This project is being done as a cooperative project involving people at Tuscarora School, the Tuscarora community, the State University of New York at Buffalo, Niagara-Wheatfield High School, and Edward Town Middle School. Tuscarora Nation students at all grade levels will be involved in gathering of information; creating artwork; recording Tuscarora vocabulary; interviewing community members; taking photographs; and even putting the whole CD together with the help of the UB personnel. The project continues to evolve.

UPDATE-January 2001

Students involved in the CD-ROM project have been working since October on creating images, backgrounds and audio files. Students in 7th-12th grade have been using Freehand 9 to create the art works. They are using the style of our local artist, Erwin (Moochie) Printup who did the illustrations for the book Giving Thanks. Moochie himself has been active in seeing some of the students at work re-creating his style. Students were given instructions in the use of the graphics program by students and staff of the State University of New York at Buffalo. They are working independently and with the guidance of Niagara-Wheatfield High School art teacher, Mary Lou Miskey.

These older students will soon begin learning to create the animated sequences using Flash5. For this portion we also plan to involve some 6th grade students as well as some new 7th and 8th grade students. They will learn this program with the help of graphic artist, Brenda Stynes who recently complete her graduate degree at SUNY Buffalo and who is taking a major role in helping us design the entire project. Brenda has met several times with local artist, Jolene Rickard, to discuss some of the cultural significance of the art work and how it will affect the workings of the program. This working together of local artists, students, graduate students, teachers and graphic arts professionals has been a great way to combine the knowledge, expertise and enthusiasm of these various groups into the common goals of the project.

At Tuscarora School groups of 5th grade students have been involved in creating video footage of local people telling the story of the Tuscarora migration from North Carolina to New York State. These students have been working under the guidance of graduate students from SUNY Buffalo who are working with the project as part of their graduate degree programs. Our students have taken the video footage and created iMovies with that footage. This semester more graduate students will work with students from Tuscarora School to create a video of Tuscarora beadwork. While not all the video footage will be used for the CD, it will provide some valuable information in VHS format.

One recent evening was devoted to having local men get together to talk about hunting and fishing stories. This lively conversation was recorded on video as background information for the food-gathering portion of the CD.

For the audio portions of the CD, Language teachers Betsy Bissell and Vince Schiffert are having Tuscarora School students record words and phrases in Tuscarora language. The quality of the audio is very important and we are still in the process of learning more about the best ways to capture the sounds we need.

Although we would love to include everything possible about Tuscarora language and culture in this CD, we have narrowed down the topics to four: beadwork, migration, food-gathering, and lacrosse. There is always the hope that FUTURE projects will allow us to include more topics. For now, this range of topics is keeping many of us very busy!

Keep watching this space as we update you on what we're doing and how the project is

progressing!