syəcəb
Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
Elders and tribal leaders from the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe teach a group of children in the summer youth enrichment program to gather cedar and prepare it for use in traditional crafts such as headbands and baskets.
Upper Skagit Tribe youth gather cedar from NW Indian Fisheries Commission on Vimeo.
By Jerry Cornfield, The Herald
OLYMPIA — Nearly 18,000 more kindergartners will be attending school all day this fall on the state’s dime but none of them will be enrolled in Mukilteo School District.
Lawmakers’ decision to put $90 million more in the state budget for all-day kindergarten will benefit students at 269 elementary schools in Washington including several in Snohomish County.
Funds will be available for students at four campuses each in Everett and Marysville school districts, according to a list released Monday by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Also on the list are three schools in the Edmonds district and one campus apiece in the Sultan, Monroe, Darrington, Skykomish, and Oak Harbor districts.
Monday’s announcement by the state is good news for districts like Everett and Edmonds, which had been beefing up their preschool programs.
“The full-day kindergarten funding is another critical part of our efforts to get kids off to a good, solid start,” said Mary Waggoner, director of communications for Everett schools.
The Mukilteo School District stood alone Monday by not accepting $1.6 million to serve a projected 653 incoming kindergarten students, because it doesn’t have classroom space on the five elementary campuses where they would enroll.
While 33 other districts did turn down state money, none came close to rejecting the sum of money or affecting the number of students as Mukilteo.
“It is frustrating. It is not as if we don’t want the money,” district spokesman Andy Muntz said. “The problem is you need more classrooms and we simply don’t have them.”
Washington lawmakers set out in 2006 to fund all-day kindergarten in every public school district by the fall of 2017.
Lacking money to do it in one full swing, they started by aiding schools with the highest percentage of students living in poverty based on the number enrolled in the federal Free and Reduced Lunch program.
Last year, Washington had 80,258 kindergartners in its public schools. Of those, the state paid for a full day of instruction for 17,603 students and a half-day for 42,367.
Another 20,288 students attended all-day kindergarten in which half came from the state and the rest from a district or private tuition.
This year, lawmakers included the $90 million for expanding all-day kindergarten programs in the additional $1 billion they steered into basic education.
As a result, the number of students eligible for state-funded all-day instruction will grow by 17,817 to 35,420.
But none of those will be in the Mukilteo School District where 1,138 kindergartners attended last year, Muntz said. The vast majority was in half-day programs and the rest in the combination of state and non-state funded instruction.
The district’s problem is simple math.
Today, two half-day kindergarten classes can share one classroom. If both became full-day, another classroom would be needed. The district doesn’t have any and now relies on portables to handle overcrowded campuses.
Mukilteo school leaders anticipated a day like this might come. For seven years they’ve wrestled with the vexing challenges of increasing enrollment and an electorate unwilling to approve financing to build facilities including a new elementary school.
The school board put bond measures on the ballot once in 2006 and twice in 2008, all without success. Each measure had support of a majority of voters but none received the 60 percent required for passage. In the past five years, enrollment has risen by roughly 550 students.
“Our elementary schools are already overcrowded and one of the unfortunate consequences of overcrowding is that we simply don’t have the additional classrooms available to make full-day kindergarten happen,” Mukilteo School District Superintendent Marci Larsen said in a statement. “Our school board is currently considering options that could result in a bond proposal that would fund the construction of more elementary space.”
Muntz said voters could see the proposal next February.
Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
Newly funded schools include:
Darrington Elementary (Darrington School District); College Place, Chase Lake, Spruce (Edmonds School District); Madison, Emerson, Lowell, Jackson (Everett School District); Liberty, Quil Ceda, Shoultes, Marshall (Marysville School District); Frank Wagner (Monroe School Disctrict); Olympic View (Oak Harbor School District); Gold Bar (Sultan School District)
Source: TRAVOIS
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Aug. 5, 2013) — Representatives from tribal housing authorities and economic development organizations throughout Indian Country will travel to Kansas City at the end of the summer for the 13th Annual Travois Indian Country Affordable Housing & Economic Development Conference. The conference is scheduled for Sept. 16–19 in Travois’ hometown, and will be hosted at the Kansas City Marriott Country Club Plaza. Attendees can expect to hear the stories of successful developments: new and rehabilitated homes for tribal members and economic development projects that have provided desperately needed jobs and services for American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians.
