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

05/19/22 • 15 min

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.

Links Mentioned:

Register for Arts Express
Dovie Thomason’s Website
More stories by Dovie on the Utah Division of Arts and Museums YouTube Channel

Links Mentioned:

Register for Arts Express
Dovie Thomason’s Website
More stories by Dovie on the Utah Division of Arts and Museums YouTube Channel

Previous Episode

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

Coming soon

Next Episode

STEM + Arts Series | Visual Thinking Strategies for SEEd Phenomenon Observations | Heather Francis & Tina McCulloch

Links Mentioned In This Episode:

Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie
Visual Thinking Strategies
Critique as a part of Visual Thinking Strategies

Don’t forget to peruse the bank of lesson plans produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership in dance, drama, music, visual arts, media arts, and more. Search by grade level, art form, or subject area at www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons.

How to Integrate STEM + the Arts

Heather Francis and Tina McCulloch discuss a specific arts strategy that Tina uses to help her students substantively inquire about different scientific phenomena.

As a classroom teacher, Tina was experiencing rapid changes in classroom education: new theoretical models, new curricular materials, new state standards; she noticed herself and others losing their teaching identity. Arts integration proved a lifesaving practice. Her goal for this podcast series is to create a comfortable environment for teachers to move forward in STEM and inquiry-based learning through the arts.

How to Teach to the New Utah SEEd Standards

In 2015, Utah adopted new SEEd standards for the K-12 classroom. The rollout for materials distribution and testing has been slow: state standards testing for fourth and fifth grades didn’t occur until 2021.

Previously, teaching STEM was based on a more formulaic model: teach facts, present worksheets, answer multiple-choice questions. The teacher presented content and found out what the students’ misconceptions were, then planned another lesson to correct learning or memorize new facts.

Now, students lead the investigation: they ask questions, create their own models, and the teacher facilitates class discussions. Students and teachers are both uncomfortable; the teachers’ instinct is often to jump in and try to rescue the struggling student, but the value of inquiry-based learning rests in the process of student exploration, struggle, perseverance, discovery, and making connections as a class.

To get started with SEEd concepts, teachers can ask students:

“What are you curious about?”
“What questions do you have?”
“How can we construct knowledge together?”

Teaching SEEd Phenomena: A Real-Life, Local Example

Tina shares an example of her experience teaching to the new standards using the principle of presenting a phenomena. She explains:

“I showed them this flash flood coming down. People could hear it and they could hear the rumble. They knew that it had rained and you could hear the people talking in the background. Then the flash flood comes through carrying big tree trunks or rocks and just muddy, muddy water. My students didn't understand why that was such an unusual event. They didn't understand what precipitated it and why it was flowing the way that it was flowing; they had never been witness to this type of event. The video wasn’t enough—the students didn’t have enough context and experience to understand the magnitude of what it means to witness a flash flood. Yet, for the people down in San Juan County—and only one of my students who had hiked in that area and seen one—they see flash floods often. So when those flash flood warnings come out of those slot canyons, it's an important thing to make sure you know. So that's when I thought, “Oh, I really have got to come local,” and find better phenomena for my students to see by using events they could witness right here in their backyard that would drive their questions.”

Tina brought the phenomena home by incorporating the knowledge that many of her students’ fathers are involved in construction. She drew their attention to the east bench of the Wasatch mountain range by showing a news clip of a new-build home that slid off its foundation and landed in the street. She also shared how a local high school is sliding off its foundation every year that it’s a wet winter—it’s being rebuilt now. Her students realized that that’s the high school they will attend. Linking two local events that directly impacted her students’ lives made the difference for their learning. The questions began: “‘Now, Mrs. McCulloch, we live down here in the valley. We're okay. Right, my house isn't gonna slide if I leave the garden hose on?”

“I said, “No, your house isn't gonna slide.” Then we talked about why their home was safe. As we finished the whole unit, one kid said, “I'm always going to make sure that I never live on a mountainside.”’