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Welcome to the Cosmic Serpent Blog: The Talking Stick

01/29/09 at 4:01 pm by Nancy Maryboy and David Begay

Welcome to the Cosmic Serpent Blog! We are pleased that you have visited our blog and hope you will find it useful and entertaining. We foresee using the blog to introduce upcoming events in the museum world and to showcase relevant and interesting exhibits and presentations from science centers, local museums, tribal museums and entities like own own Indigenous Education Institute.

We are looking forward to the upcoming workshop in Santa Fe, the first full Cosmic Serpent workshop for the Southwest region. We will have a wonderful group of educators, facilitators and participants. We will be addressing some extremely important issues in the area of Indigenous ways of knowing and western academic science. We hope to to raise an awareness in this country of the differences and commonalities among these ways of knowing and to showcase innovative activities and programs that enable continuing and collaborative enrichment in the informal science sector as well as in the world of Indigenous observation and place based knowing.

We look forward to your comments and any information you wish to share.

Best wishes,

Nancy Maryboy and David Begay (Indigenous Education Institute and Cosmic Serpent)

Comments

05/22/10 at 10:51 am by: Brian Britten

Look up at the sky and see beyond the clouds.Use your creative imagination to connect to all that exists out there. Then look around where you are now and see the complexities of life. It is the same view. The 'cosmic serpent' is an expression of this worldview.

04/21/10 at 11:05 am by: Rob Efird

Hi folks,
I'm Rob Efird at Seattle University. I just heard about this project from Cindy Updegrave at the University of Washington and I'm very interested in soliciting feedback and giving what support I can in the area of ethnobotanical gardens as a means of teaching traditional knowledge. We've had the honor of creating an ethnobotanical garden named after the extraordinary and beloved Upper Skagit elder taqwsheblu Vi Hilbert, and we have been using it for the past several years as a teaching site and 'living library' for Native and Non-Native people in the university and the larger regional community. Since gardens are often a part of museums (the UW's Burke Museum a case in point) I think our work also speaks to the focus on museums. Please have a look at our website and send me any feedback: http://www.seattleu.edu/artsci/ethnobotanical/
My email is: efirdr@seattleu.edu
If it seems appropriate, I hope to somehow become involved with your next workshop in the Northwest this coming September.
Best wishes for the success of this very promising initiative!

01/22/10 at 10:20 am by: Violet

I believe I'll be a frequent guest at your blog. I adore its design. The photo is great. And the combination of colours is super. You know not long ago I read a book about the impact of colours on people. Found it at the book search engine . It turns out that the colours influence our nerve system a lot and if a man sees one colour for a long time for example he works in a yellow office it can even cause different diseases. But it is not the case with your site. I hope that such combination will attract a lot of visitors to your blog. Wish you good luck.

01/07/10 at 12:04 pm by: Laura Peticolas

Yvonne, Susan, and Rebecca,

Happy New Year! It was so nice to read your comments here. I loved the Youtube video! What a great start to my day today.

We are working on many things all at once right now - the first CA workshop, the follow-up workshops in the Southwest and Northwest. And trying to find time to write some publications on the evaluation findings and our own findings and lessons learned.

I hope the Winter Solstice season was a wonderful experience for you all.

11/18/09 at 2:31 pm by: Susan

Hi everybody, sorry I wasn't able to go to Blaine WA this past summer. I did miss networking with the group. I'm trying to plan a kidspace at our museum and would welcome your ideas for our Plateau Tribal museum. Send me your comments to tci.education@tamastslikt.org

10/27/09 at 11:58 am by: Kyrie

If anyone needs an example for students of Western science inspiring a sense of awe and connection to the universe, rather than the dry, detached version we often hear, check out the Symphony of Science:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk&feature=youtube_gdata

10/20/09 at 10:55 am by: Yvonne

The Pathways Science Curriculum Pilot started yesterday and the students are excited about baskets, native plants, and experiementing with black mud. We're going to hook up to the Smithsonian and look at the Twana Basket Collection and review several baskets held by the Tribe. I'll be attending the Indigenous Women in Science network in Portland at the end of the month and hope to make contacts for the Pathways program's curriculum. And, the Ainu Collaboration may have resources for our kids to compare/contrast curriculum. Talk to all of you soon!

10/12/09 at 4:25 pm by: Yvonne

There must be a spiritual force at work for young Indian kids when they are able to spend time at the ocean. We travelled to Ocean Shores for our first storm watch of the season...no storms but we were able to watch the sunset and sunrise and walk the beach for hours. My grand-kids were all able to make the trip and several of their cousins met us on the second day. We stopped at the mud flats and saw sweet grass already turning in for the winter months, walked the river at Taholah to the mouth to pick up choice pieces of drift wood, shells, and rocks, and watched the waves from our rooms at the Lighthouse. The kids were able to take in the force and power of the ocean and bring that back with them to take on life in the burbs for another length of time. Our Skokomish Pathways program meets tomorrow to set up our curriculum timeline.

10/06/09 at 12:53 pm by: Rebecca Roadman

We have officially begun our classes here at Skokomish! If you will remember, they are culturally infused high school courses that offer our students cerdit for graduation through our local school district. We are excited and anticipate reaching a wider variety of native students this year our attempts to branch out to the Nisqually, Chehalis and Squaxin student population through ITV. The first class will be WA State/Tribal History and will be very interesting as we expect to include portions of the Sovereignty Curriculum. The other class will start in a couple of weeks and will be the new Science curriculum through the great work of my priceless colleague, Yvonne Peterson! We will provide more updates soon!

09/18/09 at 10:27 am by: Yvonne

The Pathways Program is gradually getting back into high gear at Skokomish. We took a few weeks off to connect with families and are now working on our schedules for the year. It is good to be in the planning stages for the UW Burke Musuem's hosting of the indigenous Ainu of Japan. It looks like we will have a group of 5 youth helping to host and then travelling to Japan to return the exchange in the summer of 2010. The students will be fundraising during the year. Looks like we will be doing some science/math curriculum around the tribal canoe journey to Makah and Pathways students will conduct experiments along the way...ideas?!

09/11/09 at 11:53 am by: Yvonne Peterson

What a whirlwind since my return to the rez...my family is wrapping up basketry material gathering for the season and using the last sunny days to dry everything. The Tulalips surprised us by hosting weavers to gather tule and my nieces and nephews left in an instant to help elders cut, bundle, and load tule. Of course, there was great food and conversation to wrap up the trip! There must be a connection to environmental issues and of course curriculum to be developed...

Talk to everyone soon!

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