Conference attendees will include tribal housing authority staff (executive directors, occupancy and resident services staff), tribal housing board members, tribal chairmen and women, tribal council members, tribal economic development staff, tribal college presidents, administrators and finance staff, along with tax credit support staff. Attendees can expect to get in-depth information and tips on the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, the New Markets Tax Credit program, asset management/compliance, green building, architectural design, inspections, environmental services and more.
Tatanka Means will be this year’s keynote speaker. Means is an accomplished actor, comedian, entrepreneur and equality advocate from Chinle, Ariz., who represents the Oglala Lakota, Omaha and Navajo nations. He is the son of Russell Means, the influential member of the American Indian Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and he follows in his father’s footsteps as an advocate for equality and advancement for Native Americans. Means will present during Tuesday’s lunch.
Besides conference sessions and presentations, attendees are invited to a range of optional activities: a Kansas City barbeque showdown at the annual welcome reception, 18 holes of golf, a tour of the American Indian art collection at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, a night of dueling pianos at the Kansas City Power & Light District, and a trip to Ameristar Casino. To register for the conference, or for more information, visit: www.travois.com.
Wells Fargo is the Presenting Sponsor of the 13th Annual Conference. Over the last ten years, Wells Fargo has invested $36.7 million in 17 American Indian community projects in housing and economic development, and has made 224 community development loans totaling $781 million to Native Alaskan, tribal nations and Native American community organizations.
About Travois
Travois is the leading housing and economic development consulting firm in Indian Country. Since 1995, Travois has brought more than $450 million in private equity capital to Indian Country, which has helped build or rehabilitate more than 4,200 homes through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, and has brought nearly $50 million in private equity capital for tribal economic development. The Travois family of companies offers housing and economic development assistance, architectural design and inspection services, environmental assessments, consulting on green energy improvements, asset management services and comprehensive training to the nation’s American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian population with clients in 18 states, from Hawaii to Maine. For more information, please visit www.travois.com.
About Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo & Company is a nationwide, diversified, community-based financial services company with $1.4 trillion in assets. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, insurance, investments, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance through more than 9,000 stores, 12,000 ATMs, and the Internet (wellsfargo.com), and has offices in more than 35 countries to support the bank’s customers who conduct business in the global economy. With more than 270,000 team members, Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 25 on Fortune’s 2013 rankings of America’s largest corporations. Wells Fargo’s vision is to satisfy all our customers’ financial needs and help them succeed financially.
Jack McNeel, Indian Country Today Media Network
Sweating and digging in the Montana sun may not be most student’s idea of how to spend the summer, but seven Salish Kootenai College students did just that for six weeks as part of the requirement toward a degree in tribal historic preservation, the first such program in the nation.
RELATED: Salish Kootenai College Graduates First Tribal Historic Preservation Class
“The main reason for this summer study is to learn archaeological techniques,” said Dr. Jeff Bendremer, an instructor at the college.
Archaeology is typically not a positive subject among Native Americans, but the opportunity to learn and practice the procedures, combined with being able to see it through a different cultural perspective, holds great promise for the future.
Jennifer Phelps, from the Ponca of Nebraska Tribe, thought the summer program was “outstanding, especially to break ground as an indigenous field school. It’s something new and something that hopefully will be looked at from a different approach. It’s coming from a Native perspective. It’s something our ancestors had. We’re not here to disturb everything, just find out what was here. Were our ancestors here and what did they do here? How did they live?”
![Jennifer Phelps, Ponca of Nebraska, says “When we do it [archaeology] it’s done in a respectful manner.” (Jackie McNeel)](https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/sites/default/files/default/files/uploads/jennifer-phelps-ponca-salish-kootenai-college_0.jpg)
The first week was spent at Fort Connah, a Hudson’s Bay Trading Post built in 1846 in what is now Ronan, Montana. Salish Student Katie McDonald had a personal connection to the site because one of her ancestors ran the post in those early days.
The students learned to use archaeology techniques like ground penetrating radar and magnetometry, neither of which disturbs the soil, and worked with a tethered blimp for low level aerial photography in both visible light and infrared.
“It allowed us to pinpoint any kind of metals,” McDonald explained. “We can give coordinates of where it was so the people who own the land now, [Fort Connah Preservation Society] it’s up to them what to do with it. Our job was just to find it.”
