In June 1992, Patrick Logan and Brian Metcalfe were fortunate to attend a workshop that Brenda Longclaws, Aboriginal Education Consultant, organized for all coordinators and consultants in our Division. Brenda arranged for Rosemary Ackley-Christensen, Director of the Indian Education Department of the Minneapolis Public Schools, to speak to us about aboriginal education and meeting the needs of all our children in our classes.

Rosemary provided a very enlightened workshop which gave us a better understanding of the aboriginal culture and how we might better support educators working with aboriginal children. Brian particularly remembers one story that Rosemary related. She asked us how we as educators would traditionally reward younger children who had completed assignments or who did well on various tests. We generally agreed, of course, that all younger children love to get "stickers" on their papers as feedback for a job well done. Rosemary went on to explain that aboriginal children did not view the "happy face" in the same way that other children might.

Rosemary spent a great deal of time with aboriginal children determining what types of "stickers" might provide them with the "warm fuzzies" that are so important to young children. When Rosemary was told that "my grandma’s smiling face makes me feel good" or that "I feel safe in my grandpa’s arms", by young children, she started to make up stickers with pictures of elders to which the younger aboriginal child could better relate. With so much of the learning of an aboriginal child dependant on the visual as opposed to the auditory process, Rosemary began collecting and designing clip art which she could introduce into classrooms.

Patrick Logan asked if Rosemary would be willing to share a copy of her clip art masters with him. She graciously agreed and Patrick spent a great deal of time scanning in these images and converting them to the PC-Paintbrush (.PCX) clip art format for IBM/MS-DOS computers. A good deal of the graphics include the faces of children, with images ranging from blossoms, leaves, pine trees, feathers, eagles, rabbits, and other animals.

Between January and March 1993, Brian distributed throughout our Division, the above PC-Paintbrush Aboriginal Clip Art as "freebies" on eleven 5.25" diskettes. During June 2000, an educator asked Brian if he could still provide her with copies of this Aboriginal Clip Art. Realizing that there was still a need for these graphics, Brian converted each PC-Paintbrush image to its corresponding web-based GIF and JPG formats for easy access over the Internet. In order to provide continuity with the original freebies, distributed in 1993, Brian has displayed the contents of each of the original 11 diskettes as 11 corresponding volumes and has retained their original "somewhat cryptic" filenames which were based on the older MS-DOS 8.3 naming convention. Each image is provided as a thumbnail button which can be clicked to see the full-sized graphic. Users may select individual images by right-clicking on the full-sized representation and then save the graphic to their local computer as a GIF formatted file. If, on the other hand, one wishes to acquire all 11 volumes of the Aboriginal Clip Art, one should proceed to the "Downloads" link at the bottom of the left-hand menu. On the Downloads web page, each volume is provided in both a GIF or JPG format. If you plan to use the images on computer web pages then the GIF images (which are captured at a resolution of 72 dots per inch) will be quite adequate. However, if you wish to print out the images, then it is recommended that you download the JPG formatted graphics because their 300 dots per inch will provide much more detail. Additional information regarding how to download and organize these Aboriginal clip art images is provided on the "Downloads" page and should be followed to help organize these files on your local hard drive.