Cradleboard Teaching Project
Encyclopedia
Cradleboard Teaching Project, founded in 1997 by singer/song-writer Buffy Sainte-Marie
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Buffy Sainte-Marie, OC is a Canadian Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire includes...

, has developed a curriculum that aims to raise self-identity and self-esteem in present and future generations of Indian children by introducing them to enriching, accurate information about Native American people and cultures.

It was financed with money from her non-profit philanthropic Nihewan Foundation for American Indian Education and a grant from W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Additional financial support has been made available from Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....

, the Lyn and Norman Lear Family Foundation, The Herb Alpert Foundation, private donations and sale of curriculum materials.

The project uses the internet email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

, chat rooms, bulletin boards, interactive web sites, videoconferencing
Videoconferencing
Videoconferencing is the conduct of a videoconference by a set of telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously...

, along with multi-media resources and other more traditional media. Teachers and students are introduced to the curriculum via an Electronic Powwow which presents relevant information via the web, and gives opportunities to interact with others via Chat Rooms and discussion boards. After a period of initial exposure to the curriculum via the Powwow, teachers are offered the opportunity to participate with other veteran teachers and students in a Cradleboard Cross Cultural Partnering Program which partners Indian and non-Indian students and teachers to explore their understanding of Native American cultures. Telephone contact and live meetings are also used here to extend personal intercultural understanding.

The core curriculum includes courses about geography, social studies, history, science and music at each of three grade levels—elementary school, middle school and high school grades. All units are developed to give a Native American perspective about each subject to all students. To achieve this, the project has involved members of various Native American tribes in the on-going development process.
The Cradleboard project was selected as one of over 300 promising practices identified by President Clinton's One America Initiative
One America Initiative
On June 14, 1997, U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton announced One America in the 21st Century: The President's Initiative on Race. This initiative, established with , was a critical element in President Clinton's effort to prepare his country to embrace diversity...

on Race.
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