Indigenously Different: Embracing Traditional Teachings

Tribal nations must find a balance between western education and Indigenous knowledge. Learning, unlearning, and decolonizing means embracing the idea that education is not linear.

INDIGENOUSLY DIFFERENT’S VALUES ARE LED BY TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE, ELDER SUPPORT, AND MULTI-GENERATIONAL LEARNING. Family educational reclamation and self-determination lead to self-actualization.

Learning for Indigenous peoples all over the world is holistic in nature. It is more than hours tracked; we are building a community of resilient Indigenous learners. 

Indigenously Different: Embracing Traditional Teaching will be a newly created mobile app that supports native teaching by allowing the organization of learning experiences from an indigenous perspective.

• The app allows users to capture their learning experiences in photos and categorize them in their own shared folders.

• Indigenously Different then tracks hours and gives an update on progress. This allows users the ability to validate their shared knowledge and helps them to be accountable for their educational outcomes.

• It will support multiple children and even the guardian as having their own columns and tables. The app will allow the user to set goals and adjust as necessary.

• An important feature is the visual breakdown of where hours are being spent. Each state has requirements and links to find those by state will be a resource, this ensures that users acknowledge and maintain their required records.

Students will be encouraged to learn and will feel confident in their traditional knowledge. The app also incorporates links for resource sharing, there will be content for scholarships, native news, harm reduction efforts, advocacy initiatives, and peer-to-peer networking. This model will be used to create a non-indigenous partner app with similar features.

Attended Tribal Council meeting with the kids? Great that counts as Social Studies! Take a photo, write a quick blurb about the content, and send it off with a tap to be recorded in your app. Did you take a tour of the local museum? Take a photo record the time and place, (would like to incorporate Google Maps for location) and log those hours! Spending an hour learning your language or ceremonial protocol? great that counts too! 

It's time to validate and embrace non-traditional learners. Indigenously Different provides confidence and support to regain cultural knowledge. Certifications and workshops can be logged for the learners to create a quick look at qualifications.

During COVID families had to choose between strictly online learning platforms or homeschooling. Before the pandemic, only around 3% of people chose to homeschool. From 2020-2021 homeschooling increased to 63%! As the pandemic subsided more people decided to continue homeschooling with a fall of only 17% from 2021-2022.

Where did this leave native people?

Indigenous peoples all over the world have been told they are not capable of teaching and educating their children. This ideology has undermined the ability to transfer Indigenous knowledge.

Native people have been forced to endure the removal of their children and re-educating from a colonial worldview. These historical traumas created a barrier in our confidence to pass on knowledge.

It is no secret that we have a higher rate of suicide, and domestic violence, as well as missing and murdered people. Our lack of community resources has compounded and interfered with the rebuilding of our nations.

We know that to restore our communities we need to embrace and support our indigenous

worldviews.

How can we do this when we do not feel confident to teach it?

Besides the barrier of access to the internet (which I am also working in a digital equity space to resolve), the knowledge is there, it has however throughout the last couple hundred years been minimized and subjected to continued degradation. What we need is a reevaluation of what our shared knowledge is and its impact on our communities' well-being. We need to support not only our Indigenous knowledge but that of other countries as well. I see this as a platform that other communities can utilize to regain their culture and identity.

Megan Gourd has a level 3 cert in UX as well as training in Revit, AutoCAD and basic coding. She has been trained in Project Management and has a Bachelor in Social Entrepreneurship. She currently serves as the Vice Chair for her tribe and has made learning (specifically from an indigenous worldview) her long-term goal. She knows firsthand the discrepancies native people are faced with when trying to break away from European learning models. 

Indigenously Different will give confidence and support to indigenous communities. 

Right now I have already received two grants to take my team through the research and development phase and we are actively looking for assistance to move to the third phase. We are currently working on setting up discussions with other educators, homeschoolers, tribal communities, and Indigenous families. We are working on bringing the app to a test phase by the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025.

I am applying to become a SOLVER because for this to work it needs to be amplified. This is not something my group or myself can do on our own. This has the potential to have immense generational impact and while I may have helped get the ball rolling I know that for it to succeed it will need a much larger organization to eventually take it over. I want the passion and mission to stay true, this is why it is so important that it develops within and alongside those who truly understand the perspective of the losses Indigenous people have and continue to overcome. 

SOLVE is a supporter of Indigenous innovation and we need people who believe in creation. We need people who are willing to help us think through what we have missed, step us into the network of like-minded innovators, and allow us to partner with resources we ourselves cannot tap into. Addressing issues related to data sovereignty is also a concern and we would like to be connected with people who can assist. 

We know that mentorship and incubators change business outcomes. While most businesses have a one in five chance of success it is proven that those who go through an incubator program have a three in five chance. We PLAN to succeed. This is more than an idea, this is our generation's learning in our hands. We plan to build a platform of success. 

Megan Gourd has been an active member of the homeschool community for over 18 years. She was a member of homeschool co-op for over 7 years and served on its board for 2 years. In that time, she observed the many ways that homeschoolers track and record their hours and has spoken with hundreds of people at every level of the homeschooling journey. She found a consistent need for recording hours and organizing subjects. She found it frustrating that no app or program would allow her to easily track her unschooling method. Indigenously Different came out of those needs. She has been an active member of Indigenous organizations and currently serves as the Vice Chair for her tribe the Fort Bidwell Indian Community. She has worked with the Tribal Resource Center as a tribal liaison and now works with Tribal Broadband Bootcamp in digital equity. 

Megan has had the privilege of being included in cohorts related to Language Reclamation, Tribal Governance, AISES Rematriation, and innovative business startups! She is a go-getter, an advocate and motivated by her desire to see real change. She is a member of the Gidutikad Band of Northern Paiute as well as a Blackfeet descendant. She has served on non-profit boards and has a degree in Social Entrepreneurship