American Indian Culture and Research Journal

American Indian/Alaska Native pupils continue to lag behind their white counterparts in the STEM sciences. This gap is attributed to a disjunction between western and Native epistemologies and pedagogies; it also leads to an over-reliance on outside experts and technicians when addressing science related issues on tribal lands. This paper describes an informal science education project for Ojibwe middle-school-age children that is placed entirely within an Ojibwe domain. The project, in which the authors collaborated, incorporates an Organic Video Approach (OVA) that embraces traditional storytelling, Ojibwe epistemologies, and culturally relevant resources. Program participants explore community science issues within a Traditional Ecological Knowledge system and create Ojibwe-centered science videos. Students demonstrate media fluency and accurately reposition important science concepts within the community epistemology. The authors offer it as a portable model that can be adapted for use by diverse Native communities.