Indigenous STEAM Program Chicago

Please register for our Winter Storytelling and Honoring the Trees event on February 15th at North Park Village Nature Center.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfX_CRqvre21Ubkf2biEBzzCigSYXQMrFZ3x3LpJq4wqUGLbw/viewform

Check out a new phase of some of our work led by Carrie Tzou! This is the first PD session we are offering with 4 more to come! Check out the website here: http://goodladinstitute.org/expansive-stem-education-toward-just-futures/

ISTEAM Summer Program 2023 registration is now OPEN! Join us for Indigenous STEAM Summer camp.
ISTEAM Week 1: July 10th-14th
ISTEAM Week 2: August 7th-11th
Labagh Woods, Grove 3
Click this link to register https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd53WftF9IXOnTOcLAcYpWIZPcEmt3NMuRf7VPB0lNCtWCTAw/viewform

Behne all! Our spring newsletter is out! This season, we announce our ChiSTEAM summer program dates (email Felicia to get started on registration), and we introduce the ISTEAM Aunties who have been working on our curricular materials!

Let's as We Head Back-to-School. For the safety and well-being of our students, educators, administrators, and other stakeholders must be knowledgeable of the cultural importance and diverse expressions of Native identity.
https://vimeo.com/736667005/14e0f1d94e

Dear Community,

We write to address a series of social media critiques about our Chicago ISTEAM program. We know that the story unfolding hurts children, youth, families; hurts victims of domestic abuse, of racism, of identity violence; hurts community locally and afar, regardless of what is true or not. We are sorry for that.

ISTEAM is a community-based effort to develop educational programs for youth from ages 5-18. The 2022 Chicago program was developed in collaboration by Northwestern University, the American Indian Center of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools Title VI program, and St. Kateri Center, as well as at least 30 other Chicago community members ranging in age from 18 to their late 70s. All three organizations had their youth program employees contribute to ISTEAM. There were four weeks of programming planned. Two weeks were ISTEAM, 2 weeks were coordinated by the CPS summer program and the AIC. We aimed to create good space for our community. And, Week 1 of ISTEAM was beautiful and deeply needed by all of us who participated.

Starting 7/22/22, the final day of week 1 of ISTEAM, 5 individuals began posting a range of accusations and commentary on social media about ISTEAM and multiple individuals associated with it. Amongst the most serious accusations are the following: we promote domestic abuse; we promote anti-Blackness; we are grooming children to accept violence; we are engaged in identity violence; and there are now a series of other claims being made. Though the accusations are false – we do not promote any of this – these are important issues more broadly in our community
that do need work. We will take the current moment as an opportunity to address and contribute to the healing and capacity building of community beyond ISTEAM. We are committed to doing right by Native children,
families, and communities.

The local Chicago community has been and will be the center of our accountability process, not social media. We provide this single update so those unfamiliar with the details, or the dynamics in Chicago Native community, have heard from us directly. We have agreed to pursue the following actions:

1. We have postponed week 2 of ISTEAM so we can put steps 2-6 in motion. However, we have been asked to continue ISTEAM programming as soon as we can because many families voiced that their children have been deeply struggling and they felt good at ISTEAM. We will work towards seasonal camps to ensure we honor families’ requests. In addition, the lead of the project had a family member become very ill two days after the allegations were made and then pass on several days later. She and her family have been in ceremonies and are still planning memorials, burial and other end of life tasks that will extend into the 2nd planned week
of ISTEAM. Other community organizations will continue to offer
programming for youth to ensure families aren’t left without Services.

2. We have met with partner organizations, Chicago ISTEAM co-designers & facilitators, and Chicago ISTEAM families multiple times to ensure a broad range of people had opportunity to discuss the issues raised and how to best help community. The allegations were directly discussed, information, documentation and other evidence was provided. Some partner organizations are pursuing additional steps with respect to some of the allegations.

3. Some of us as individuals will hold circles to help survivors of
violence (e.g. domestic abuse, sexualized violence, child abuse, and
many others). A group of survivors and several people currently
experiencing these forms of violence have started to convene to discuss what they would like to see happen. These events have made it clear that there is little in place in community to address these issues and that current efforts are not helping or healing at least some of us who need it. However ISTEAM cannot do this as we are educators. We are not experts or trained in these areas.

4. We will approach the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative made up of 17 community organizations to propose an effort to build capacity around trauma, conflict and restorative justice that helps community. Some community members have voiced that there must be ways for people who have done harm to repair and make it right, if possible. We have requested time at the next meeting to discuss this.

5. Northwestern (partnership across the multiple Native focused offices and employees) will develop clearer policies for Native students, staff, and faculty as well as non-Native people working with Native communities. We aim to develop processes and policies documenting individuals' community connections and more explicit partnership guidelines, codes of conduct and hiring practices for Northwestern.

6. We will work towards increasing educational efforts and awareness about a variety of issues (example issues discussed: domestic abuse, sexualized violence, anti-Blackness, bullying, and suicidation). We are committed to continuing to learn and develop more effective ways of disrupting the perpetuation of colonial violence in all its forms and creating opportunities for community to engage issues in meaningful and productive ways.

We are mindful that the ways we respond to these social media events can either create or prevent additional trauma and harm in community. Accomplishing the above goals will take time if they are to be done well. However, the ISTEAM collaborative has always worked to do good things with and for community. We will continue to do that and aim to contribute to broader community efforts towards wellbeing.

Chicago ISTEAM Collaborative
Organizations: Northwestern University, American Indian Center of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools Title VI Program, St. Kateri Center of Chicago

We are so excited for ISTEAM Summer 2022! Join us as we in enagage in Indigenous Science, technology, engineering, art and math. Some of the exciting things we plan to do this summer is learn about nearby ecosystems, harvest medicines, learn about and enjoy traditional foods and stories, play indigenous games and community build 🌿🐢🐞🌻🌿

Posoh - Save the dates! We are looking forward to ISTEAM Summer Program 2022! More details to come!

Behne everyone! We hope you're all enjoying summer and continuing to build relations with lands & waters everywhere you go! Don't forget to check out our website for free family resources and activities! https://indigenoussteam.org/ Oose!

Indigenous STEAM – Indigenous science education resources The Indigenous STEAM Collaborative co-designs, implements, and shares land based educational materials developed in collaboration with families, communities, and educators and research. We foreground Indigenous knowledge systems – roles, relations, responsibilities, and gifts between and within hu...