BAY MILLS - Wanda Perron and Paula Carrick of the Bay Mills History Department were recently notified by Bay Mills Indian Community Grant Writer Kathy Adair that their office would be receiving a $33,817 National Park Service Grant. The purpose of the two-year grant is to increase knowledge of the Ojibwe culture, traditions, language and history in the 32 schools currently chartered by Bay Mills Community College.
"It's unfortunate, but many people don't know the history of the tribes in Michigan," said Perron. "It's not ignorance, but a lack of information - there is none out there. This will give us an opportunity to tell our own history from our own perspective."
In addition to providing the schools with the rich history of the local Ojibwe, Perron and Carrick said that their presentations would also be reproduced on digital video discs as a learning aid and for distribution to all 32 schools. The presentation, which includes detailed accounts of the local Ojibwe from the earliest recorded times until present day, also includes how the tribe got its name, how they migrated to the area, tribal government, the Indian Reorganization Act, clan systems, treaties, influence of the church, and life in boarding schools. Upon completion, three presentations would be facilitated in Saginaw, Mich., for charter school teachers, administrators and staff.
Since Michigan educational standards require that Michigan history be taught in all schools, the opportunity to incorporate local Native American history into the 32 schools currently being chartered by BMCC is an added bonus for Perron and Carrick. Their history presentations would be used to compliment the current history and social studies classes being taught to the 10,000-plus students who currently attend a BMCC-chartered school. In addition to introducing students to cultural resources and information that would not have been accessible to them otherwise, Perron and Carrick said it is equally important that these students know the people who are providing them with the opportunity to attend a school of their choice.
"History books in use at other schools don't do tribes justice," Perron said. "To this day we are trying to override what's been taught in history books. We have a unique opportunity to share our history with thousands of students so they know who is chartering their schools. Bay Mills has a rich history and you can't go to your history books to find it."
The Bay Mills Executive Council founded the history department in 1996 to assist Dr. Charles Cleland, a professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at Michigan State University, who was contracted to write a book on the history of the community titled "The Place of the Pike (Gnoozhekaaning): A History of the Bay Mills Indian Community. The history department assisted Cleland with the retrieval and preservation of documents, pictures, maps and meeting minutes to be used in the book. After the book was completed, the history department employees continued to stockpile photos, documents, oral histories and stories to preserve the history of the people of Bay Mills.
