Our Team

Dulce Whitford, Indian Education Curriculum Advisor for the CAIRN Project, has an MS in Native American Studies from MSU-Bozeman, BS EE, and is MT Certified as a Reading Specialist K-12.
Dulce spent a good portion of her early career teaching in reservation schools in Montana and South Dakota. She learned first-hand the barriers to educational opportunities that rural and Indian students live with each day. Dulce is currently the Indian Education For All Coordinator for the Great Falls, MT Schools. She has a gift for getting right to the heart of the matter and describing the foundation of a process for her team. She is passionate about increasing the choices for Indian students while supporting tribal culture and family dynamics.

Junior G. Horse Capture, Cultural Consultant for the White Clay People , is a co-founder of One Step Further, a non-profit organization that coordinates educational and cultural opportunities for the youth of the Little Rockies region of Montana.  He serves as a guide to our team as we develop online courses and field classes for students in the Fort Belknap area. Junior organizes summer camps and workshops for local youth to enhance their knowledge of treaty issues, the environment, and repatriation.  Participants work together in the field with members of Tribal Health, Fort Belknap Community College, Tribal Environmental Protection Program, and the Forestry and Fish and Game Departments.  Junior has also worked with the Drug Court incorporating indigenous frameworks into counseling excursions and is currently working on a long-range cultural education plan for his people.

Kenny Weatherwax, Blackfeet Cultural Consultant, was born in Yakima, WA in 1952 to William Sr. and Katherine Weatherwax. At one month old he moved in with his grandmother, Agnes Big Road Wells. He grew up on Two Medicine River and was taught by his ninety year old grandmother traditional Blackfeet knowledge and skills. He learned to speak the Blackfeet language, sing traditional songs, locate natural medicines and memorize oral histories. Kenny's grandmother made it very clear that he must master two worlds for both would be his one world. She encouraged his training in the English language and in public schooling, knowing that he would need all these skills to lead a successful life. Kenny helped establish the Blackfeet Community College and tenaciously held on to the idea that his people's college would teach Blackfeet language and culture to their youth as a core requirement for graduation. Kenny is married to Theodora Black Weasel Weatherwax and has two sons, Austin Carlson and Kenny Weatherwax (deceased), two daughters, Velvet and Lucretia, and four grandchildren.

Jan Sublett, Media Teacher and Advisor, (BA Psych, MLS, Montana Teaching certificate for EE and K-12 Media) has actively been involved in education for over thirty years. She has had the opportunity to live and teach in many states including California, Texas, Louisiana, and currently Montana . She has worked in urban and rural communities with students of varied ages and abilities. As an extension services librarian in Missouri, she helped provide bookmobile and library services to schools and individuals.

Jan believes that learning is a life-long adventure that has the power to enrich lives. She feels all people are capable of learning and enjoying the process when information is presented in the manner most suited to their interests, needs and learning styles.

{Picture to come soon!} Clayton Hawley is an Assiniboine Cultural Advisor from North Central Montana. Clayton brings us the holistic view of intertribal values. He reminds our team that the essence of all cultures around the world rest in similar values of love of family, desire to live up to one's personal beliefs of a good life and the hope that the future will be good for our children. His life experiences among his people have brought him much strength that he shares with our team along with his wonderful sense of humor. he has a talent for finding commonality in experience between opposing views that helps our team come together in a common cause of creating opportunities for our youth. He knows how to tease and untangle the good from the bad. If they gave degrees in this, he would be a professor emeritus.

Megkian Penniman has her Masters in Native American Studies from MSU-Bozeman and works closely with MT Office of Public Instruction creating lesson plans that integrate the Indian Education For All Act. She is a Montana certified English and art teacher who has spent time living and teaching with the Northern Cheyenne nation. She, along with Shane Doyle is a founding member of Native Nexus which creates active learning opportunities for schools to experience native cultrues first-hand. Megkian reviews the scope and sequence sections of our English and Art courses and advises on the alignment of our course objectives and lessons to the national and Montana state standards in content and pedagogy.

Even Howard is a graduate of Montana State University's English Department and an Alumni of the Americorps America Reads and VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) programs.  She believes that successful learning depends on  involvement and engagement within a supportive learning community of peers, mentors, family, and teachers and that online learning allows students to broaden their community to achieve their goals. Even has volunteered over 3000 hours for organizations benefiting elementary, high school, and college students, as well as families living in poverty. She has traveled independently through Western Mexico and most recently spent two years teaching junior high and elementary school in Nara Prefecture, Japan.

Gail White lives in Southeastern Idaho on 10 acres of sagebrush and olive tress with her husband, "Doc", a pack of at least five dogs, and one grouchy cat. She has a BS degree in Geology from Idaho State University. Gail worked for ten years developing coursework and instructing personnel for the Navy's nuclear submarine naval training program near Arco, Idaho. She became an expert in anylyzing the holes her students held in math and science concepts and learned how to create curriculum that would fill those gaps in a field where anything less than a mastery level of the concepts could be catastrophic! She comes to us to advise and aid in the development of online math courses. Her stories of Zippy's adventures give our math students real-life situations to base their math ideas upon.

