February 22 - April 4, 2027

Professor: Robin Prichard

Tuition: $310 member / $410 non-member

6 Weeks; 1.5 NDEO-Endorsed PDCs

**Optional add-on** College Credits through Oakland University: 2

This NEW course is designed to provide dance teachers with the knowledge and skills to teach historical perspectives of Native American dance in their dance history, theory, and literature courses. The course will focus on what premises instructors should keep in mind in order to respectfully incorporate Indigenous dance into their curricula, and it will cover public dance forms that can be shared and disseminated to any student in any circumstance. Assignments focus on translating the course information into assignments and lesson plans for the teacher’s specific age, level, and demographic of student. At the end of the course, dance educators will be knowledgeable about Native American dance from 1890–1950 and confident in teaching about it to their students.

Each week will consist of three main components:

•         Weekly readings and/or video viewing.
•         Mini-assignment to be shared in discussions. Other students will read and share feedback on each other’s assignments.
•         Thinking Ahead: a prompt for thinking about your final project for the course. Since this is the large assignment for the course, it is necessary to start thinking about it early and working on it as the course progresses. This will be submitted just to the instructor. It is also a good format to ask questions about your project, if you have them.

To receive college credit for this course in addition to PDCs, you must register through Oakland University by scheduling an advising session and finalizing your registration through OU before the November 7 deadline.

Questions about this Course?  Email opdi@ndeo.org

Brand New Course in Spring 2027

Robin Raven Prichard has spent a lifetime attending powwows and dancing in Intertribal Native communities. In between, she is an international scholar and artist working between the worlds of concert dance and Indigenous dance. In her First Act, she danced throughout the U.S and Australia for award-winning choreographers, Opera Australia, and created her own award-winning choreography. In her Second Act, she was a professor of dance for two decades at universities in the U.S. and Australia.  She has received two Fulbright Fellowships to study Australian Aboriginal and Māori (New Zealand) dance. Both her scholarship and her creative activities show a longstanding commitment to diversity of bodies on stage and with highlighting previously silenced voices and invisiblized bodies. Now in her Third Act, she researches and writes about Intertribal Native American Dance and global Indigenous dance. She was awarded NDEO’s Outstanding Dance Researcher in 2025, The Selma Jean Cohen Award from DSA, and numerous state and national awards for her choreography.

How Courses Work