Nurture the Children

Billie: Carole, Whisper n Thunder is delighted to feature Nurture the Children this month - can you tell our readers a bit about your organization?

Carole: I started Nurture The Children (NTC) 19 years ago, although at that time it was just Grandma Carole’s games, it did not become Nurture the Children until just after I began my journey into living the Sundance way of life. I started because as I attended Pow-Wow’s I noticed that there was little being done to educate the children about Native American Culture.

I began by providing games based on the basic skills native children would have needed to survive before the coming of the European influences. I invited the children (native and non-native) to join me in my time machine and travel back 500 years to the time before the coming of European influence.  

The games I started with are designed to teach about the strong connection between Native People and the Earth Mother. I believe in teaching our children by “nurturing through nature.” We played the Moving Camp Game, where the children are required to use their most important Indian tool…their imagination. If you can imagine it you can make it happen. They traveled from winter camp down in the valley to summer camp up in the mountains. They could not go shopping at a local store so they followed the food source up into the mountains where there was fresh green grass. They had to cross an imaginary stream or river, and avoid a blackberry thicket where the bears might be feasting after the long winters sleep and lastly climb a few mountains. I use rope to layout the stream and river, creating easy and hard places to cross. The children were challenged to find the easier places to cross. The mountains are other children, crossed in “leap-frog” fashion. The Rattle Snake game teaches listening skills, Fire Tender teaches the sacred nature of fire and sneak-up & listening skills.

As I began to take the programs into the schools I was frequently asked “how much do you charge?” I believe all knowledge belongs to the children and therefore I can not “sell” it. So I developed the Youth Serving Youth programs and began asking each class to participate in them. They can choose to participate in the bi-annual clothing drives, annual school supply drive, the coat and boot drive or any special project that NTC is working on. All proceeds go to Rosebud Reservation, S.D. (my Sundance home) targeting a different community and school every year; the amount of donations vary from year to year. We have done a couple of special projects: new textbooks for Spring Creek Elementary School and over 3,000 books to start a “library” at He Dog School. Sadly He Dog still only has a reading room because there are no funds for a librarian.
 
Billie: What was the igniting passion that led you to form NTC - and in particular the relationship to Nature and children?

Carole: It takes so much more than food clothing and shelter to nurture our children. I have found that Nature has been my biggest source of understanding. My first “best friend” was a huge old oak tree that I would climb and share all my secrets with. I have found so much comfort and fulfillment by sitting upon the Earth Mother and feeling her energy flow up through me and out. Learning to “speak without words to the standing one, four-legged, winged ones, creepy crawlers, finned ones and swimmers" was the most fulfilling event in my life. I learned how insignificant I am in the Great Mystery.

While discovering how insignificant I am, I was able to see that there is a place just for me within the “web of life” and that no one can fill that place of responsibility but me. I believe that by helping our children reconnect with the Earth Mother, they too can make these discoveries about themselves. Finding their humility and responsibility will help them develop a strong cultural connection, the very basis for a strong personal identity.

With the rising suicide rates among our young people, my desire to nurture through nature has become stronger each year. I feel like the small impact made by Youth Serving Youth Programs is like spitting on a prairie fire, making a small local impact that is quickly overcome by the advancing flames. Strong children form strong families, strong families form strong communities, strong communities form strong Nations and strong nations form a strong world wide force that can change the very world we live in….one child at a time!  
 
Billie: Tell us a bit about your donations of fabric and patterns.

Carole: I have donated fabric and patterns to the youth advocacy center on Rosebud for the young women to use for making quilts and clothing.  My thoughts here are that we must provide them with opportunities to be self-sufficient. I would hope that we can eventually see them selling shawls, regalia, and quilts online. We must provide these young women with a glimpse of a positive future if we are to overcome the high suicide rates. In the process of learning to make regalia the elders teaching them “how” can share the “why;” understanding the meaning behind symbols used in quilts and regalia.
 
Billie:How do kids get involved? I love the Youth Serving Youth programs. Tell us about those. 

Carole:I have never been disappointed by the willingness of our youth to become involved. Once they are offered the opportunity they step forward and respond beyond my expectations. I see these programs as having a threefold objective:

1.    Educating mainstream America about the fact that Native American children living on and off reservations do not have the same educational possibilities as even the poorest person living within mainstream American society.