Gail and her husband Doc opened a coffeehouse/bookstore near the ISU campus in 1992. Ever the teacher, she has spent these last 13 years helping her customers and employees earn their degrees by tutoring, editing papers, cajoling, encouraging, and occasionally bribing them to finish.  She is an active volunteer for two Humane Societies, two animal shelters, and is helping to implement a dog-training program at the local women's prison.  She is a naturally curious person with a passion for learning and a love of nature. 

Charlie Truby is one of Montana's original online teachers who has pioneered successful strategies in this new learning arena. He is certified by the state of Montana in Social Studies. With Relationship-Based Teaching and the use of the Multiple Intelligences, Charlie believes all students can succeed. He uses the Socratic method of teaching to inspire his students to learn via their own unique interests. He is a proud graduate of the University of North Dakota and has taught in Montana since 2000. Charlie is married to Paula and has three wonderful boys. His hobbies (and talents) are web design and umpiring baseball and softball.

Dr. Catherine Raven earned a botany/zoology degree from University of Montana and went on to work as a ranger for the National Park Service at Glacier, Mt. Rainier, North Cascades, and Voyageurs National Parks. She earned her Ph.D. in Biology from Montana State. She is a writer, college professor, and educational tour guide in Yellowstone, Teton, and Glacier National Parks. Her first book, The Green Planet:  Forestry, was published in 2006 by Chelsea House. Dr. Raven's expertise shows up in Abaetern courses when she teaches students how to do authentic field research and learn first-hand about their environment using scientifically valid methods. Her favorite topics include forest fire ecology and buffalo.

Jolee Barry is the owner of New Leaf Solutions, a company that consults exclusively with nonprofit and education organizations throughout Montana.  She has worked extensively within both the education and nonprofit communities throughout the state, and has vast knowledge of the challenges faced by non-profits in Montana. Jolee holds a B.A. in Art History with an emphasis in Arts Management from the State University of New York at Purchase. Jolee aids our team with facillitating board meetings, doing grant research and connecting us to other like-minded non-profits.

Contact Jolee for your organization's needs at New Leaf Solutions.

Shane Doyle is an enrolled member of the Crow Tribe who grew up in the town of Crow Agency, MT. He attended high school in Hardin and at Billings Central and graduated from Bozeman Senior High in 1990. He received a four-year degree in Elementary Education from MSU-Bozeman in 1997 and returned to the Crow reservation to teach 5^th grade for four years. Shane recently completed his Masters in Native American Studies and is currently a doctoral student in Education at MSU-Bozeman. Shane is married and has an two year old daughter who keeps him very busy at home. He is active in his traditional culture and enjoys singing traditional style pow-wow music throughout the state and nation. He is a member of the Big Lodge clan and an adopted member of the Crow Night Hawk Society. Shane is currently teaching for the Native American Studies Department at MSU-Bozeman. Shane is a founding member of the Native Nexus, an educational consulting company that helps with the implementation of the Indian Educational For All Act.

Klane King's Blackfoot name is Buckskin Horse Rider. He is a Blood tribal member of the Blackfoot Nation. Mr. King received his college education in Edmonton, Alberta, obtaining associates degrees in Native Communications and General Studies. He went on to earn two associates degrees from Blackfeet Community College in Browning, MT: one in Blackfeet Studies (Blackfeet Language Major) and one in General Studies.  Klane has worked as a radio reporter, video producer, wildlands firefighter, elementary school tutor, and as a high school language teacher. Klane's main interests include hiking and camping, collecting music, and playing guitar. Klane is also constantly visiting with his tribal elders collecting stories, legends, songs, and other archival information. Buckskin Horse Rider is a member of the Crazy Dog Society of the South Piegans of the Blackfeet Indian Nation.

Ivy Merriot, School Director, has a BS in Philosophy from MSU-Bozeman and holds a Montana Teacher Certification to teach all sciences from grades 5-12. Ivy is an original founder of Abaetern Academy. Since the school was founded in 1996, Ivy has worked to bring an ever-increasing variety of courses into an online format. Through her efforts, students have learned aeronautics online and became the first students ever to witness the inner workings of the research hangars of Kennedy Space Center while accompanying the launch of a LigoCyte experiment on the space shuttle. Her students have made trips to the American Southwest and taken part in research on the sun at the National Solar Observatory at Sunspot, NM and have visited and analyzed the archaeoastronomical sites of ancient civilization of the Hisatsinom/ Enote (Anasazi). She coordinates the Stars Over Yellowstone star parties three times each summer to bring the resources of the night sky into her students and the general public's awareness.

Ivy began teaching science assisting Cam Bradley with outdoor environmental studies on lava flows, volcanic buttes, and a desert oasis in Idaho. She moved back to her ancestral home in Montana and began helping the Bozeman Public Schools and MSU-Bozeman with their after-school enrichment courses and summer camps for gifted students. She taught Einstein's relativity and astronomy topics to 5-12 graders. She has taught chemistry, physicis, life science, earth science, and astronomy in hard-wall classrooms with Bozeman High School (urban), Willow Creek Schools (rural MT), Headwaters Academy (private college-prep), and dveloped and taught online astronomy courses for MSU-Bozeman's National Teachers Enhancement Network (NTEN) and NASA. From these experiences, she visualizes a future where rural and Indian students can compete in a world economy while maintaining their roots to home and culture. Internet education gives these students a way to level the playing field and pursue the career of their choice.

If you are isnpired to join our team, please contact Ivy and share your vision for online education!