The following three weeks were spent at Grant-Kohrs Ranch in Deer Lodge, Montana, once a 10 million acre ranch dating to 1862 and now a National Historic Site. The National Park Service has proposed building a new visitor center, but artifacts found raised some questions and the archaeology class was asked to come and investigate, “so they can make an informed decision about if their visitor center should be built on this site,” Bendremer explained.
Students dug excavation units throughout the site and located a well that had been covered over, the apparent foundation for the house and possible chimney, plus a variety of pieces of glass and metal.
“This is more real archaeological work,” McDonald commented. “You’re in the dirt. You’re finding different things. We’re able to put them away, write down where we found it, how deep in the dirt, and the stratigraphy. Ground levels will be able to tell us time periods. The best things to find are those with a date or a maker’s mark.”
Angela Iukes, Nez Perce from the Colville Reservation, talked of the physical work. “I knew it was going to be a lot of work but I didn’t know how much. We’re going to leave here really buff,” she laughed. Despite that, she plans to come back for the advanced course in the future.
The final week of the summer program was spent on the Flathead Reservation in western Montana with the approval of the tribal council.
“The aim of our program is to train Native students who can speak the language of their people, but also be able to converse with federal officials, with anthropologists and archaeologists” Bendremer said. “They will be able to go between these two communities and understand them and have a high degree of training to be able to negotiate all these complicated relationships: state, federal, private donors, tribes, and the great panoply of different jurisdictions. It’s very difficult but these students will have the training in both the culture and the language of cultural resource management as well.”
Read more at https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/08/01/students-get-down-and-dirty-learning-archaeology-summer-150671
Early Head Start will be hosting an Art Auction on August 15, 2013. It will be held in the Early Head Start gymnasium, 7615 Totem Beach Rd Marysville, WA 98271, from 2-6 p.m.
Children’s artwork, from ages birth to 4 years old, will be auctioned off. The proceeds will go towards the Early Head Start end of the year celebration and for art supplies for the children’s classrooms.
Please come enjoy all the fine art that these children have made.
It started with a spark — an interest in green energy. This glimmer of curiosity led Lyle Wilson, an instructor at Oglala Lakota College in South Dakota and U.S. Army veteran, to start researching renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind and geothermal. Now sparked by Lyle’s interest, members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation are finding new possibilities in their clean energy capabilities.
July 24, 2013 Energy.gov
Minh Le
Program Manager, Solar Program
As part of his work at Oglala Lakota College, Lyle works with students in the applied sciences department to construct houses for members of the tribe. He envisioned taking the work a step further by integrating solar panels into new homes to help reduce power bills. To make it happen, Lyle reached out to Solar Energy International (SEI), which helps coordinate solar training courses for the Energy Department’s Solar Instructor Training Network.
From there, a group of students and instructors at the college signed on for SEI’s Photovoltaic (PV) 101: Solar Design and Installation course, in which they set up their first grid-tied photovoltaic system. This introduction served as fuel for their solar fire. Next, about 20 people took part in SEI’s PV 203: Solar Electric Design (Battery-Based) class. This course allowed them to install two 250-watt solar panels on their construction trailer.
“Most kids don’t want to sit in class — they want to get out and do things,” said Lyle. “We did a short one-day lesson in the classroom then went down to the yard and designed, connected, and built the system over two days. Our students were actually sort of stunned to learn how easy it is to do something like this once they understand the fundamental concepts.”
The mobile solar energy system built through the PV 203 course now provides enough power to run electric tools at construction sites, supports community service projects and serves as an educational resource for school-aged children.
Lyle sees these accomplishments as just the start. With more knowledge, more possibilities come into focus. Up next, the students hope to take another SITN course on setting up their own power grid. This would offer potential savings for the tribe, provide a degree of energy independence and empower students by bringing new job skills into the community.
“We could install 40 panels as a test to see how much money we could save by getting power from the sun,” said Lyle. “Then we could pass that information on to the tribe.”
Source: Washington Education Association
On Wednesday, July 31, about 100 teachers, school employees and union members will paint, garden and clean up the grounds at Totem Middle School in Marysville. The work party will help get the school ready for students this fall and is a community service project of the Washington Education Association. WEA is hosting its annual “Summer U” professional development conference in Marysville this week.
“Since we were coming to Marysville for our annual training program, we wanted to celebrate Totem’s recent academic progress, which is due in part to the school’s federal School Improvement Grant,” said WEA President Kim Mead. “The grant demonstrated that a critical key to success is having everyone – teachers, support staff, principals and parents – all focused on the common goal of improving student success. Organizing the work party to help prep the school for another year was a natural extension of this work.”
