Going in to a new year, 2009, I look on the future with a lot of skepticism, especially for our working class citizens and their children. Education is also being affected by the downturn in spending, the housing crisis and loss of jobs. With fewer taxes going into the schools and fewer resources for schools to obtain funding, many schools are cutting way back on outside educational opportunities for their students.
A major change occurred after the Columbine tragedy when schools began questioning their open door policies and began locking down and became more leery of outsiders coming into the school for any reason. Even that did not really affect the number of schools calling for programs and by the fall of 2000, the numbers were definitely up. Then 911 happened and that changed everything. It was a tough climb back out of that tragedy which affected the whole country and schools were mourning and not pushing to do as many programs as they once were.
In the fall of 2001, I was able to add field trips to the menu of offerings and things were slow at first but then as we built more exhibits, did more publicity and so forth, the number of schools and scout troops as well as home schools signing up for field trips increased. The outreach programs stayed pretty much the same. Once Piankeshaw Trails Educational Park, Inc. was formed as an official non-profit organization, then our reputation began to slowly increase. in 2004, we added two special events open to the public on weekends and one open to educators and students only on the Friday before the event. We thought we had come of age and we could just continue to climb the ladder of success. Although, the events were unique and teachers loved the idea of having the park to themselves to go around to many different artists and historians, the funding was still a problem and took many long weeks to try and raise the needed money for each event.
The pressure to raise funds was constant and all on the shoulders of a small board of directors and me. The idea was to enlist the community and the region to help with ideas for the future, and make Piankeshaw a major player in the educational and cultural community. The land would have offered numerous opportunities to expand with a museum/cultural center and better picnic facilities, more exhibits and types of programs. It was always a struggle to get people involved. The idea was foreign to the rural community and progress was slow.
Educators saw the park and the outreach programs as great assets to the students and to them as many of them incorporated ideas and concepts into their standard classroom curriculum. When funding became a tremendous obstacle, we offered the idea of an educational history museum/cultural center to a regional county park and finally to the state. We conducted one more special event under enormous time constraints with little help from anyone and we had a record number of schools who came and a record number of participants from four states. The weekend public turnout was low as expected since there was so little time to plan. The state did not step up and take the ball and run with it as we had hoped. That was the big turning point. The idea was not to work harder but to find a sponsor to help make the work easier.
Then, just as decisions had to be made, the economic crisis hit hard and the decision was made for us. We closed the park and the state was no longer interested. Budgets were slashed across the board and all that we had left were the outreach programs that we had started with. The education of the community and the advancement of tourism in southwestern Indiana by virtue of the addition of a Native Woodland Cultural Center was no longer even a glimmer of a consideration.
Now, the number of outreach programs have plummeted and I fear that trend will continue into the next year and possibly beyond. The schools and the students that will never get a chance to participate in ground breaking hands on history will be forever affected in a negative way. The education of our youth in all areas of human understanding is paramount to growing a wiser, more tolerant and understanding generation of young people. If they miss knowledge that we have available because the economy has forced schools to opt out of nearly all field trips and extra curricular activities even within the school, then who is suffering?
We all are. Students are being limited to what is taught in the classroom and to the very narrow scope of what is available in most libraries and bookstores. The research that we have put into these fast paced hands on presentations stimulates minds and invokes thoughts about life and people that lived before us and add volumes to comprehending the complexities in human behavior over time. Educational programs that on the surface appear to be just about history, are in fact much much more. They delve into ancient science and technology and provide an introduction to life sciences such as geology and archaeology. The discussions and hands on demonstrations that surround hide processing and the processing and utilization of plants for foods, clothing, medicine and more are an introduction to botany and biology. Students are getting much more than a mere discussion of dates and events and a repetition of what they hear in the classroom.
These program go way beyond the classroom. Students learn how particular plants are chosen, what the plant is made up of and how it's parts were utilized in a variety of ways. There are often hands on demonstrations that offer opportunities for children to participate in the process of scraping bark off of a branch, separating fibers or twisting fibers together and even building a dwelling inside the classroom. Other hands on demonstrations bring students to the front of the class to make use of stone, bone and wooden tools in the step by step process of scraping fur, skin and meat from an animal hide. It is one thing to see a pretty picture in a book that shows a Native woman wearing a dress made from deerskin and it is entirely different to actually experience how difficult and complex the task really is. The old image of some primitive cave man slapping on a dead deer's hide and waddling down the path to the high tech future is altered forever when we can show children the vast technology that went into some of the processes that most educators are totally unaware of. The children are missing those opportunities and therefore their education is based on what sometimes can be referred to as "armchair" technology. It is is book learned but there is little hands on experience to back up that information in traditional classrooms around the country.
