The Tribal Education Departments National Assembly (TEDNA) and the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF) are pleased to announce the ILTF's land base curriculum, Lessons of Our Land and the supporting teacher implementation guides recently developed by TEDNA and Reinhardt & Associates. Grants are available from ILTF to implement the curriculum in your community, school or organization.
The ILTF curriculum, Lessons of Our Land was developed to offer quality Indian land tenure educational opportunities for Head Start, K-12, college, adult and community education, tribal leaders and Indian landowners. While this curriculum positions Native American tribal issues and values at the forefront, the curriculum framework places emphasis on the fundamental relationship between land and people in general, not just Native Americans. Whether you teach on an Indian reservation or in an urban school with students from many ethnic backgrounds, you will find lessons that are both timely and adaptable for each and every one of these students.
However, the primary goal of this curriculum is for all Indian students to become intellectually reconnected to the land and to internalize its significance to their past, present and future as sovereign and land based peoples. Through this curriculum, Indian allottees, their children and other family members who will inherit their land, and landless tribal members will acquire the knowledge necessary to achieve self-determination through informed and responsible decision making concerning land assets. The ILTF and TEDNA believe that successful implementation of this curriculum is one of the best ways to strengthen Native communities and prevent further loss of Indian lands.
With the assistance of Reinhardt & Associates, TEDNA has developed teacher implementation guides to support the ILTF curriculum in Head Start, K-12, college, adult and community education programs. Grant money is available to communities interested in utilizing the curriculum. For more information simply, send an email to info@tedna.org indicating your interest in learning more about the curriculum. TEDNA will send you the curriculum and the teacher training guides free of charge!
TEDNA is a nonprofit organization that supports Tribal Education Departments; it strives to increase tribal sovereignty over education by improving law and policy and sharing information with our membership. For more information about TEDNA, see www.tedna.org. The ILTF strives to return land within original reservation boundaries or of cultural significance back to tribal ownership. For more information about ILTF, see www.indianlandtenure.org.
