Roger White Jr., otherwise known by his Assiniboine name, “Little Eagle”, teaches Native American Studies at Frazer High School in Frazer, Montana. Prior to teaching he worked at the Native Children’s Trauma Centre at the University of Montana. During this work, he learned that Western approaches to treating children’s trauma often had minimal impact on Indigenous children. He decided to look into what Indigenous children needed and he began logging qualitative data on behaviour and competency of Indigenous children. The insights from the data combined with learning about Total Physical Response (TPR), a method of teaching language that coordinates language with physical movements such as hand signs, led to the creation of a project called, Empowering Native Indigenous Tribes (ENIT). Roger White Jr. believes that it is the experiential component of education that causes a long lasting memory. The focus of ENIT’s work is around cognitive experiential immersion and this concept of learning by experience can be implemented by different approaches – TPR is an example.
