The NFC curriculum incorporates Native customs, traditions, and culture so that content will be more relevant and easily understood and applied by Native learners. The curriculum focuses on the importance of the participants’ connection to their culture, and the important role of community educators as part of that connection. The curriculum addresses commonalities among tribes, borrowing examples from individual tribes when necessary, and also provides an opportunity for narrative content to be customized to tribal and urban Native communities.
All About the Money
For all students, especially Native students, it is important to give them cultural and historical background information on the topic being taught. This is so they can relate it to their own personal lives. Traditional learning, in many tribes, begins with a historical or moral lesson before the actual lesson is taught – how and why they did what they did; what worked and what didn’t; what the outcome was, etc. Native students learn more by doing than by listening, so it’s important for them to take an active role in the lesson which may include discussion, research, interviews, hands on projects, presentations, and peer reviews.
Weighing In: Wants and Needs
In many Native families, the focus is on the group, not on the individual. In this lesson, “So, What Do You Want?” it is important to remember Native values of caring for the whole community. Your students may want to include in their “wants” and “needs” the concept of caring for their family.
Growing Savings
Traditionally, Native forms of “Savings Accounts” were used to store food and supplies collected in the fall in a cache for winter. Many plains tribes would hunt buffalo, deer, elk and gather fruits, nuts, grain, and berries. The Iroquois nations would gather fish in addition to what they could find growing on the land. Similarly, for the northwest tribes where salmon was plentiful. To preserve these foods, Native people would smoke and/or dry them for easy storage and to prevent spoilage. In the areas where corn and other grains were grown, Natives would first dry and then grind up the grains using a stone and pestle.
Your Future Your Choices
Traditionally, each member of the community had a particular job (i.e. leader, educator, hunter, tool maker, cook, child rearing, etc.). Native societies were egalitarian in nature. All jobs were equal as were the people who did them. Women’s and men’s responsibilities were thought of as parallel rather than hierarchical. In the egalitarian Native societies, authority was dispersed, and decisions were made by those who would be carrying them out. People contributed according to their abilities and interests. The term leader is used because no one in the community had the right to “govern” over another. Governance is commonly defined as the exercise of authority, control, or power. Given this definition, American Indians did not traditionally “govern” themselves and it is inaccurate to try to fit American Indian leadership paradigms into this conceptual framework.
Investing in the Future
With the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 legalizing gaming operations on reservations in many states, many Native American tribal communities started to become more economically independent than ever before. Not all tribes have benefited from this growth. There are still tribes with very small gaming operations or none at all. Today, there were over 501 gaming operations run by more than 246 of the nations’ 573 federally-recognized tribes (National Indian Gaming Commission).
True Wealth
Traditional Native American wealth can be thought of in several different ways.
- Gift Giving or Give-aways are where status is given to individuals based on what they give to others as opposed to a commodity or exchange economy where status is given to those individuals who have the most. Gift Giving among the Plains tribes can be done in celebration of an achievement, memorial of one’s passing (both at the time of passing and one year following), or as a thank you. The entire community contributes to the ceremony and therefore shows the wealth of the entire tribe.
- Potlatch is a Chinook adaptation of the Nootka word patshatl, which means “giving.” A Potlatch, much like the Give-Away, celebrates the giving and distribution of a portion of wealth among fellow tribal members. These ceremonies can also serve to mark transfers of power between generations, to memorialize important chieftains, and to celebrate the social initiations of heirs. The Potlach ceremony used up and down the west coast of the U.S. The Canadian costal people also used Potlach.
- Bartering is a form of trading where goods or services are exchanged for a certain amount of other goods and services. Usually no money is used in a barter transaction as bartering typically exists in cultures that have no monetary system. Although bartering still happens today, traditionally Native cultures used bartering to exchange for items needed.
References
A list of refernce cited in the Native Financial Cents: Supporting Financial Capability for Native Americans Curriculum.