Nez Perce Teaching Boxes

A few years ago I tried to put a batch of books, photos, and maps into a package for local school teachers. It was an effort to get some information on Nez Perce history and culture into the curriculum, and into the minds of local students.

A few teachers used what I began to call “teaching boxes,” but the materials were all over the grade levels, a bit academic, and clunky. As it turns out, in recent years Oregon—and Washington—schools are required to teach Native American history and culture, and in our state it is all directed at fourth grade teachers and students.

Two years ago we brought Vivian Henry, an interpretive ranger for the Nez Perce National Historical Park, to speak to teachers and students before classes began. Shari Warnock, the teacher at the tiny, multi-grade Imnaha School, bit into it. She took the teaching box materials—now supplemented with National Park videos and teaching materials, and made a year of it. She had help from Ginger Graham, a retired teacher who volunteers at the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland, and students read, listened, and eventually went to the National Park site and even up the Snake River in a jet boat! And this past year, Olan Fulfur took his Joseph High School American History students to the Park as well.

We’ve updated materials for all of our local schools–photos of dip-netting and a tule mat tipi, maps of pre-Lewis and Clark Northwest and the great Nez Perce fighting retreat, etc, and we have a couple more teaching boxes to go out. One is going to the Education Department at Eastern Oregon University. The goal is to get teachers and students across Nez Perce Country in Oregon familiar with the history, culture, and even the current activities of the Nez Perce people.

The photo above shows a Teaching Box and some of the materials. If you would like to know more, let me know! Maybe we’ll save one box to “check out” to schools and teachers beyond Wallowa County.

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Year’s End

Hello Friends,

First off, thank you for reading my blog posts, coming to Brown Bag programs, stopping by to talk about books, Indians, treaties, wild foods, dams, fish, art, and the state of the world.

It’s been a fine year at the Josephy Center: wonderful exhibits featuring “Women on the Edge,“ “Art and Words of the Lostine,” “The Wallowas in Historical Photos,” and “Nez Perce Music.” The Josephy Center took on and managed the annual Wallowa Valley Arts Festival to great applause. The clay studio hums, and we teach special art classes for the Joseph school along with regular Friday student classes. For those of you in blog land, do visit the web site—josephy.org—and take in some of our shows and events when you come to town. Or click on https://josephy.org/video-audio/ to see or listen to some of the Brown Bag programs, exhibit openings, and goings on here at the Center.

My role at the Center is to run the Josephy Library and take the lead in Indian programming. It’s been a good year: a couple of small grants and two hard-working volunteers have caught us up with cataloging—check https://sagelib.org to see our holdings, and to begin making the non-book holdings accessible to the world. Our “Nez Perce Ephemera” and “Manuscript” holdings will soon be visible online.

She “Returned from a hard journey”– ‘etweyé·wise 

But the biggest triumph—and the most rewarding event I have been involved with for many years, was the installation of ‘etweyé·wise, the story of Nez Perce return told in bronze and granite by Nez Perce artist Doug Hyde. At the installation of the first sculpture by a tribal artist on Joseph’s Main Street, we had drummers from Lapwai and Umatilla, singers and speakers from Nespelem. There were tears as Joseph Band descendants talked about this “homeland” and a long-ago Chief Joseph Rodeo queen unwrapped a mortar and pestle, found and held by her white family, and returned it to the Nez Perce. Then we—tribal people, local people, and curious visitors from everywhere—sat down and ate salmon together.

Things have changed in the Wallowa Country—on the installation of the sculpture, the Wallowa County Chieftain editorialized “Welcome Home.” There’s a Nez Perce art show coming in January (Opening January 5, 2:00—4:00 pm, with Kevin Peters, John Seven Wilson, Carla Timentwa and more) and another series of talks by elders in the spring. The Josephy Center is one of many organizational and individual partnerships expressing new relationships with descendants of the Nez Perce who long called this place home.

In this season of gift giving, when the family and good cause demands on you are many, think about a gift to the Josephy Center and its Library so that we can continue this good work.

(You can send a check to PO Box 949/ Joseph, Oregon 97846, or donate through the web site at https://josephy.org/donate/ )

I thank you for your support, and wish you all the best in the coming year.

Canoes, statues, gifts

Many of you have been following our canoe journey, and some know about the big grant we received from the Oregon Community Foundation to have a Plateau Indian artist put Indian art on Main Street in Joseph.

That one is a long process. We are recruiting artists now–deadline January 15–for a first selection of three artists, who will each be given $1,000 and a month to develop proposals. One of the three will then have a year–and a $25,000 artist’s award–to complete an art project for Joseph’s Main Street. If you know of Plateau artists who might be interested, let us know! The OCF grant will cover most of the costs of this project.

Allen Pinkham Jr.’s small canoe floats! There is a little polishing up to do, but he is now thinking about those 30 foot logs sitting in Jim Zacharias’s log yard! We have some grant money for this project, but we will need more to get a traditional 30 foot Nez Perce dugout canoe on the Snake River in 2018!

And we will need more to complete a “Who Lived Here and How They Lived” permanent exhibit on the Center’s second floor next to the Library. Joan Gilbert, who designed the Josephy exhibit, is designing this one, and I think it is going to be good. The intent is to answer your questions–and those of visitors from across the world–about the Nez Perce who once lived here and who we at the Center, along with many others in this community, are now welcoming home.

We are also working with Tamástslikt on a summer 2018 exhibit. No end of good things going on here (I have not touched on the classes and exhibits and concerts that Cheryl has lined up), and I hope that you will be able to enjoy some of them in person.

Meanwhile, on this Giving Tuesday, or anytime, for that matter, we’ll appreciate your support of the Josephy Center and our good work. Check here to give online–https://josephy.org/support-the-josephy-center-for-arts-and-culture/–or give a call if you’d like!

Thanks–and the very best of holidays to you and yours.