Native American Series 2 | Connor Chee, Navajo Pianist and Composer | Interviewed by Jennifer Purdy

05/12/22 • 39 min

Artful Teaching

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Native American Series 2 | Amplify Native Voices in the Classroom Online Course | Heather Francis and Stephanie West

Amplify Native Voices in the Classroom is an asynchronous and interactive online course developed by the BYU ARTS Partnership. The course includes approximately 14 hours of instruction, two projects, and several discussion board activities. Teachers can earn 1 USBE credit for successful completion of the course. The course is open to all educators from Pre-K to High School.

By the end of the NACI PD course teachers will be able to

Honor and analyze their own culture and Native American cultures by creating a [artistic artifact] that explores culture and identity;
Empathize with Native American Tribes in Utah by reflecting and synthesizing what they learned while exploring interactive timelines that represent the past and present context of each socially and politically distinct tribe
Select accurate and authentic resources by practicing strategies for identifying culturally responsible resources
Articulate their own principles/framework for culturally responsive teaching that elucidates the connections they have made between their own culture, their student’s cultures, their teaching practice, and the NACI model through a written reflection, artistic work, or video presentation.

Each course will be moderated by a facilitator from the BYU ARTS Partnership Leadership Team. You are given one year to complete the course.

The course is available for teachers publically beginning June 7th, 2022. You can register for the course on MIDAS for USBE or relicensure credit or email [email protected] for more details.

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Native American Series 2 | Frog’s Teeth | Dovie Thomason, Storyteller

Dovie Thomason at the Arts Express Summer Conference 2022

Today, we have a treat for you—-a sneak peek of what you’ll get at Arts Express Summer Conference from one of our fabulous presenters, Dovie Thomason, a Native American storyteller and author. After we tell you a bit more about Dovie and her experiences, we will share a recording of one of the stories she performed and recorded for the Utah Division of Arts and Museums in 2020, titled “Frog’s Teeth.”

The Story Behind the Story “Frog’s Teeth”

This story comes from a series titled “Stories Grandma Told Me.” This is not a story Dovie heard from her grandma. It was a story given to her when she was the mother of a child beginning to lose their teeth. The person who gave Dovie this story received it from her father’s traditions as part of the Oneida First Nation in Ontario, Canada.

We thank Jean Tokuda Irwin and our partners at the Utah Division of Arts and Museums for granting permission to use this recording and for introducing us to Dovie and sponsoring her at Arts Express this summer as a keynote speaker and presenter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGD_KkI4Ibg

Dovie Thomason Biography

Coming from the rich oral tradition of her Lakota and Plains Apache family, Dovie Thomason has had a lifetime of listening and telling the traditional Native stories that are the cultural “heartsong” of community values and memory. Both wise and mischievous, Dovie unfolds the layers of her indigenous worldview and teachings with respect, sly humor and rich vocal transformations.

When she adds personal stories and untold histories, the result is a contemporary narrative of Indigenous North America told with elegance, wit, and passion. Her programs are a heartfelt sharing of Native stories she has had the privilege of hearing from Elders of many nations and are woven with why we need stories, how stories are a cultural guide in shaping values and making responsible choices, how stories build communities and celebrates our relationship with the Earth and all living beings.

The oral tradition she gifts to listeners inspires delight in spoken language arts, encourages reading, supports literacy, can be used in classrooms to motivate better writing as students experience storytelling techniques, literary devices and effective communication. All of this takes place while they are exploring their own narratives and family values. Dovie has represented the U.S. as the featured storyteller throughout the world.

In 2015, she was honored as the storyteller-writer in residence at the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba in Canada. Dovie has used her storytelling to advise the UCLA Film School on narrative in modern film, NASA on indigenous views of technology, the Smithsonian Associates’ Scholars Program and the premier TEDx Leadership Conference. Her role as a traditional cultural artist and educator has been honored by the National Storytelling Network’s ORACLE: Circle of Excellence Award and the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers’ Traditional Storyteller Award.