Who: Washington Education Association members and some local parents.
What: Painting and gardening work project
Where: Totem Middle School in Marysville, 1605 Seventh St., Marysville
When: 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, July 31, 201
Why: WEA Community Service Project
Source: Indian Country Today Media Network
The American Indian College Fund announced that the United Health Foundation’s Diverse Scholars Initiative has awarded copy00,000 for scholarships to 18 academically deserving Native students pursuing health or health-related degrees.
The scholarships were announced at the fifth annual Diverse Scholars Forum, which brings more than 60 scholarship recipients to Washington, D.C., July 24-26 to celebrate the scholars and inspire them to work toward strengthening the nation’s health care system. This year’s event gives these future health care professionals the opportunity to meet and interact with members of Congress and leaders from a variety of health care fields.
Five scholarships will be awarded to New Mexico tribal college students attending Navajo Technical College; five scholarships will be awarded to Arizona tribal college students attending Dine College or Tohono O’odham Community College; four scholarships will be awarded to students attending Northern Arizona University, Arizona State University, Grand Canyon University, or the University of Arizona; and four scholarships will be awarded to students attending San Juan College-Farmington, University of New Mexico-Albuquerque, or Western New Mexico University.
According to the American Medical Association and Association of American Medical Colleges, the number of multicultural health professionals is disproportionately low when compared to the overall population. For example, while about 15 percent of the U.S. population is Hispanic/Latino, only 5 percent of physicians and 4 percent of registered nurses are Hispanic/Latino. About 12 percent of the population is African American, yet only 6 percent of physicians and 5 percent of registered nurses are African American.
Given the changing demographics in the United States and the volumes of people entering the health care system due to the Affordable Care Act, there is an even greater need for a more diverse health care workforce.
Research shows that when patients are treated by health professionals who share their language, culture and ethnicity, they are more likely to accept and adopt the medical treatment they receive[1]. Increasing the diversity of health care providers will reduce the shortage of medical professionals in underserved areas, reduce inequities in academic medicine and address variables — such as language barriers — that make it difficult for patients to navigate the health care system.
The scholarships announced today are part of United Health Foundation’s Diverse Scholars Initiative, which has provided nearly $2 million in scholarships this year through partnerships with organizations like the American Indian College Fund. The initiative aims to increase diversity in the health care workforce by supporting promising future health professionals.
“We are grateful for the opportunity to support these exceptional students in their efforts to achieve their educational goals and work to improve our health care system,” said Kate Rubin, president of United Health Foundation. “The Diverse Scholars Initiative helps these scholars fund their education, and gives them an opportunity to learn from one another and interact with experts who are leading the way in improving patient care.”
“The American Indian College Fund is thrilled to continue its partnership with the United Health Foundation. Inequity in health care combined with the highest rates of diabetes, cancer, and other serious diseases have created a vital need for Native health care professionals across Indian Country. These scholarships will help train the next generation of Native healers,” said Dr. Cheryl Crazy Bull, President and CEO of the American Indian College Fund.
For more information about the Diverse Scholars Initiative, visit www.unitedhealthfoundation.org/dsi.html.
About the American Indian College Fund
With its credo “Educating the Mind and Spirit,” The American Indian College Fund is the premier scholarship organization for Native students. Created in 1989 to provide scholarships and support for 34 of the nation’s tribal colleges, the Fund receives top ratings from independent charity evaluators, including the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance, and received its third consecutive four-star rating from Charity Navigator. It provides more than 4,200 Native students with scholarships annually.
About United Health Foundation
Guided by a passion to help people live healthier lives, United Health Foundation provides helpful information to support decisions that lead to better health outcomes and healthier communities. The Foundation also supports activities that expand access to quality health care services for those in challenging circumstances and partners with others to improve the well-being of communities. Since established by UnitedHealth Group [NYSE: UNH] in 1999 as a not-for-profit, private foundation, the Foundation has committed more than $210 million to improve health and health care. For more information, visit www.unitedhealthfoundation.org.
