STAR is pleased to announce that board member Richie Plass of the Menominee Nation will be holding educational seminars entitled "Trails of the Menominee" nationally.

Richie will discuss what its like to be Indian growing up in a culture that doesn't recognize his perspective of history. He has worked extensively on the Indian mascot and logo issues and he has lectured all over the country to students at many universities.

Now, Richie is taking his discussions one step further, to school staff, curriculum developers, and students majoring in the fields of education, social work and psychology.

By completely avoiding the Indian perspective schools have inadvertently been teaching racism as part of their curriculum. We are taught about Manifest Destiny and the settlers exciting journeys west in their increasing demand for land. But we are never taught about what happened to the people who were originally a part of that land, and are left instead with the somewhat ambiguous feelings that either they were killed in wars, they assimilated or somehow, they just disappeared.

Multicultural education now includes the study of Asian, Hispanic, and African American cultures. But in most cases, the study of Native people is only found in the study of the past. Richie is here to spread the news, to let us know what happened to Indian people, where and how they live today and how multicultural studies cannot be complete without understanding the Indian Perspective.