One Foot in the Levant

Cut Bank, Montana has incorporated education about Native Americans in all grade levels with a special emphasis on and participation by Blackfeet Nation students because of the reservation's proximity. This effort is also state legislature: the Indian Education For All (IEFA) law was passed in 1999 and funds schools conducting the curriculum. Cut Bank School is special because of how Blackfeet Nation students contribute to the teaching, but students are also learning by reading stories about American Indians, learning words and phrases, talking about the first Thanksgiving, and playing traditional music.

In 1890, an anthropologist used an early audio recording device called a phonograph to record three spokesmen for the Passamaquoddy tribe singing songs, telling stories, and pronouncing simple words. After years of efforts to eradicate Native American culture and language, these recordings were found again and shared with modern-day members of the Passamaquoddy tribe, who now use it to transcribe, interpret, and add to their cultural knowledge. The songs and stories have already begun making their way back into tribal events.

Herders in rural Mongolia are given financial compensation to help preserve cultural heritage by keeping watch over the country’s remote relics and burial sites. The historical sites hold a trove of information dating back thousands of years but their remote locations make preservation an arduous and expensive undertaking for the government.

In October of 2019, the city of Eureka, California returned stolen lands to the Wiyot Tribe, the region’s Native American people. This was done over a decade after a brutal massacre on the land, which is an island that had slowly become overgrown and deemed uninhabitable. The Wiyots worked every weekend for years cleaning up the land, and now, with a clean bill of health and the property rights, they can start to heal as a community together again.

Kha'p'o Community School recently became the first of six Native American Community Academy schools in New Mexico and, after two years of planning, is now entirely under tribal control. Its educational model brings tribal language and project-based learning focused on tribal identity into the classroom. This model teaches the importance of cultural preservation and prepares the children who will someday be leading the very tribe that they are being educated in.

The Karanga Aotearoa program coordinates with museums and cultural institutions across the world to repatriate Moriori remains and artifacts stolen by colonizers throughout New Zealand/Aotearoa's history. The process is Indigenous-led, with significant involvement from the descendents of those being returned, and prioritizes maintaining dignity for the ancestors.

The Fayette County Traveling Museum collects, preserves, and shares Uniontown’s Black history. The owners sift through archives, libraries, and donated boxes of materials, which are displayed as educational resources. The museum, which before COVID-19 was set up at schools and churches, details the early history of African Americans, both enslaved and free, the town’s Underground Railroad stop, prominent Black community figures, and the area’s Klu Klux Klan presence. Video and oral histories of older residents also encourage young people to explore their history and make the information more accessible.

The Moose Factory’s Community Language Project is part of a decade-long program to maintain the "L" dialect of the Moose Cree people alive. Through phone calls, in-person visits, the project's leaders are compiling as many words as possible, and have already published four versions of a dictionary, the last one was a digital version and contains around 27,000 entries. There are also children's books and grammar books available as well.

A Nepalese company called Traditional Homes was formed in order to restore traditional Newari homes to prevent them from being demolished. The houses are by the indigenous Newar people of the Kathmandu Valley and boast beautiful latticed windows and courtyards. These small restoration projects have taken off thanks to websites like TripAdvisor and Booking.com. Not only does the money go directly to the locals supporting the new bed-and-breakfasts, but tourists also receive an authentic and homey experience.

The Sri Lankan Civil War lasted from 1983 to 2009 and bitterly divided the country into two sides between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Years later in 2012, a literary program called Write to Reconcile was created by Sri Lankan-Canadian novelist Shyam Selvadurai to use creative writing as a tool to open up dialogue between the two sides that still have misconceptions and prejudices against each other. Many participants in the workshop, which ended in 2017, testify to how much the program changed their perspectives.