Mission
Our mission is to help teachers and schools educate children and youth about the diverse histories, cultures and contributions of California Native peoples.
Goal
Our goal is to create culturally responsive resources that improve representations and classroom climates for teaching and learning about California's first people.
Partners
About California Indian Culture & Sovereignty Center
The California Indian Culture & Sovereignty Center (CICSC) fosters collaborative research and community service relationships between the faculty, staff, and students of CSU San Marcos and members of Tribal communities, for the purpose of developing and conducting research projects that support the maintenance of sovereignty and culture within those communities. For more information, visit www.csusm.edu/cicsc/..
About the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center
The purpose of the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center is to culturally enrich and benefit the people of California and the general public. The goals of the Museum and Cultural Center are to educate the public about California Indian history and cultures, to showcase California Indian cultures, to enhance and facilitate these cultures and traditions through educational and cultural activities, to preserve and protect California Indian cultural and intellectual properties, and to develop relationships with other indigenous groups. For more information, visit www.cimcc.org.
About the San Diego County Office of Education
The San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE) is inspiring and leading innovation in education so that all students can thrive in a future without boundaries. The County Office helps the county’s school districts operate efficiently and with significant cost savings by leveraging resources to perform personnel tasks and provide staff development and other services. With a focus on equity, innovation, and career technical education, SDCOE directly educates more than 3,000 students at more than 20 sites each year and provides support services to more than 500,000 students across 42 school districts. For additional information on how SDCOE is innovating education and working to guarantee all students graduate prepared for college, career, and life, visit www.sdcoe.net
Board Members
Staci Block, Ed.D. (Cherokee)
Executive Leadership Coach, Multilingual Education, Equity, and Global Achievement, San Diego County Office of Education
Over the past 21 years Dr. Staci Block has served as a county office of education administrator, school principal, curriculum and instruction director, and classroom teacher. Staci has provided hundreds of customized professional learnings that activate teachers and administrators’ creative leadership to innovate and design high quality instruction and supports for all students and families. She brings extensive experience with authoring Native American Studies curriculum development, designing equity-focused professional learning on culturally and linguistically responsive instruction, leading nationally recognized statewide digital equity innovation projects, and overseeing grant management. Dr. Block serves as an educational leader and tribal representative on the California Indian Education for All Board of Directors and California Department of Education's American Indian Education Oversight Committee to the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Dr. Block has been a county office project director and key personnel for eight grants that promote professional learning and innovations for K-12 staff. She authored and developed numerous websites, Native Ways of Knowing micro-courses, indigenized curriculum materials, Canvas digital courses with tutorials, articles, quick start guides, resources, and webinars to ensure equity in learning. She helps to disrupt and build LEA capacity to create transformational change through innovative and equitable learning practices with Liberatory Design and Project G.LA.D. (Guided Language Acquisition Design). Dr. Block is an advocate for improving outcomes for underserved student populations, especially for American Indian students.
Bill Carbone
Executive Director of Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, TeachRock
Bill Carbone is Executive Director at Steven Van Zandt's Rock and Roll Forever Foundation (RRFF), where his skills as an ethnomusicologist, educator, musician, and people-person coalesce. At RRFF, Carbone leads a staff of 13 curriculum designers, policy wonks, and development professionals ever onward and upward toward their mission to empower teachers and engage students by using popular music to create interdisciplinary, culturally responsive education materials for all 21st-century classrooms. Over the past several years, Bill has fostered partnerships with and developed educational materials to accompany films such as Ron Howard's The Beatles: Eight Days A Week, the PBS Soundbreaking series, CNN Soundtracks, and RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World. He's presented and workshopped the material at conferences from Reno, Nevada to Qatar, and sometimes even hits the road with Little Steven to preach arts integration from the stage.
Olympia Kyriakidis, Ed.D.
Executive Director, Multilingual Education, Equity, and Global Achievement, San Diego County Office of Education
Nicole Lim-Myers, J.D. (Pomo)
Executive Director of California Indian Museum & Cultural Center
Dr. Nicole Lim has earned advanced degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and University of San Francisco School of Law. She is Pomo and has worked for the National Indian Justice Center and the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center (CIMCC) since 1996. As Executive Director of the CIMCC, she works to develop exhibits, educational programs and curricular resources that represent Native American perspectives. She founded the Tribal Youth Ambassadors program in 2010 the program received the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities in 2016. She co-edited, On Indian Ground: California, the first in a series of books that focus on best practices for K-12 educators of Native students. California Governor Edmund Brown appointed her to the Board of Directors, 4th District Agricultural Association, Sonoma-Marin Fair, where she served from 2013-2017. Nicole served as the Vice President of the California is Association of Museums (CAM) and formerly co-chaired CAM’s Government Relations committee. She also serves as the Secretary for the National Tribal GIS program and is a member of the Native American Advisory Committee to the University of California Office of the President.
