder teachings which have provided the thread of continuity that for centuries has held tribal peoples together.

Today, in modern classrooms, particularly in higher education institutions, in which Native American courses are taught, integrating this elder knowledge and instructional methodology into the curriculum often becomes problematic. In many academic situations, instructors assume their only access to any form of elder teaching or traditional knowledge is through a written text taught in a linear process. What once began as oral tradition now may be filtered through several layers of interpretation often resulting in either distorted information or misrepresentation. The essence of elder teaching becomes flat or two dimensional omitting the experiential aspect of the process.

The First Nations Program at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay has developed a multi-faceted approach to address this issue of accessing elder teachings, both in content and in process, for their students and faculty. Culture based teaching methods based on the three tribal r’s: respect, reciprocity and relationship plus the fourth “r” of responsibility form the basis of the program and its curricula. The concept of the four pillars of Indigenous philosophy: Indigenous intellect, sovereignty, law and policies, and history underpin the fusion process developed to introduce and eventually integrate Native American thought and worldview into other disciplines. The fusion project is designed to create expanding concentric circles rippling from the base of elder knowledge through other aspects of the Academy. Traditional practices as the memory circle and the circle of learning impose a teaching/learning situation which at one time came naturally but now must be modified to fit a modern classroom environment.

The Oral Concentration component of the First Nations Program is perhaps the most exciting and assuredly the most challenging. Allowing students the opportunity to interact directly with tribal elders replicates a process with centuries of history supporting it. The traditional system of elder teaching that once provided time and encouragement from which students could learn today has been replaced by busy schedules or other societal demands as well as by electronic information and other technology. Through the Oral Concentration, students must slow down, sit down and listen to the important stories older tribal members have to share. It is a way of instruction that cannot be replicated in a textbook or in any formal classroom setting. The Oral Concentration process reclaims and validates elder knowledge in both context and content, and as education should do, opens our understanding to include learning processes other than the conventional linear classroom.

I call my own narrative “jumping off the porch.” My cousin Ruth stopped me one day and asked if I remembered when we used to jump off the porch at her grandmother’s house (her grandmother was my grandmother’s sister). I quickly said yes and we began reminiscing about those days of our childhood. Many Sunday afternoons, my family would go with my grandmother “Sugar” to visit her sister, my great Aunt Emma. The routine was the same each time. While the adults sat and talked, the children would play games out in the yard under the trees. The most fun and the most daring, however, was jumping off the front porch. We would take turns jumping off the three foot high porch of the farm house onto the sandy ground. When we got tired or needed a break, we would stop to listen to the older people talk. There was no interruption; it was not allowed. We would sit and listen until we were restless and then we would return to jumping again. It was such a wonderful way to connect with the older folks and of course to learn. After reflecting on these times with much laughter and sometimes a little sadness, Ruth and I remarked what a loss it was that our tribal children today no longer have the time nor the means to “jump off the porch,” to surround themselves with the elders, to hear the important things they have to say and to experience the security of belonging to a time honored tradition. Fortunately, efforts as the First Nations Program at UWGB are finding answers by providing educational “porches” from which young people can pause and learn the valuable knowledge from our elders which is so integral to the survival of the cultural traditions of tribal peoples. It is a good thing not only for our tribal communities but for the Academy as well.

Blaeser, K. 1999. Stories Migrating Home. Bemidji, MN: Loonfeather Press.