"A labor of love:" Leaders in Indigenous education speak on newly crafted social studies resource

Jul. 10—TRAVERSE CITY — In 2019, social studies standards for the state of Michigan were changed to include mention of tribal governments for the first time.

Recognizing the new need for resources for teachers, the Confederation of Michigan Tribal Education Departments (CMTED) began working on a resource guide for Michigan teachers to teach to and about Indigenous communities in the state.

The resource guide, or Maawndoonganan, was published in the fall of 2021 and is available for free online.

Last week, Jannan Cotto, citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Melissa Isaac, citizen of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, and Amanda L. Weinert, citizen of Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, presented about Maawndoonganan in a webinar, which was part of the Michigan Department of Education's 2021-22 Comprehensive History Instruction webinar series.

Maawndoonganan means "gathering of information to share with people" in Anishinaabemowin.

The title was developed with tribal elders who speak Anishinaabemowin and stems from three words: the word maawndookiin, which means to "share", maawndoongen, which means to "gather stuff up" and maawnjiding, which means a "gathering of people."

"I think it's really important that we use Anishinaabemowin as the title, Maawndoonganan, so that you're speaking the original language of this land," Weinert said.

Tribal educators from all over the state met in workgroups to develop Maawndoonganan, which took roughly two years to make.

Cotto, tribal education director for the Match-e-bee-nash-she-wish of Pottawatomi of Michigan, and Weinert, curriculum specialist in the Nigaandiwin Education Department of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, both worked on the committee for resources for grades K-4 in developing Maawndoonganan.

Isaac, Gizhwaasod, or protector of the young, of the Indigenous Education Initiative (IEI) at the Michigan Department of Education, was on the Maawndoonganan Bias Review Committee.

Maawndoonganan includes a variety of resources, including video, audio clips, podcasts, radio shows, news articles and scholarly articles, that are split up by grade level and relate to specific teaching standards laid out by Michigan law. Each resource is labeled by the code of the standard that it meets.

It is more than 90 pages long.

Everything in Maawndoonganan is intentional and carefully selected, from its cover, which has a detailed description at the beginning, to the very resources listed within it.

Alongside the actual resources listed, Maawndoonganan also includes a diagram of preferred language to use when talking to and about Indigenous people and maps of sovereign tribal nations for teachers to use in crafting and executing lessons.

One resource that was highlighted is an entry on the Mackinac State Park website that explains the 1836 Treaty of Washington between the U.S. government and the Anishinaabek people.

The resource correlates with the state standard for third grade teachers to "describe how Michigan attained statehood."

In 1836, the Anishinaabek ceded over 14 million acres — nearly 40 percent of the current land area of Michigan — in exchange for permanent Anishinaabek access to reservation lands and natural resources, including hunting and fishing rights.

However, the U.S. Congress altered the terms of the treaty after the Odawa and Ojibwe representatives left Washington, and the final version stated that the U.S. government could forcibly remove Anishinaabek people from northern Michigan after just a few years.

Without this treaty, Michigan would not have become a state when it did, according to the website.

"We really feel like lots of times when we learn about statehood, this is something that's left out," Cotto said.

Maawndoonganan also has uses outside of the classroom.

Brett Sinclair was among the audience at the webinar.

As a local diversity, equity and inclusion consultant, he said he has already used Maawndoonganan as a resource in his work.

For the past few months, while working as a project manager with the Great Lakes Children's Museum, Sinclair has used Maawndoonganan to take messages that Indigenous artists in the exhibit are conveying in their work, find the state standards that speak to those messages and then build out other ways for kids to engage with the art as an educational tool.

Sinclair said that he hopes that the more Maawndoonganan is used in the classroom, the more invested people will be in interacting with the content and leaning about Indigenous culture and history.

"The more that we can use knowledge and arts and history and practices to foster curiosity, I think just the better of a community we're going to be able to be," Sinclair said.

Emily Modrall, the project coordinator for the Kitchi Wikweedong Anishinaabe History Project, has used Maawndoonganan in her own work as well, she said. Through the Kitchi Wikweedong Anishinaabe History Project, Modrall has worked on signs that will mark historical landmarks and history of the Kitchi Wikweedong Odawa before Europeans colonized the Traverse City region.

"I'm not attempting to tackle regional or state or Midwest history in the output of my project, but it's really important to understand it to then understand the local history," Modrall said.

Maawndoonganan was a "labor of love," Isaac said. Isaac said she doesn't expect teachers to just know the information provided by the resources in Maawndoonganan, since previous K-12 curricula in Michigan has lacked proper accounts of history, which is something she experienced herself.

"I just think back to my school experience in Michigan's K-12 public school system, and being in history class and wondering like, 'What were we doing while all of this was going on?'" Isaac said. "Like I really thought that at a young age."

Cotto said she hopes the use of Maawndoonganan in classrooms today can help current students be better leaders and community members in the future.

"I hope that the children that are in your classrooms now and moving forward over the next 10 years or so ... are given a little bit more information than probably some of you all received in school," Cotto said. "So that when those children are taking on positions in their communities, as leaders, as helpers and folks that are serving their community as citizens, that they have an understanding of who are the citizens of Michigan, including Native people and tribal people."