Joely Proudfit, Ph.D. (Luiseño/Payomkowishum)
Director of California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center
Department Chair, American Indian Studies, CSU San Marcos
Executive Director, California’s American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival
President/Owner, Native Media Strategies, LLC
A full professor, Dr. Proudfit has been tenured three times in the CSU system. In addition to her academic positions, in 2016 she was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Advisory Council on Indian Education (NACIE). She continues to serve on NACIE. Additionally, in 2021 she was appointed by California Governor Gavin Newsom to the Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. She is the lead author and researcher on the 2012, 2014 and 2016 groundbreaking annual reports on the State of American Indian and Alaskan Native Education in California. She is the series editor of ten (10) books addressing American Indian education throughout the U.S.: On Indian Ground-: A Return to Indigenous Knowledge—Generating Hope, Leadership and Sovereignty through Education. She is author of the book titled Beyond the American Indian Stereotype: There’s More to Me Than What You See. Dr. Proudfit is also the founder and Executive Director of the California’s American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival (CAIIFF), which is the largest AIAN film festival in the U.S. Proudfit owns Native Media Strategies, LLC a consulting company providing full-service media consulting. Dr. Proudfit is the owner of Naqmayam Communications, an independent, full-service, California Indian-owned and -operated public relations agency. Dr. Proudfit holds positions on numerous boards and committees, such as: Vice chair for the Native American Caucus of the California Democratic Party, board member of the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center, board member, Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, and board chair for Vision Maker Media. She was named Variety’s 2022 Entertainment Educator of the Year.
Stanley Rodriguez, Ed.D. (Kumeyaay)
Director, Kumeyaay Community College
Dr. Stanley Rodriguez is from the Santa Ysabel Band of the Iipay Nation. He is a Tribal Councilman for the Santa Ysabel Tribal Government, Director of Kumeyaay Community College, a Board of Directors member for Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, and a U.S. Navy Desert Storm Veteran with nine years of service. Dr. Rodriguez is an instructor with the Navy Drug and Alcohol Counselor School, Kumeyaay Community College, a faculty member at Cuyamaca Community College, and adjunct faculty at California State University, San Marcos, American Indian Studies Department.
John Tippeconnic, III, Ph.D. (Comanche, Cherokee)
Professor Emeritus and Former Director of the American Indian Studies Program, Arizona State University
JohnW. Tippeconnic III, a member of the Comanche Nation and part Cherokee, is currently teaching courses in American Indian Studies at the University of California, San Marcos. He is also an Emeritus Professor and Former Director of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University. Previously, he was a professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Penn State University where he directed the American Indian Leadership Program. He is the former Director of Education for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Director of Indian Education for the U.S. Department of Education. He served as vice president of Navajo Community College (now Dinè College). He also taught 4th grade and middle school math and social studies. He served two terms as president of the National Indian Education Association. He was named a “Fellow” by the American Educational Research Association. In addition to numerous articles, his publications include the co-edited books Next Steps: Research and Practice to Advance Indian Education, Voices of Resistance and Renewal and a Leadership and Indian Education: A Dozen Observations a chapter in the book American Indian Stories of Success. The book On Indian Ground: The Southwest is in press.
Rhonda Welch-Scalco, Ph.D. (Kumeyaay)
Rhonda Welch-Scalco is an enrolled member of the Barona Band of Mission Indians, former Chairwoman of the Tribe, and full-time faculty at MiraCosta College. Her educational background is steeped in child development, early childhood special education and in risk and resilience. Dr. Welch Scalco is passionate about early childhood education and supporting tribal children who have special learning needs achieve their educational goals. Rhonda has authored two infant board books, “ilymash shemap” and “sin, hewak, hemuk” in her native language in conjunction with starting a chapter of Reach out and Read at Southern Indian Health Council. Rhonda is also a founding member of the Barona Cultural Center and Museum website, Shiimull Mata’yuum, that assists in teaching the youngest members of the tribe “our ways of knowing.”
Linda Sue Warner, Ph.D. (Comanche Nation)
Special Assistant to the President on Tribal Affairs, Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College
Dr. Linda Sue Warner holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in Administration (1989). She also has a M.Ed. from The Pennsylvania State University in Education Administration (1978) and a B.A from Northeastern State University in Language Arts/Education (1970). She has more than 30 years of experience developing and guiding policy for federal agencies, including her work as an appointed member of the U.S. Department of Interior’s negotiated rulemaking team for NCLB/AYP in Indian Country. She also served as lead staff for the NCLB Teacher Quality Initiative in Tennessee, has provided educational leadership training to more than 40 programs or organizations in the nation, and has been appointed to or hired for national teams for BIE, AIHEC, and NCATE initiatives for educator and organizational accreditation. Dr. Warner brings her decades of experience in educational administration and policy, higher education leadership and accreditation, and quantitative research and evaluation expertise to BPC’s education and tribal projects.