2. Educating mainstream America about the poverty in Indian Country.

3.   By teaching young children to serve others, they have the opportunity to feel the fulfillment of spirit (that intangible element that one gets form service to others). They will then continue to serve others throughout their lives. The children’s nation (native and non-native) needs to be nurtured through nature if we are to have any hope of healing the Earth Mother. As I write the Earth Mother is bleeding into the Gulf. When we create a Children’s Nation that is connected to the Earth Mother and each other, then and only then can we hope to create an adult population that will begin to respect the Earth Mother and cease their assaults on Her.

Billie: What is it that NTC does now that you believe most embodies what you were trying to accomplish when you had the initial vision for NTC?

Carole: The school programs help bring about an understanding and acceptance of the diversity and value of traditional earth ways. The Youth Serving Youth programs provide an opportunity to put diversity education to the test. When the youth reach out to serve others that they will never see, they develop the ability to “see” past their differences. The dominant culture starts teaching their children in preschool with little tests that ask them to “circle the thing that is different, circle the one that doesn’t belong.” Whether it is an intentional lesson or not, by the time children are in third grade they understand that “if they are different they do not belong.”   

We must provide opportunities for the children to “see” that no two things in nature are exactly alike, no two stones, no two shells, no two trees, no two bears…so why should two humans be exactly alike? By helping them discover the beauty in the differences they will begin to accept and respect each other. Each of them are one leaf on the tree of life, each independently feeding the tree and being fed by the tree. But they are also feeding each other because the tree takes what it is given and shares it with all.

Each fall thousands of human being travel great distances to enjoy the beauty of the changing colors found in leaves. Yet these same human being walk past all the beauty of the diversity that surrounds them everyday. Nature has such powerful lessons to teach us but we first have to get out there and open our eyes and ears. Learning to see with our ears and hear with our eyes. When I see my cat outside and he opens his mouth I “hear with my eyes” that he is speaking to me and when I hear the wolf crying in the night “I see him with my ears” as clearly as if he were right in front of me. We do it everyday without thinking, but when we do it with the knowledge that we are doing it, a whole new reality appears.    
 
Billie:What challenges or opportunities, as I like to call them, are facing you now?

Carole: Ha, until now I have been a one woman task force, gathering the children and providing the education and opportunities to serve. Right now I am actively seeking members for a board of directors. To make bigger changes I need a taskforce. What bigger change??? That would be the fulfillment of my life’s “mission” to open a Nurture The Children Camp, I call it Camp Ina Maka for now; the board of directors may decide on a different name. This camp will provide a place to bring our youth back to the earth.             
 
Billie: What's on the horizon - where are future dreams for NTC taking you? 

Carole: On the horizon: buying land and developing the Back to the Earth camp. There will not be a lot of construction but there will be some buildings to house the elders, offices and conference area so that the camp can rent it out to make money because my plan is that by the seventh year the camp will be entirely self-sufficient. All buildings will be a combination of current sustainable housing and traditional housing technology, all power will be produced on site (water, wind, and solar). I would like to see it stand as an example of living in harmony. While it will include some modern technology, only earth friendly technology will be used.

The children will be housed in traditional Lakota villages; each Tipi family will have to learn to function as a family providing for their own needs. Food will be provided but they will have to prepare it, they will have to gather their wood, haul their water. Their biggest responsibility will be to each other…the main rule will be that decisions must be made based on what is best for the “good of all.” They must learn first and foremost the difference between 'I want and I need.'

I want to pull them away from the reservation and back to the land. Then they can go back to the reservation and share what they have learned. Ideally the youth that finish the program will be given first choice for the jobs of camp counselor for the next session if they decide to stay.   

Initially the camp will target the children of Rosebud; then as it get up and running at full speed it will be open to all children in Indian County. Eventually I hope it will be expanded; developing other camps throughout Turtle Island. Each camp would pull elders from the local Nations to share local traditions.  

To learn more about Nurture the Children and how you can help, please contact Carole at nurturethechildren@hotmail.com.  Thank you Carole!