The reference is at the bottom of this page. Currently, I teach at Salish Kootenai College on the Flathead Indian Reservation in beautiful downtown Pablo, Montana where I am the Assistant Director for the Distance Education Department. Today's technology may be different, but for Native People the philosophy of communicating at distance is not new. So too, mentoring for distance education was also within the scope of the lives of our ancestors, mentors who taught the youth of the tribe to read the trails, to leave picture messages on rocks, to listen for the animal calls, to read the signs in the forest, to play the drum and sing the songs. The concept of sharing, connecting and relating to the environment forms the basic premise of education for American Indian people .
All humans are social animals who depend on each other for their mutual survival and their identity.
We call this connecting and relating the communal experience. It incorporates values of stories, languages, customs, songs, dances and ways of thinking. The community is a place where one learns to be human. This kind of communal learning must be preserved as a component of American Indian education. Today, with or without our conscious participation, a new story of education is being written.