When you take students on field trips to museums or bring in experts that can really take you into the past or through the process of a particular task that brings it to life, students get a fuller, richer understanding of something that otherwise might lodge in their minds as a mere question on a test that reinforced some ancient myth or stereotype. The fact that the world economy was once based on the "fur trade" and then when the furs ran out and warfare erupted between strong Native peoples vying for control of that trade and when Euro-American powers used these intertribal tensions to benefit them, the entire world was affected. The powerful fur trade economy ended and industrialization began to take root in the country. This has to provoke thoughts in students that empower them to make comparisons to our own 21st century faltering economy. If it isn't working and we can't fix it, what will happen and what will take the place of the current economic system? Can we glean information about our future from looking at events and circumstances of the past? In a word, Absolutely!
Students need to "craft history" for themselves. There is an economic issue here that has not been addressed very loudly. Our entire country is suffering. Education is the key to solving our economic problems. Perhaps the next generation would have been able to call upon a memory of a lesson in history that would prompt them to resolve a current situation based on how a particular situation was handled successfully in the past. Without that situational experience, without that hands on interactive approach to learning and bringing in specialists in those area, students education is suffering. The cutbacks in our school programs is not going to advance our knowledge as a people. The students will not understand as much about our collective past and therefore opportunities for understanding diversity and technological change and solutions to economic success may be slower in coming or not come at all.
The focus of our cutbacks should not be in educational opportunities but in salaries and bonuses for millionaire Wall Street financiers who made a mockery of our financial system in the first place. The students should not be made to suffer and forced to a narrower scope of educational opportunities. The students need broader educational understanding and a more diverse education and with economic slow downs forcing schools to cut out busing students to museums and educational parks, that broad spectrum of education slows to a crawl.
Piankeshaw Trails Educational Programs are still available and are being promoted on new websites at this very moment. Jessica Diemer-Eaton is doing the majority of them in schools and for pow wows, special events and museums. She is bringing a lot of the same materials and a lot of new hands on educational items right into the classroom. She is skilled and talented and works well with children and the general public. I will still do the occasional program and have now set up a whole new dimension to what we offer in educational opportunities to the public. The growing economic woes and the demand by parents and schools for more authentic educational tools, promoted me to open a new on-line shop that features Native Woodland Indian clothing, educational supplies, tools, arts, and an entire line of interactive educational kits. The subjects of these kits range from the study of fossils; gems and minerals to Native Woodland Indians, Plains Indians, the Underground Railroad and Civil War to Pirates, Prehistoric tools and much more.
The kits offer educators, parents and most of all kids a variety of activities based on real life science and history. The items have been, for the most part, collected by me over the course of the last twelve years and with technological advances upon us, it was easy to select Etsy.com to utilize as a method of getting these kits and other crafts out there and available to the general public in a usable format. The safe Paypal system is great for both buyers and sellers. I also designed a business name, logo and website specifically for the craft items that will take you directly to the Etsy shop of the same name. Crafting History is the name I selected for the shop and for all the products that I sell as hand made, assembled or as vintage items over 25 years old. The shop affords me to do one-of-a-kind items such as specific books, tours, clothes and especially the kits. No two items will necessarily be alike. When it comes to leather pouch kits, bead catcher kits, bead necklace kits, fur scraps, arrowheads and supplies such as flutes, polished stones and shells--those items, although listed as if there were only one, are almost always available in any quantity a teacher or educator might need for a classroom activity or youth organization. These kits are perfect for scout troops who need to earn points toward a badge on nature, American Indians, geology, plants, history, pirates, collecting, research, etc. etc.
Nearly every week I will be adding new crafts, kits and educational products to the growing list. The main website will feature items that are coming and you can click to the shop right from the website and order whatever you desire. Paying for an item or many items on Etsy is made so simple. You click, pay with Paypal and that's it. Each shop owner has, thanks to Etsy, has a ready inventory of what is sold, when it was paid for and when it was shipped. There is also an easy way to contact us via email through our shops. I have additional contact information on the main website.
Jessica and I are here and willing and able to serve educators and site planners for events and educational programs. Please go to our websites and check out the numerous opportunities and be sure to keep checking Crafting History often, as it will change the most frequently.
Here is that list I promised of the current websites:
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