Tachquoak - Fall
The Cradleboard Project
The Cradleboard
Teaching Project turns on the lights in public
education about Native American culture - past, present, and most
important for the children - the Future. It comes out of Indian country,
and reaches far beyond, into the mainstream classroom and into the
future of education.
Backed by lesson plans and an excellent curriculum,
the Cradleboard Teaching Project is also live and interactive, and
totally unique; children learn with and through their long-distance
peers using the new technology alongside standard tools, and delivering
the truth to little kids with the help of several American Indian
colleges. Cradleboard reaches both Indian and non-Indian children with
positive realities, while they are young.
This is the way of the future when it comes to
offering a cultural study unit to a child, because it's alive! This is
the future when it comes to offering the cultural "real deal" to
youngsters half a globe away, in time, we hope, to benefit the lives of
Indian children who wonder "Who am I?...and who do others think I am?"
During the five years that Buffy Sainte-Marie spent
as a semi-regular on "Sesame Street", it was always her hope to convey
in the Native American episodes one message above all:
Indians Exist.
We are alive and real, and we have fun
and friends and families and a whole lot to contribute to the rest of
the world through our reality.
It's our hope at Cradleboard that we can joyfully
replace the old inaccuracies, with reality, delivered by teams of
experts; to the lifelong benefit of Indian children; and that every
mainstream child will have access to an enriching Native studies unit
provided by Indian people, including children of his or her own age.
Cradleboard
(krad-l-bord) a frame, made of natural materials, used by North American
Indians to carry a child. The cradleboard style varies from tribe to
tribe. It is flexible in use, protective and decorative; a Native
American invention much appreciated by other cultures who have adapted
the idea to their own uses.