The Big Sky Science Partnership is helping Briggeman learn the finer points of college-level geology this year. She'll tackle astronomy and physics over the next two years, during the course of two-week summer sessions and quarterly meetings for which she will receive college credit.
In turn, she will take her new skills to the grade-school classroom where she will help Native students relate to geologic formations in their own backyards or tribal histories.
The Big Sky Science Partnership is a five-year,
$5 million grant project of the National Science Foundation. This is the inaugural year of the program, which unites science education leaders at Salish Kootenai College, the University of Montana, Montana State University and tribal consultants from the Flathead, Northern Cheyenne and Crow reservations. All these groups have joined in a partnership with K-8 schools and the Montana State Office of Public Instruction.
The project seeks to establish long-term relationships among all participating groups as they strengthen their own knowledge of science, integrate it with culture, and in turn increase science achievement of all students from the third to eighth grade. Salish Kootenai College on the Flathead Reservation is the lead institution in the partnership, and the only tribal college in the country that has such a lead as part of the NSF project.
The partnership is helping clear a path between university faculty who don't have a strong record of partnering with tribal communities and K-8 schools, said Regina Sievert, Big Sky Science Partnership project director.
“If they want to move along in their tenure, this isn't one way to do that, generally,” said Sievert, who is also a K-12 program director with the SKC Indigenous Math and Science Institute.
“MSU has a history of working with the Crow and Northern Cheyenne tribes,” she said. “UM has less of a history of doing that, although they have always expressed an interest. From my experience, it has always been quite limited.”
Diane Friend, a lecturer in UM's Department of Physics, said the three-day culture camp gave her time to visit with Salish and Kootenai tribal elders as they made drums together. She was given the chance to ask questions, such as: “What is important to you? What should we know?”
Iris Pretty Paint, UM's co-director of research opportunities in science, served as an adviser to the project. She is helping the elementary teachers, tribal community members and college professors establish relationships and find ways to integrate culture into their classrooms.
“It's not easy to talk about culture,” said Pretty Paint, who is a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation. “But they have to understand we are a people of a place. We all have our places and that makes us unique. You can't take one tribe's place and teach about science and think that will apply to everybody. You have to have that context of their community, their history. If you are going to deal with the Blackfeet, you have to know their treaties, about their sovereignty, what kind of relationships they with the state. How do they view science? What's the translation?”
Pretty Paint posed this question to teachers who will soon be returning to their classrooms: “If you don't ever learn other learning styles, whose problem is it that they're not getting science?”
Reach reporter Jodi Rave at 800-366-7186 or jodi.rave@lee.net
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