Central Middle School students on Tuesday learned how to hunt for seal, gather fish in a net, run and scream, make a dreamcatcher and paddle a canoe — all without leaving the gymnasium.
The lessons were provided by Dan Ninham, a member of the Oneida tribe from Minnesota who travels the country teaching students to play Indigenous games native to North American tribes. Raylisha York Stanley, Indian Education Liaison for Lawton Public Schools, was instrumental in getting Ninham to visit Lawton middle schools this week.
“We share a lot of Southern Plains games, but we don’t go outside (our culture),” Stanley said. “That is one of our goals is to go outside our culture. He seems to have a passion for teaching Indigenous games.”
Most of the CMS students responded to his instructions with enthusiasm once they got over the surprise of being given greetings in a language other than English. Several faces registered surprise and confusion. Ninham told short stories about how the games related to tribal culture, demonstrated the concept, then had the students up and moving.
For the dreamcatcher game, students were given a length of rope, told to hold it in their right hand and form a circle. Then the students reached out to someone across from them and grabbed the other end of their rope, resulting in a dreamcatcher. Ninham explained that dreams go through the holes in the dreamcatcher.
Students then had to untangle themselves without dropping an end of their rope. They had to go under and around people to accomplish the task.
That is the second part of Ninham’s goal — to teach students to solve their own problems and to work as a team.
“I try not to solve problems for them,” Ninham said. But with limited class time, he offers hints to the solutions.
“They figured out to work as a team and spread out to accomplish their goal,” Stanley said of the fishing game. “The kids love it. They are getting a little bit of PE, a little bit of culture and a little bit of social skills.”
Even though the games were new to the students, they seemed to like the variety.
“We usually play the same games,” said Cailee Teza, 13. “Everybody does their own thing. With this, everyone is working together.”
Rika Darino, 11, also said she liked that the games were different, as she paused during a game of stickball.
“This is like an old-school game that people used to play,” Darino said. “We are running back and forth like we usually do, but we have to hold it (a stick holding a ball) steady so it doesn’t fall out.”
Amarelizia Acosta, 13, said she enjoyed learning the new games.
“These games are great,” she said. Her favorite one was untangling the ropes. “We were working together as a team. During normal PE, we play those games all the time and these are new. We’ve never played them before.”
Sofia Davis, 12, concurred.
“I’ve never done this before and it’s fun,” she said. “This came from a long time ago and people came up with it.”
Not only is getting students exercising important to Ninham, so is laughter. A laughter game is also in his repertoire.
“Laughter is medicine,” he said. “It helps people to laugh, that’s where healing comes into play.”
Ninham estimates he has taught 300,000 students in the 3 ½ years he has been teaching Indigenous games.
“It goes back to wanting to make a difference and encouraging kids to set a goal in life,” Ninham said as to why he teaches the games. “Indigenous games are for everybody. Non-Indigenous education is good for Indigenous people and the reverse is true also. The bottom line is to share and be respectful of cultures.”
One student may have summed up the experience best: “This is the best PE day ever,” she said.