About the Program

• This is a DEFERRED-GRADE spring semester course.
• The course does not begin until April/May 2010. Three orientation lectures will be scheduled between April 9 and May 15 (the experience will run from May 16 to June 4, 2010).
• Students are encouraged to apply early, as enrollment is very limited.

Choose either 3- or 6-credit enrollment. (Required readings and final-paper length will vary based on credit choice.)

Description

This award-winning cross-cultural and educational seminar will help students explore and understand the worldview of the Anishinaabeg (also known as Ojibwe), one of the largest aboriginal communities in North America. The participants will be immersed for two weeks in the history, culture, and lifeways of the members of the Red Lake, Leech Lake, and White Earth nations in northern Minnesota (near the Ontario-Manitoba border).

Most of us are taught history facing west, but history in this seminar will be taught from the perspective of people facing east. The seminar members will participate in the sweat lodge ceremony, pipe ceremony, big drum ceremony, and intertribal traditional powwow, and they will visit several spiritual/ceremonial lodges.

The students will meet and learn from leading Ojibwe educators, traditional elders, and medicine men and women. They will experience family and social life by living with Ojibwe families for a weekend in the communities of Red Lake, Redby, Little Rock, and Ponemah.

This seminar will help the students understand why the worldview of the Ojibwe has been in conflict with the worldview of Euro-Americans during more than 300 years of conquest. The seminar will help the students appreciate diversity, think more critically about their own history and culture, and identify values that shape their own worldviews. The seminar participants can also develop skills of attentiveness, listening, observation, and reflection, all-important in meaningful cross-cultural encounters.

Faculty

Dr. Bruce D. Martin grew up alongside the northernmost point of the Red Lake Nation, Lake of the Woods, and Angle Inlet, Minnesota. He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and psychology at the University of Wisconsin, and master of divinity and doctor of ministry degrees at Princeton Theological Seminary. He has served as a cross-cultural seminar leader at Eastern Mennonite University. In addition to spending his sabbatical year among the Ojibwe, he has led several seminars to Ojibwe country in the United States and Canada. Dr. Martin is currently an adjunct instructor for the College of Education.

an   program of the College of Education

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