Date: Fri 25-Oct-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: DOTTIE

Quick Words:

schools-Indians-Chartier

Full Text:

SCHOOLS

Learning The Ways Of The Plains Indians

B Y D OROTHY E VANS

When Native American lecturer Clint Chartier, who has roots in the MicMac and

Mohawk tribes, was a young boy growing up in Colorado, he didn't attend

school.

Instead, he learned everything he needed to know from his elders - older

family members for whom he felt respect because of the wisdom and experience

they had acquired over many years.

"We just listened," Mr Chartier told a 5th grade class of Sandy Hook children

recently during a special cultural arts program held October 16-17.

Just listening was what the Sandy Hook children did, too, when Mr Chartier

invited 11 different class sections into his tipi over a period of two days,

telling them about the culture of the Plains Indians.

From the moment the students entered his large canvas tipi and sat down at his

feet, they were enthralled.

Mr Chartier certainly looked the part. His two long black braids hung down in

front of a beautifully decorated deerskin shirt and he wore doe skin leggings

and mocassins.

Speaking quietly and using humor to convey many facts about Native American

culture, Mr Chartier invited the children's comments and questions. He also

gently dispelled a few of the commonly held myths about the Plains Indians.

"Native Americans living in New England wouldn't have had a tipi like this

one. The eastern woodland tribes lived in bark houses or lodges," Mr Chartier

said.

Women and girls did 90 percent of the work, he said, while the boys learned

about hunting and helped provide for the elders in the tribe.

"If you saw the movie Dances With Wolves, you might have noticed what the

women were doing in the background," he said, listing the many tasks performed

by Native American girls from dawn to dusk.

His young audience expressed amazement.

"It wasn't just cooking and cleaning. They had to tan the hides to make them

soft and waterproof. To do that, they used their brains... deer brains, that

is!" Mr Chartier said, as he explained the process of rubbing the brain

material into the rawhide to cure it.

It was the young girls, he added, who learned how to extract the brains from

the deer skulls.

"Oh, gross!" was the general outcry, but the children were impressed at how

soft and pliable brain-tanned doe skin was, after Mr Chartier passed a hide

around for them to feel and smell.

One boy remarked that he was glad tanning was the work of squaws, not braves.

"You'd never call a Native American woman a squaw," Mr Chartier said.

"That's a very disrespectful word and we shouldn't use it - although you might

read it in books or hear it on TV," he added.

Many of the artifacts he'd brought to show the children were authentic, such

as a pair of fur-lined MicMac mocassins worn by his grandmother and a

100-year-old headdress topped by a pair of buffalo horns and hung with ermine

pelts.

Every part of the buffalo was used, Mr Chartier said, including the bladder,

which served as a water carrier.

"The stomach became a cooking pot and the small intestines were used as

ropes," he explained with a smile, obviously warming to his subject.

The children listened respectfully and they seemed to appreciate Mr Chartier's

matter-of-fact manner, even though some of what he was telling them seemed

utterly impossible to imagine.

When a 30-pound buffalo robe was brought out and children in the front row

were invited to try it on, their delight increased.

"They had no written language as we know it, but you can see the symbols they

used," said Mr Chartier, holding up a buffalo Record Robe with the hide

covered by drawings.

One boy was asked to get down on all fours and wear a coyote pelt over his

back to demonstrate how the Plains Indians were sometimes able to camouflage

themselves during a buffalo hunt.

All too soon, the 40-minute class was over and it was time to go back into the

brick and mortar walls of Sandy Hook School.

When the children filed out of Mr Chartier's tipi, they found the sun had

burned through the early morning mist and a fine October day was well

underway. Looking back, they might have decided the tipi standing in the

middle of their school courtyard didn't seem so strange after all.

Against the colorful backdrop of autumn leaves, it fit right in.