Program provides funding to train Native curators

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The University of Lethbridge Centre for Aboriginal Management has been authorized to proceed with a program to train students as senior administrators and museum curators.

The Peigan Nation intends to fund up to 24 students in the next year.

Reg Crowshoe, general project manager for the Peigan Nation Red Book Project, said the Peigan Nation is still seeking portions of the funding from various government departments.

"The training component is a vital part of the program, which must commence immediately," said Crowshoe.

Courses and workshops will be offered on campus by the Peigan Nation, the University of Lethbridge and Edmonton's Grant MacEwan Community College.

The program will pay tuition, books, fees, living expenses and transportation costs for the students.

It will consist of three phases and includes courses on accounting, museology and Blackfoot history and culture. The third phase includes a five-week internship at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, five weeks at Head Smashed-In Buffalo Jump and two weeks at a smaller museum.

"The training program is designed for students who understand the Blackfoot heritage and culture," said Rick Hinton, Director of the U of L Centre for Aboriginal Management.

"This unique program is a joint venture with the Peigan Nation following their expressed needs. We hope to follow this with a similar program which has a Cree orientation.

"It will be a benefit to aboriginal people as a whole as they seek to develop further their cultural base, their economies and repatriate artifacts currently housed in museums."

Graduating students will be able to work immediately with the Medicine Lodge centre and Cultural Renewal Program as curators of the Living Museum and tourism program planned for 1994 on the Peigan Reserve.

"It is being developed as part of their tourism action plan which in turn will be the engine of economic growth for the Peigan Nation," Hinton said.

The program doesn't start until May 4 but it is already receiving requests for graduates from Parks Canada for Native Interpretive guides, from a culture centre in Saskatoon and from a number of other Native-oriented cultural positions.