Pull-Out Program Holds Culture Day In Brighton

By Emma Brown

BRIGHTON — The Brighton Pull Out program held their second culture day on April 21. Each student arrived that morning in their traditional clothing anticipating the day’s events. The culture program had a replica of a traditional camp erected to be able to provide the students with a realistic scenario of what a typical camp would have consisted of before modern homes came along.

Beneath the cooking chickee Diane Smith, Stacy Jones, Rita Gopher, Mahala Madrigal, Mary Jo Micco, Martha Jones and Diane Snow taught students the art of making fry bread. Each student had their own bowl in which to place the ingredients, kneed and prepare the dough and drop their finished product into the frying pan over the open fire.

Once the fry bread was cooked it went into a cooler and was saved for lunch. At the same time the cooking staff was preparing a traditional lunch over the open fire.

Under another chickee Mable Haught shared Seminole legends with the students. The telling of the legends gives the students an example of what many of their Grand-parents grew up listening to before TV’s and video games came around. Molly Roberts gathered students under an oak tree to teach them how to play the cow knee bone game, and yes a real cow knee bone is used.

This game is taught to the students during culture day to demonstrate to them the type of game their parents and grand-parents might have played for fun before modern games were available.

Vincent Osceola and Victor Osceola gathered the boys under one chickee to teach them proper carving techniques. Finally, under another chickee Joanne Osceola facilitated Creek language acquisition bingo. This class was designed to test the student’s knowledge of the Creek language.

It was a full day of culturally fun learning activities and the students did not seem to know that learning their culture could be so much fun without realizing how much work it can be. This day was designed to have a more realistic approach to teaching the Seminole culture to the students and to give the students hands on experience with their tradition which in turn created much more involvement on behalf of the students.

The Pull-Out program’s culture day was a big success and credit is due to all of the language and culture staff that made this successful event possible for the students of the Brighton Pull-Out Program.