Johnson O'Malley Coordinator Provides Report to Membership

By Amanda Scheel

LCO Johnson O’Malley Coordinator

The Lac Courte Oreilles Johnson-O'Malley (JOM) Program currently covers seven schools in the service area which includes Hayward Community Schools (High, Middle, Intermediate, Primary), Northern Waters Environmental School, HACIL, and Winter School.

There was recent legislature passed that includes tribal enrollees and descendants up to age 19 to be eligible for services if they attend a public school that does not receive JOM funding. An eligibility process and forms are currently being worked on to expand the program and make it available to those members and descendants.

Currently, there are 529 Native students eligible to receive services through JOM. Eligible services can include academic help for students in schools that house a staff position, sports registration fees for school sponsored sports, some sports gear for school sponsored sports, most school supplies, school sponsored field trip admissions, etc. Each service requiring funding from the grant must be approved through the grant's allowable costs with some services requiring approval through the JOM Parent Committee. There are some services that have a capped amount that can be contributed from the grant.

The Johnson-O'Malley grant currently employs a JOM Coordinator and a Student Tutor. The Student Tutor program is new. The JOM Program has collaborated with the Hayward High School Work Experience Program to allow high school students in good academic status and good attendance to work as tutors to Hayward Intermediate School's eligible JOM students. This has replaced the previously open position for a full-time JOM Tutor to be housed at the Hayward Intermediate School. There is an open position for a JOM Tutor to be housed at the Hayward High School.

The JOM Program often collaborates with Hayward and Winter School Districts and other tribal entities to bring cultural experiences to students of these schools. These tribal entities most often include Bizhiki Wellness Center, LCO Boys & Girls Club, LCO University, Oakwood Haven, and LCO Conservation.

Johnson-O'Malley and Bizhiki Wellness Center co-op to provide a culturally-centered drug, alcohol, and suicide prevention group to Hayward and Winter Middle School students. We meet weekly with these students. We have several cultural lessons that we teach but often have different community members come in for storytelling, cultural activities, history lectures, and to share their own personal stories with our youth.

We try to do a yearly ricing field trip for middle and high school students, but unfortunately, this school year we could not make it happen. We did hold a deer camp field trip for our Hayward Middle School 8th grade students and Winter middle and high school students. Students learned how to skin and butcher a deer, were taught about our Treaty Rights by LCO Game Wardens, were taught the history of frybread and how to make it, were taught about traditional Ojibwe hunting protocol, how to prepare and cook venison, how to track a blood trail, how to drag a deer out of the woods, were taught how to do tree identification during the winter months, were taught the uses of birch bark, and were taught how to harvest birch bark without harming the trees. We plan to make Deer Camp an annual event.

We have an annual snowsnake tournament with the Hayward Middle School, Hayward High School Ojibwe Culture & Language students, and Winter School JOM students. We also do an annual ice fishing field trip with 8th grade and high school. This upcoming ice fishing field trip will teach our students how to set up and check tip ups, how to jig for fish, how to spear through the ice, the history of the Chippewa Flowage, how to clean and process fish, and how to cook fish over a fire.

We host an annual Sugarbush field trip that includes all JOM students in middle school and high school. Students learn the history of Ojibwe people harvesting maple sap and turning it into syrup and sugar. They learn how to tap trees and boil sap. We are planning to reach out to the LCO Fish Hatchery to possibly host a field trip. All of our field trips are to educate our students about our Tribe's history and educate them on our terms not some premade curriculum written by non-Native people. We try to include our local elders and community members who are culturally knowledgeable to present. Storytelling, seasonal tree identification, sharing plant knowledge, and foraging/harvesting/gathering are always a part of every field trip. Some of these field trips also include non-Native staff and students. It has become a great way to unify our students and staff as they all learn directly from us. If anyone has any ideas or would like to help at one of these field trips, we are always looking for presenters. Please reach out to JOM Coordinator Amanda Scheel at amanda.scheel@lco-nsn.gov with any questions.