Friday, August 23, 2024
Lessons in math, science, and Native culture plus fun, educational trips around Milwaukee filled summer days for a group of MPS Native students. They took part in the first in-person College Access Bridging Program organized by MPS’s First Nations Studies.
Bridging prepared those middle school students for the First Nations Studies College Access Program, which the students enter when they begin high school. The students in the bridging program gathered four days a week for seven weeks, from June 24 to August 8.
The 17 students attended classes two days each week at the Southeastern Oneida Tribal Services offices on the south side. On the other two days, they took field trips to places such as Discovery World, the City of Milwaukee’s urban stables, and Mequon Nature Preserve to extend their learning.
Alyssa Mussa, Act 31 teacher for First Nations Studies, described the College Access Bridging Program as “getting a taste for College Access, in the most fun way.” Wisconsin Act 31 requires all public school districts to teach students about the history, culture, and tribal sovereignty of Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized Native tribes and nations.
The bridging program gave the students new experiences while reinforcing classroom lessons, preparing them for what they’ll find in high school. First Nations Studies’ College Access Program supports students throughout high school, providing tutoring, motivating students to graduate on time, and helping them plan for life after high school through visits to colleges and universities and by exploring careers.
First Nations Studies uses a culturally relevant curriculum, called Expanding the Circle, that promotes the transition from high school to college. First Nations Studies also exposes students to Native culture and languages.
The students received cultural education during the bridging program, as well. They learned how to do beadwork from a visiting Native artisan, how to identify plants and know their traditional uses from a Native plant expert, and learned about traditional dances and regalia from an Ojibwe dance troupe, for example. 
Rebecca Webster was one of the visiting instructors during the bridging program. Webster, who is Oneida, runs Ukwakhwa farm and educational center with her husband on the Oneida Nation Reservation, southwest of Green Bay. There, they grow traditional foods. The couple specializes in heirloom varieties of corn, beans, and squash grown by the Haudenosaunee, or the Six Nations Indigenous peoples of northeastern North America.
Webster not only told the First Nations students how Native people traditionally have processed corn and eaten it, she showed them and gave each student a hands-on experience.
First came a lesson in Oneida cornbread, a flatbread called kanʌstóhale̲ — not baked but boiled, and dumpling-like in texture. The cornbread can be savory, made with beans mixed into the dough, for example, but the cornbread Webster demonstrated was naturally, lightly sweet, combined with fresh blueberries that turned the dough vivid blue.
Students were given the chance to work with the dough, forming it into portions. After it was cooked, the cornbread was served with blueberry-maple syrup sauce ladled over the top.
Most of the students in the class had never eaten cornbread prepared this way. The flavor reminded her of corn tortillas, one girl said.
Next, students learned how the cornmeal traditionally was processed. The lesson again was hands on — Webster brought out oversized mortars and pestles so all the students could try pounding dried corn kernels into cornmeal.
For the mortars, sections of yellow-birch tree trunks, about 2 feet tall and 10 inches in diameter, had been harvested in late winter to allow the running sap to cure the wood. The sections were partially hollowed out and the cavity burned. That ash, combined with the corn, makes the corn more nutritious. The corn is pounded by lightly dropping the large, heavy pestle on the kernels in the mortar. The meal is scooped out and sifted in a basket made from black ash wood; the larger pieces go back to be pounded again.
Webster said education is central to the mission of her farm; the principal focus is “to help our community regain knowledge that was lost,” she said.
It’s a mission that meshes with that of First Nations Studies, as well.
The bridging program fulfilled another goal of First Nations Studies. “It is important for our Native children to come together and build their own community. Oftentimes, our children do not know that there are other Native children in their schools, and they certainly don't have many opportunities to meet other Native children across MPS. That's why it is important for First Nations Studies to create these opportunities and connections for our children,” said Richanda Kaquatosh, Supervisor of First Nations Studies. She noted that Native students attend more than 140 of MPS’s schools.
Families of Milwaukee Public Schools high school students who identify as Native can register their children online for the College Access Program by First Nations Studies.