Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc.
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"It doesn’t matter the extent of their disabilities. It’s their culture. It’s like feeding. If your child can’t feed himself you feed him because he needs to eat.”
Erich Longie, President, Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc., Spirit Lake Dakota Sioux
There is a lot of talk about “person-centered” language and planning. To assume that culture is not important to a Dakota child with severe mental retardation reveals an attitude that the severe mental retardation is the only thing that matters.
"As a child when I moved to a deaf school off tribal lands I couldn’t participate in my cultural rituals such as pow-wows and ceremonies. My life was like a torn piece of paper. When I could reconnect these ceremonies and my ability to be first a Native American and then a deaf person my life came together again.”
- Mark Azure, Intertribal Deaf Council
When you celebrate culture you don’t celebrate it for all of these reasons like learning better gross motor skills. You do it because that’s what we do. According to Erich Longie, Dakota Sioux, Native American communities in the Great Plains have a history of full inclusion. One example is given below.
For more on culture and disability, with special emphasis on the Great Plains tribes, click here to download a Powerpoint presentation used in COPT training workshops
Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc. -- P.O.Box 663, 314 Circle Dr., Fort Totten, ND 58335 Tel: (701) 351-2175 Fax: (800) 905 -2571
Email us at: Info@SpiritLakeConsulting.com