The Cradleboard Teaching Project has been honored as one of President Bush’s Examples of Best Practices in Education for its promotion of honoring diversity and promoting cross-cultural understanding among schoolchildren in America. W.K. Kellogg Foundation support has allowed the Nihewan Foundation, directed by Buffy Sainte-Marie, to serve hundreds of thousands of students and teachers every year since initial funding began in 1996.
Via their Teacher Training programs, the Youth Council on Race, and the award-winning Cradleboard Teaching Project, they provide interactive multimedia Native American curriculum and online cross-cultural networking among grade school classes 3-12 in many schools across the nation. Strong connections have been made between schools on reservations and diverse urban and suburban schools, and a number of the connections have led to travel exchanges between groups of students and teachers, such as the Blackfeet Tribal School on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and a high school in Washington, DC and a suburban school in Dearborn, Michigan with the White Mountain Apache Tribal School on the Apache reservation in Arizona.
Cradleboard’s Science: through Native American Eyes curriculum has been reviewed as “a multicultural treasure” and “a science sensation” that “brings science into a human context that grounds the material for children” (National Science Teachers Association in USA Today). Free online core curriculum matches National Content Standards, maximizing use in existing local school curriculum.
