Cherry Valley highlights Native American art, culture
courtesy photo
Tony Grant sings and drums with Cherry Valley students as he does during the school days. He also teaches the Kootenai language.
courtesy photo
Learning about the Flathead Reservation is one skill kindergartners and first graders should master, and Chief Cliff is a spiritual and physical landmark.
Berl Tiskus
Sophie Matt stands in front of her drawing based on the book “The Blizzard’s Robe.” Sophie said a young girl made robes to keep the whole village warm.
Super beader Dana Hewankorn shows Cherry Valley students and siblings a beaded painting she is making during Cherry Valley’s Night of the Arts.
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POLSON — Every year Cherry Valley Elementary School hosts a Night of the Arts.
"This year we are celebrating Native American art and culture,” said kindergarten teacher Molly Billedeaux.
“This year’s theme grew out of our work for Indian Education for All,” said Cherry Valley Principal Elaine Meeks.
Meeks and a group of district teachers developed a comprehensive IEFA K-5 curriculum.
With a strong belief that art should go across the curriculum and be embedded in the curriculum, the Cherry Valley staff chose its Night of the Arts theme. The theme always meets Office of Public Instruction standards for children in Montana, such as learning the names of the tribes on the Flathead Reservation.
Tony Grant works with Sometimes children might not excel in language arts or math, Meeks said, but painting, sculpture, dance or music allows them a means of expression.
Each teacher selected a book that dealt with Native American stories and used that book as a platform for Native American art projects for the students to display on the night of the arts.
Billedeaux chose “Jingle Dancer,” by Cynthia Leitich Smith and Ying-Hwa Hu and illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright. The children in her class made small jingle dresses. Billedeaux’s own childhood jingle dress hung in the classroom.
“The Northern Lights” provided inspiration for Helen Siemers and her first graders.
ColeJene Whitworth showed his art project, a painting of a person illuminated by northern lights.
“We put paint on (the paper) and then put salt on,” ColeJene said, explaining the texture in his painting.
“We made dream catchers,” Lucian Sawyer said, explaining that his first grade class read “Buffalo Dreams,” involving a white buffalo.
Teacher Nicole Big Bow used a Cheyenne legend about how the Big Dipper came to be in her classroom. The book was called “Seven Brothers.”
First graders Sophie Matt and Lexi Stratton told the story of “The Blizzard’s Robe.” Teune, a young girl makes robes for her people, to protect them from the Blizzard. But then there is a fire, and … well, you have to read the rest of Robert Sabuda’s book to get the whole story.
At the Night of the Arts, Cherry Valley students and their families viewed the kids’ art projects, made bracelets out of beads and buckskin, painted, drummed and sang with Grant and danced in a powwow held in the cafeteria. Silent Hills provided the powwow music and Naomi Billedeaux, in full regalia, led the dancing. Kids and some parents joined the dancing, and it truly was a celebration of Native American art and culture at Cherry Valley.
