MIT Astronomy Education resources Native Astronomy, Site of the Day 9/1/96

Stone Medicine Wheels Bibliography

AMERICAN INDIAN ASTRONOMY TEACHER GUIDE, TEACHER INFORMATION, STUDENT ACTIVITIES, (Middle School, grade 5, see book review); By Priscilla Buffalohead illustrated by Robert DesJarlait -- covers lightly for elementary level ideas treated in more depth here for older students and teacher science background

Crab Nebula Supernova, 1054 was visible in the daytime for 20 days. It was recorded by Natives in Chaco Canyon and elsewhere. Check out the rest of this Anasazi site.

• Von Del Chamberlain one of the early discoverers of many Crab Nebula supernova petroglyphs, says too many people are now saying every petroglyph is astronomical -- thus discrediting the ones that really are
BRIEF PERCEPTIONS of Astronomical Phenomena, Menominee, recorded by Colleen Waukanchon:
The Moon -- 

Aurora Borealis -- In Anishnaabemowin, this is jibayag niimi'idiwag, Ghosts Are Dancing, jibay is ghost of a dead person 

Meteors -- finding little star-marked stones. 

Meteors and Native Americans -- as an astronomy guy researched and presents this.

Center for Archaeoastronomy explains what it is, has some very short editorials and articles from back issues of its bulletin. Perhaps there will bemore content to the website later
Ethno-archaeoastronomy brief article by Claire Ferrer about difficulties of collecting star knowledge from Mescalero Apache -- only a couple of old men knew it, and they were religiously forbidden to speak of it to women.
History of Astronomy including ethnic and archaeoastronomy, web site mostly for astronomers, Max Planck Institute, Germany.

CREDITS: I drew the Lakota-style quilt sun-star in FreeHand and converted it to raster for these pages -- but to get it right, I had to look at the star on my actual quilt (by Elaine Brave Bull, Hunkpapa Lakota from Standing rock rez). The 3 natives marvelling at the moon -- some kind of eclipse -- was drawn by John Fadden (Mohawk artist) in 1970 or so, to illustrate a book of traditional stories by his father, elder Ray Fadden (Tehanatorens), several of which are star legends. It was then published in Akwesasne Notes. I scanned and traced it in FreeHand, to use with Heart of the Earth AIM Survival School Indian-centered science material prepared in 1993.

 Nice review and 4-star rating (10 out of 10) from Magellan (whole site)
 

Yahoo SUNGLASSES site (for First Nations section only).

 Cool Canadian Site of the Day -- First Nations section only -- for 2/22/96 (ah, fame: so fleeting and soon gone)

Point Communications --picked this site (whole thing) last year, among the "top 5%" of K -12 educational web. Since then, they also top-rated the MayaPages -- and made racist remarks about Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum in their review.

History of Astronony: Max Planck Institute for Space Research, Germany -- It's just a link, no "best of". Here's why I'm so happy about it. Below the line is Archaeoastronomy: dead stones and bones, no relevance to the life and true history of science. But this Native Astronomy website is above the line, they put it with the part of history of science -- like Gallileo -- that still lives. The Lakota constellations, the stone circles that touched the stars 2,000 years ago on the high plains of Canada -- he considers that they live, that the life of the mind continues forward with them. Instead of being below the line, with the stones and bones of the archaic, dead past. Any Native person likes to hear that some savant thinks that.