Volume 17 Number 2
January 1978

Donald K. Sharpes

AS DO all American public schools, schools controlled by American Indian school boards are confronted with the issue of how to improve the curriculum and the relevancy of what is taught. In the effort to be distinct and different as American Indians, and yet to use innovative approaches from the public schools, they are facing the problems all new schools face as they strive to discover their central purposes. They are adjusting to the newness of the schools they control, while resolving what it means to be an American Indian.

The problem in curriculum development, then, is two-fold: to identify with and be distinctly American Indian, and to become educated to cope with the modern world. To be educated without addressing the question of background and ancestry is insufficient. Every man and woman is educated through and in his own culture. There is no systematized American Indian school system through which a specific curriculum for American Indians can be transmitted, and within which American Indian children and youth can identify. Each school is as distinct as is each tribe.

The North American Indian has a deep and abiding reverence for all of nature and living things. He is patient with the living earth, and knows that it cannot be technologically disturbed without damage. That sense of mystery and love that has so permeated his past ought to be the central core around which the school’s curriculum is designed.

Some of these elements could include:

• the protection of life, health and living
• the securing of a living
• the securing of learning (education in the formal sense notwithstanding)
• expressing emotions and beliefs
• working in groups (the development of social and civic responsibilities)

The total curriculum is to be an aid in the development of meaning for the American Indian child within the context of the native tribal culture, and the total American Indian milieu. He must learn to come to grips with the two worlds of the Indian and non-Indian.

The child will learn not only the nature and extent of the world around him and his relation to it, but the peculiar values of that nature the tribe has traditionally held. The world of flora and fauna and weather have peculiar features that are regional, and the meaning each tribe places on weather, for example, can profoundly affect the values the child learns.

The major curriculum premise is that curricula for American Indian schools be environmentally oriented.

I would propose that the curriculum for American Indian controlled schools consists of several inter-related elements. I would propose that the principal themes could be:

I. Energy and Matter—could consist of math, and the physical and natural sciences.

II. Language and Culture—would allow for the teaching and learning of language(s), the social sciences, and Indian ways and life.

III. Spirit and Life—permits the development of art and literature, poetry, religion, and the spirit ways of the tribe.

IV. Law and Economics—will consist of the development of consumer skills, the roots of law, order, and justice, and managing money and other resources.

V. Physical Development and Health—allows the school to aid in the development of the physical well-being of the child, his psychomotor skills and attitude, emotional and mental health and capabilities.

These five general themes or patterns will allow for the introduction of distinctly American Indian content offerings, while preserving the best of the traditional public school curriculum. Within the general context of the environment, these five broad areas can provide an integrated and unified approach to other content areas or subjects planned.

Assuming the environment as the central theme, let’s take an example of what a curricular unit might look like in the general area of Energy and Matter. This broad area could encompass the basic skills of math, and the physical and natural sciences. But its principal objective would be in the application of the use of those basic skills in solving problems in the broad area of Energy and Matter.

A typical unit, or series of units, might look like this:

The mathematics component could be the use and application of measuring skills to solve problems associated with the environment and its use. This could be done at all age or grade levels. Students could find out about their community land resources and investigate county or regional libraries to find out what information is used in the determination of decisions about land use and water use. Thus, a constant problem in curriculum design—integration—could be accomplished with a built-in integrated force, the environment as the central curriculum emphasis.

This particular example of a curricular unit could further be differentiated by showing how the land protects life and hinders it, how it secures a living, how it is a source of learning, how emotions are expressed about it, etc., thus further helping to integrate the relationship between the American Indian child and his native environment.

The important point in this development is that the basic skill, mathematics for example, does not itself become the subject to be taught, rather, a human environmental problem becomes the focus and all traditionally known disciplines or subjects are used as tools to solve problems. The broad area of Energy and Matter does not itself become the sole subject to be known, but the theme around which curricular units the community desires essential to know can be learned by the students. All of these broad areas can be revised as appropriate to accommodate the interest of the tribal community.

The twin main goals of a Native American curriculum: planning for curricular innovation, and reform for Native American schools, are compatible and interrelated. The preservation of the enormously rich heritage of all Native American groups needs local institutional support. The Indian controlled school is the central institution which can commit itself to insuring that heritage’s preservation.