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As a new curriculum gets implemented, board game helps teach Indian Education For All

 The Bozeman Trail Game at a classroom
Taylar Stagner
/
Wyoming Public Radio
The Bozeman Trail Game at St. Stephens Elementary School. Materials provided by Jeannie Cooper.

Years ago researcher Victoria Sanders developed a board game to teach students about treaty rights. She recently showed a demo of the game at the Teton Science School in Jackson.

"We've done the beta testing and we're up to like 600-700 kids across Wyoming so Rock Springs, Casper, Midwest, Cody, Jackson," she said.

The game is called The Bozeman Trail and kids get to problem solve from different perspectives as the game takes them through the westward expansion of the late 1800s. Different teams are given objectives on how to divvy up limited resources.

One thing Sanders really wanted to emphasize was the original treaty rights in northern Wyoming and southern Montana. In the Fort Bridger Treaty, the Eastern Shoshone, Lakota, and the Northern Cheyenne all received treaty rights protecting their land.

But Sanders said that all changed when white people started revising the treaty for economic gains.

Originally, Sanders was told to bring the game to high schoolers but she ran into a problem.

"They don't believe that the treaty rights that are ascribed to the Native nations in 1851 are going to continue in their favor. So they gave up on the game," she said.

But younger kids don't know the outcome so they have a better time playing.

"It's not about grade level, almost. It's about whose hearts are soft enough to wrestle with all of this complexity. But yeah, the younger kids were better at it," Sanders said.

This game is one example of school districts in the state trying to educate students about Native American issues, specifically the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes.

On March 10, 2017, Governor Matt Mead signed into law what is called the Indian Education for All Act. Rob Black is the Native American Liason for the Wyoming Department of Education. He said teaching the foundational history of Native nations is essential, but how teachers go about instruction can look different from district to district.

"I've seen a huge success and it really draws the kids into your history and social studies and you can get a lot of your standards hit with that too."

"It's not really a subtlety, but a lot of people kind of miss that they think the state just mandates the curriculum. But honestly, we're really locally controlled in that regard, and that textbooks, curriculum, teaching materials, [are all] entirely left up to the 48 school districts," Black said.

The state outlines benchmarks of what students should have learned throughout the year, including concepts from the cultural practices for younger kids to how tribal governments work for older students.

The state also provides online materials to teachers to meet benchmarks, but Black said these days, teachers have contacted him less about where to find materials.

"I think teachers in the school districts have become more aware and they've gotten more comfortable," he said.

It's important to note that The Indian Education for All Act is required but is unfunded. So there's some concern on how much emphasis will be placed on this program.

In Montana, controversy surrounds their version of the program and has led to lawsuits involving the tribes and the state.

This fall the standards for Indian Education for All were implemented. One school board in Riverton, only just approved their curriculum for Indian Education for All changes this week, even though that's the district neighboring the Wind River Reservation. But Black said he believes they were likely teaching it before this.

"We're pretty certain a lot of districts were already doing things like this, especially on and near the reservation were doing these kinds of lesson plans before they had to be implemented," he said.

Jeannie Cooper teaches 2nd grade at St. Stephens Elementary School in Fremont County and said the Bozeman Trail board game is a great way to implement this new curriculum.

"I've seen a huge success and it really draws the kids into your history and social studies and you can get a lot of your standards hit with that too," Cooper said.

She said the foundation of treaty rights like those in the Fort Bridger Treaty is so important to teach at a formative age and get the kids thinking about the early formation of the U.S. and Wyoming.

"So, people really get that good, solid background of why things happened the way they are, the way they're happening now, how things were set up and why they were set up," Cooper said.

Taylar Dawn Stagner is a central Wyoming rural and tribal reporter for Wyoming Public Radio. She has degrees in American Studies, a discipline that interrogates the history and culture of America. She was a Native American Journalist Association Fellow in 2019, and won an Edward R. Murrow Award for her Modern West podcast episode about drag queens in rural spaces in 2021. Stagner is Arapaho and Shoshone.

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