Eighteen third graders sat cross-legged on the floor of their classroom at Sunny Sands Elementary School in Cathedral City on Friday, giving their teacher, Ramona Frost, their full attention.
They were reviewing some of what they had learned about the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and the tribe's Cahuilla ancestors as part of a new curriculum developed by the tribe and the Palm Springs Unified School District.
The district in the 2017-2018 school year had about 125 Native American students. The vast majority of students in the district are Hispanic or Latino — over 18,800 in 2017-2018. The ethnicities with the next highest enrollment numbers included nearly 2,900 white students and 1,314 black students.
Frost quizzed the students Friday about the tribe's tradition of bird singing and what materials Native Americans had used for rock art many years ago.
"Why were the pictograph drawings in red?" she asked.
Calling the students by name, they answered: raspberries, cranberries, strawberries.
A short video of the bird singing
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2019/11/01/native-american-curriculum-launches-through-psusd-agua-caliente-partnership/4115379002/
