Jared ten Brink, a doctoral student in education at the University of Michigan, is an enrolled member of the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi. He lives a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the tribe's reservation, making it difficult for him to help his two young children learn about their indigenous heritage.
However, as a science teacher and former educational coach, he was looking for a way to bring the teachings of tribal elders to a wider audience via distance learning. But he hasn't had much success using traditional video streaming.
“How can you really connect with the Earth when you're looking at this flat screen and a little box on Zoom?” question. “How do you put someone in that space?”
To help better preserve and share the teachings of his indigenous culture, he decided to try out the latest technological tool – virtual reality.
But when he went to tribal elders with the idea, not everyone accepted. Some were concerned that attaching virtual reality headsets might take students away from the natural world.
However, other tribal leaders thought it was worth a try. So over the past year Ten Brink has been experimenting with this approach, taking a 360-degree camera into the field to capture key cultural practices. The short VR videos are just part of the curriculum he is developing, which also includes hands-on exercises.
Could virtual reality be the key to teaching indigenous ways of knowing to a large number of students?
We caught up with Ten Brink on this week's EdSurge Podcast to dig deeper into this question.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, or use the player on this page. Or read partial text, edited for clarity, below.
EdSurge: How did this project come about?
Jared ten Brink: As someone who wasn't very raised and immersed in my tribal culture, I don't really understand it from a place where I can do the teachings. Plus, I'm not an old man. From my point of view, this is not my place. So I didn't want to be the person teaching in these videos. I wanted it to be someone else.
So I reached out to personal friends. I reached out to various tribal government agencies and organizations I know and asked them about this matter. So I sat down and said: What do you think about this idea? What should we teach him? What should the topics be for them?
We settled on two themes that are really important to the Anishinaabe, Council of Three Fires, of which we are a part: sugar maple and manumin, or wild rice.
Our ancestors were told to look for where food grows on water. They went down the St. Lawrence River and found the place where food grows on water, the Great Lakes Basin, where wild rice and mannomen grow everywhere. It was all over the place, and our story closely mirrors Manomen's. When we were driven from our lands, Manomen was killed. When settlers came, they filled in the wetlands where the manominum plants grew to grow potatoes, or they killed them because they polluted the water systems. Thus, the manomin is now an endangered species.
Drinking is also very important because drinking is how we survive the winter. Realistically, you get to February – this time of year – and your food supply runs out, and that's when the gift of syrup comes in. We didn't just use it as a drink. We boiled it all down to make sugar. And that's great. Anyone can do it if you have a maple tree.
This is one of the things we did with the kids. And it was very interesting to see. So we have these kids sitting here with these spoons, and they're stirring and stirring and stirring. Then suddenly, they wonder: “Why does it change color?” After stirring for about five minutes, suddenly, in about 15 seconds, it turns from syrup to sugar. And they say: “Stop!” It's so cool to see, and the kids think it's so cool to see.
How does virtual reality come about?
So, for these videos, I went to a tribal member's sugar bush in northern lower Michigan – the northern part of the Lower Peninsula. We went out into the woods with a 360 camera, and I just followed him. We went out into the forest. We have exploited the first tree. He talked me through the process and taught me how to harvest maple syrup.
Some who hear about this idea may think it's ironic that you're using ultra-modern virtual reality technology to try to preserve an ancient culture.
I don't think it's a paradox that technology helps us learn in this area. Indigenous people have used technology in many different ways for a long time, and we are not stuck in one era or one past. And that was one of the things that I talked about with some of the tribal people, even though some of the tribal people were very adamant that they didn't think that was appropriate.
Many were in favor of it, among the people I spoke to, and I'm sure there were many of them, just like any other residents. We don't all agree.
What do you see as a potential for VR outside of the scope of this project?
One possibility I see in the future is VR streaming, which would require a lot more resources than I have access to.
You know, if you could stream VR, you could set up a camera around a sacred fire, and you could have a tribal elder teach you and talk to you on the ground, and then you could be in your own space with your peers, and have a sacred fire burning as well and put on a headset Your head and contact this person. One of the things I heard from a lot of indigenous people is that they missed the smell of fire.
We did something where seniors were connecting via Zoom. But it's not quite the same. When you just look at this call, you and I are in this box. You cannot see the entire space around you.
[In VR]You look around and see people dancing around you. You see people watching, you see people talking – and not everyone is doing the same thing. There is a lot going on.
