The Hopi Privilege



Hopi Reservation in nowhere land

 It was a privilege to visit a Hopi reservation, the year we took the children to visit the Grand Canyon. It was in 1999.  By way of exploring more than the Grand Canyon though, we decided to go visit this reservation, fifty miles out from the beautiful landscaping of the Canyon.  As we came upon the reservation, it was with a sadness that my heart expressed as I looked over the sandy, dusty, flat landscaping with a jagged rock sticking out here and there, hilly-crusty homes peeking out from sort-of-mountainous crags.  I wanted to start crying. 

We drove up to a lonesome trailer and I dared to get out and knock on its door.  A young man answered, very  non-chalant, not surprised to see my black face or anything.  I asked if he could point me to where I could get a Katsina doll.  Imagine that.  I am embarrassed to say, that was all I could ask for.  He told me that there was a Katsina doll maker that lived higher up in the hills behind him, that he makes them also, but he did not have one painted to sell.  This was on a Sunday and the commissary was closed as well. 

I got his directions to the Katsina doll maker's house, but also asked if I could see what he had.  Going inside his trailer was an eye-opener.  There were the openings and wrappings and stuff of American life all over the place, haphazardly arranged as if the place for it to be was where it was opened last.  In the corner was his work area.  He picked up a Katsina doll that had both a male and female coming together as one, with lightning bolts extending from each head.  It was not painted.  I asked if I could buy it from him, just as it was and he sold it to me for $25.00.  I thanked him and tried to have an American conversation with  him, but I was doing most of the talking.  The Native American instinct in my own blood recognized that there was no need to engage in a long conversation of words, so I shut up.  He understood and I understood.

I finally left, returning to my family and we went looking for the other Katsina doll maker's home.  The wife turned out to be a school teacher and the husband made the dolls.  There were dolls lined against their small apartment walls, everywhere, I remember, beautifully painted, but priced way out of my purse.  Seemingly these were donned just for the souvenir seekers, like me. 

I am grateful that the young Hopi man shared his true goods with me.  I hold onto that doll and pray that the young man and countless other youth who are on dusty reservations like his, living quiet but desparate lives, out of the way of civilization, will be revived and re-counted as part of this country in a real way. 

Today's resource is a website that offers a real glimpse into the Hopi culture at http://www.nau.edu/~hcpo-p/ .  Visit the Youth and Teachers portal that offers pages on Agriculture, Arts and Crafts, Hopi Villages/Clans, Traditional Knowledge, Mining and Snowbowl and Running.  A good share with students.

Until Next Time,
Jennifer Herring, PhD

Socio-Culturally Responsive Education: ready-set-go

     With the concept of multicultural education evolving over the past twenty-thirty years as it is now, we face moving forward with the vision of 'just doing it.'  The word is out and the questions are ' where are the textbooks, where are the curricula, what does multicultural education look like in the K-12 classroom? '  I believe, piece by piece these questions are being answered, but still not quite coming together as a ready-set-go model that so many K-12 educators are accustomed to being handed.

     What is needed now are the pulling together of the pieces and giving teachers the package, or at least pointing them to the cadre of self-designed, action-responsive books, materials and tools that are there, but are all over the place.  I am prompted by the article Claiming Native Youth Knowledge:  Engaging in Socio-culturally Responsive Teaching and Relationships by authors Tiffany S. Lee and Patricia D. Cerecer, published in the October-December 2010 issue of Multicultural Perspectives.  These authors showcase how Navajo and Pueblo youth are informing educators about just what socio-culturally responsive teaching looks like, what it is for them.  These students are saying they want courses that encompass, include who they are, how they live and where they come from in this world, right now, right now.   Where are the materials, text, books, right now?
This blog will help answer those questions, providing out-of-the-way, not well known, non-mainstream curricula that are being used in the K-12 classroom.
     Each blog posting, I will feature a text, curriculum, trade-book or materials that provide opportunities for teachers to practice socio-culturally responsive education.  Allow these texts, materials to remove the boundaries, remove the borders separating students, parents, teachers and administrators.  As one Pueblo student articulated so well in the the referenced article in the preceding paragraph:  If you are a teacher you are a person of authority and you need to know that, especially if you're looking down on someone which that shouldn't happen anyway but like, you should treat them with a certain amount of respect, not just like, you know, looking down on you...sometimes I feel that from my teachers, they don't respect me or they just don't listen to me because they're trying to come up with a solution right off the bat...I think a lot of it, that comes down to, and you've probably heard this a few times is, you know, communication and respect...It's so simple yet there are a lot of things in the way...so many boundaries between teachers and students. [Multicultural Perspectives, Vol 12, No. 4, Oct-Dec 2010, p. 204].

LET'S START WITH STORYTELLING - the use of storytelling can offer 
 a dramatic narrative that not only stirs the emotions but also contributes to the cognitive power of these emotions, making particular contributions to moral learning (Winston, 1999).  Suggestions below include short stories, memoirs.

Children Tell Stories: Teaching and Using Storytelling in the Classroom 2005, Richard C. Owen, Katonah, NY (1-800-336-5588) 

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Preacher's Daughter, Preacher's Kids, Church Kids: The phenomenon of growing up crazy in the Apostolic Pentecostal Church By Jennifer Herring, 2007, Springfield, IL (217-741-2432)    This memoir captures an African American woman's life in a family of nine children, as the daughter of the preacher who converted the entire family as he travelled from the Baptist to the Apostolic Pentecostal denomination. Her story explores each sibling's response as well as her own to the strict lifestyle of the Apostolic Pentecostal. She shares her evolution in establishing her own identity, growing in her own beliefs and faith in the God of her childhood.============

Voices From The Fields: Children Of Migrant Farm Workers Tell Their Stories  Atkin, S. Beth,  

 

Powerful black and white photographs lend drama to this collection of interviews and poems, which tell the stories of Mexican-American children and their migrant families. Foreword by author Francisco Jimenez introduces the painful reality that migrant life today is as oppressive as it was thirty years ago; we continually neglect to consider the hands that carry our fruits and vegetables from the earth. The voices of the children in this book convey the hope, pride, fear, and struggles that make them unique from, and at the same time similar to, their American peers. This simple yet powerful book shines light on the weathered hands of migrant children reaching out for better opportunities, better lives. 

 

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Until next time, Jennifer C. Herring