Read more at https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/07/28/100000-awarded-18-native-students-pursuing-health-degrees-150619
Rob Capriccioso, Indian Country Today Media Network
At the beginning of the Obama administration, there was major hope from Indian education advocates that Native-friendly policies could be enacted that would shift the federal focus from rigid criteria-based testing to making sure Indian students were actually succeeding in culturally relevant ways. After five years, hopes have waned, and protecting the status quo has become the next best option.
In 2009, the first year of President Barack Obama’s two terms, Natives had just experienced a tough 8-year stretch under the George W. Bush administration’s famous No Child Left Behind regime, where federal dollars were spent beefing up testing standards, and states—not tribes—were charged with leading the efforts.
Native culture, learning methods, and tribal language development were largely not on the minds of federal policy makers when the law was passed, nor on the minds of many state officials who had to implement the plan. Major opportunities to address the needs of Indian children were missed, lamented a plethora of tribal advocates. Test scores, some which showed Indian students scoring very low on the new standardized testing, soon proved that something was amiss.
With Bush gone and the No Child Left Behind Act, otherwise known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), coming up for reauthorization, Indian educators worked feverishly in the early Obama years to ensure their goals were met. Congressional briefings were held, White House connections were established, and Indian advocacy organizations got their messages out to the major education players.
There were early successes. Arne Duncan, the sole education secretary under the Obama administration to date, made contact, and he continues to do some major outreach to tribes to better understand their concerns. William Mendoza was appointed director of White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education in late-2011, and he has since admitted that federal bureaucracy has been too siloed in addressing Indian education needs—that there needs to be greater coordination between tribes and the Departments of the Interior and Education and Health and Human Services (a point Indian educators have long been making).
But the successes have been small, funding cuts have occurred under federal sequestration, and the ESEA has still not been reauthorized. Gridlock in Congress is one reason. Another, education experts from both political parties agree, is because Obama issued waivers to some of the parts of the Bush program that state educators disliked most, so a push for major reform ended up being sidelined.
“It’s been a recipe for protecting the status quo—that hasn’t been a great thing for Native students,” said Quinton Roman Nose, director of the Tribal Education Departments National Assembly.
“The reauthorization of the ESEA is way past due because the Obama administration has had problems building a consensus to get it done,” he assessed.
“Frustrated” is the best word to describe Native educators who have concurrently been forced to fend off further cuts proposed by Congress, Roman Nose said.
For instance, last week Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) received credit for amending H.R. 5, the Student Success Act, to prevent major reduction in funds and initiatives for American Indian and Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students. RELATED: Critical, Last-Minute Save For Indian Education
It was a success that leaders with the National Indian Education Association were forced to grit their teeth through. While celebrating the fact that more money wasn’t taken away, NIEA President Heather Shotton noted in a statement that the organization “does have strong concerns about H.R. 5 overall because it does not include our education priorities.” Those education priorities include strengthening tribal participation in education, preserving and revitalizing Native languages, providing tribes with access to the student records of tribal citizens, encouraging tribal-state partnerships, and equitably funding the Bureau of Indian Education. In other words, the same priorities that haven’t been acted on for years.
NIEA also wanted to make clear that it was not Young alone who protected Indian education. “[T]he story behind the passage of the amendment is one that really includes the work of Native organizations such as NIEA and tribes, who worked tirelessly for its passage,” said spokesman RiShawn Biddle, noting also that the amendment was offered by Young, as well as Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), and Betty McCollum (D-MN).
No matter who received the credit, a cut was avoided, but how to move forward to get the real priorities addressed?
The message, for now, seems to be the same as it was at the beginning of Obama’s tenure: “We look forward to working with all congressional leaders, as well as with the Obama administration, on crafting a new version of the No Child Left Behind Act/Elementary and Secondary Education Act that advances equity for our American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children,” Shotton said in a statement. RELATED: No Child Left Behind Act: A Bust in Indian Country
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/07/25/indian-education-bold-plans-protecting-status-quo-150586
Alex Jacobs, Indian Country Today Media Network
For 18 years, Clayton Brascoupe, director of Traditional Native American Farmers Association, has taught a course called Indigenous Sustainable Communities Design. The stories of how people and communities have been affected are powerful.
• There were the South American students who took back their knowledge and heritage seeds to create gardens and build a new community house. They grew a certain yellow watermelon and when presented to the elders at a fiesta, they began to cry because they hadn’t tasted the fruit since they were children. They were also recognized at the national level for this community work.
• Then there was the phone call Clayton received from the mother of a young man from Arizona. She asked what they had done to her son, because he had completely changed from a game-playing couch potato into an engaged busy gardener.
