Children of Native America

FOREWORD

American tribes and culture groups designed to give school-age children a snapshot of the wealth of information there is to learn.

During the five years that I spent on Sesame Street, I tried to convey in the Native American episodes one message above all: Indians Exist. We are alive and real. We have fun, friends, families, and a whole lot to contribute to the rest of the world through our reality. The Cradleboard Teaching Project, a program of the
Nihewan Foundation, is one way to get this message across. Cradleboard helps children get to know one another through cross- cultural communication, using whatever means they have.

Native American children, like all children, are not only their cultures. Even kids from the most traditional Native backgrounds have much in common with all other children: they have families, they grow and change every day, they love and work and play.

Many Native American children, through their families and communities, experience a special cultural richness. These kids understand that they live in a special relationship between the earth and the sky; that they are related to all other creatures; that their cultures are unique and precious. They also know many hard truths: that their native languages are greatly endangered; that their ancestors experienced hatred and violence in their own country; that much of their greatness is unknown to most other people.

But Native children, like all children, should also know that there is tremendous good work to be done in which they can share.
They have a future.

Buffy Sainte-Marie

Source - References
http://www.cradleboard.org/
http://www.nihewan.org/

Photo©: Aaron Harris