Page 477 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

452 L. Waukau-Villagomez and C.S. Malott

for nature. Menominee people have lived in harmony with nature for hundreds of
years, as evidenced by the pristine northern Wisconsin forests and lakes.
Both Leslie Teller and Lisa Waukau are Menominee teachers who use storytelling
in their classrooms. Leslie uses traditional storytelling and Lisa uses informal
storytelling. The students love to hear their stories. One semester, Leslie taught a
distance learning class on mythology for Menominee and non-Menominee stu-
dents. She believes that the native Menominee students had an easier time relating
to the stories she told in the class than the non-native students, since the sharing of
oral narratives is a part of the Menominee students’ traditional ways of coming to
know the world.
The multifaceted nature of native storytelling is also evident in another example
from Leslie Teller’s teaching practice. Many years ago, Leslie heard a story when
she was taking a class in Arizona. Today, she uses this story to teach onomatopoeia
to her students. She teaches the word for owl in the Menominee language, which is
“koo-koo-a-oo.” The students usually laugh and they don’t believe her since the
word sounds like an owl hooting. Then she relates a story about prairie dogs and
the Dust Bowl in mid-America of the 1930s:
The Apache word for prairie dog is ee-ee, which is the sound that prairie dogs actually
make. When the white man moved to the Great Plains, he saw the prairie dog as a nuisance.
They did everything they could to rub them out. The prairie dog towns were complex and
vast – one was reported to be as big as the state of Indiana. Indians said that the prairie dogs
were necessary to aerate the land. When most of the prairie dogs were gone and the rains
came, the water couldn’t soak into the land. It was an ecological disaster. People did not
know the stories and they suffered.
Lisa uses storytelling to introduce important events or ideas in history. Sometime
the stories are funny and come from the news or current events. Other times, the
stories are family stories about war or they are events in Menominee history. The
following is an example of a true story from Menominee history that she uses to
demonstrate the conflict between Native tribes and European colonists:
It was a beautiful October and the year was 1811 when the word spread that the great
Tucumthe was planning to visit the Menominee and it was a time the young people of the
Tribe would remember. You may know him as Tecumseh. Imagine this man, the greatest
warrior of his time, was coming to visit the Menominee. The young men could barely
contain their excitement and the young women could not understand why. He was after all,
just a man not even from our tribe. So what that he was coming from so far away. One girl
was heard to comment, “He isn’t exactly the sun in my cornfield.” And a young man
retorted, “Well, when Tucumthe speaks, his enemies tremble. How many people do you
know that can do that?”
But, the big question was why is this hero of the battles in the Ohio Valley coming to visit
the Menominee? It must be important for him to come all this way. Menominee bands from
all over were coming to meet Tecumthe in a Grand Council and soon the main band was
hosting people from all over at the little village at the mouth of the Menominee River called
Minikani. They wanted a chance to see, to hear, and to touch the great Tecumseh.
Finally, he arrived in his flotilla of canoes and excitement was in the air as he disem-
barked. There he was: tall, muscular and handsome and not very old, and he looked every
bit the son of a great chief. Our Chief Tomow greeted the visitor along with all the other
band chiefs and they escorted our visitors to the Council Lodge where they smoked