• Another young man returned home to Los Angeles to start urban gardens, but his story was not quite that simple: As it turned out, he was hard-core gang member who took it upon himself to change his community by providing fresh food.
• On another occasion, the course provided a natural solution when mother nature wreaked havoc: A Mayan group from Belize learned to preserve surplus garden-grown food and marinated chicken. When hurricanes damaged everything, they still had the preserves to feed the community.
Clayton Brascoupe — known around Turtle Island as Clayton or “Scoobie” — is Mohawk and Anishnabe, and was raised in Tuscarora, NY. He married Margaret Vigil from Tesuque Pueblo, NM and they have four daughters, which is also the name of their farm “4 Sisters”. He served an appointed position on the Tesuque Pueblo Tribal Council, and has been involved in community gardens and marketing for years. We travelled together with White Roots of Peace/Akwesasne Notes on the 1973 Wounded Knee trip; Clayton returned to NM to marry Margaret, and our fellow traveler Tom Cook returned to Pine Ridge, SD to marry Loretta Afraid of Bear. I went on to become an editor of Akwesasne Notes, co-founder of Indian Time and Akwekon, Tom is now a respected member of his Lakotah community and participates in the Sun Dance. Clayton’s older brother Simon Brascoupe, was an important artist in the early development of marketing Canadian Native Arts.
Clayton’s course is a two-week hands-on grassroots workshop — it’s also, frequently, a life changing experience. Class size ranges from 20 to 25, with the most ever being 35. Locals from New Mexico, Arizona, and elsewhere in the southwest make up most of the class. There are urban Natives, as well as Natives from Canada, Central and South America. Many students return to become instructors — the staff is 98% indigenous, and many of are women. Recently there’s been a Midwifery component — the thinking being, if we can grow clean food in a non-industrial way, then why not our children?
What Clayton says is important for these students, is it to develop a resource base of knowledge in the affected communities and to become experts in their respective communities. Identify resources, land bases, elders’ knowledge, youthful energy, water sources, urban parks, markets and outlets, recycling discarded resources and discarded people too. Identify problems and solutions and use local resources to fix them, and if there aren’t enough local resources, go out in wider and broader networks to find more. Its base knowledge is agriculture, but it’s not just about planting gardens. Health care is everyone’s biggest issue and expense, but fresh food dramatically changes diet and lifestyle, positively affecting diabetes and heart disease. Food, health, economies, energy, housing, spiritual well-being, elder care, raising children, education — it all becomes inter-related.
Clayton had originally started the course as Permaculture Design but each group had different issues, so the course grew outward and became its own living organism, adapting and changing. Citing examples around Indian country, he talked about ecology and borders and what he terms eco-tones, where two environments come together. These “edges” are where things happen and exchanges are made, where there is more diversity of plants and animals. It’s the difference between a riparian area with a meandering river or a re-created “seaway”, dug out and made straight for industrial traffic. Communities become just like these traffic lanes — dollars don’t stay, they leave immediately like out a pipeline fast, instead of percolating around families. In most communities, dollars are replenished in grants instead of recycling via local diverse economies. Just like a riparian wetland or our own digestive system, there needs to be more meandering, more edges where things meet, interact and exchange, to yield more nutrients, more bang for the buck, rather than having everything of value be extracted by corporations and outside markets.
Although the course is designed for and made up of indigenous peoples, non-Natives have been students and there are usually around 5 spots for non-natives who pay the full course fee. Sometimes Native organizations or benefactors will sponsor individuals to come and learn and then go back to Native communities to teach. Participants can camp nearby, children are allowed but there’s no daycare, and there’s local food catering from San Juan (Ohkay Ohwingeh). The 2013 session of Sustainable Communities Design runs from July 28 through August 9 in Santa Cruz, New Mexico. Those interested should visit tnafanm.org/TNAFA.html for more information.
One final story: An El Salvadoran farmer comes every year driving his cooking-oil fueled pick-up truck. He fills up at restaurants (which usually have to pay to have their oil picked up), the best fuel oils are from Taiwanese, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants. The McDonalds waste cooking-oil clogs his vehicle’s engine, it won’t run; so think about that for awhile.
Alex Jacobs, Mohawk, is a visual artist and poet living in Santa Fe.
Read more at https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/07/23/teaching-indigenous-solutions-modern-agricultural-problems-150540
