(Ramona) This is Wahpekute territory, the land of the Dakota.

(Emily) It feels great to look at the stars the same place my ancestors did.

(Sienna) We're doing an art project for NASA.

I drew, like, this star forming and creating life.

[upbeat music] (Izzie) Funding for "SciGirls" is made possible by NASA.

NASA inspires the future generation of space explorers and scientists to engage in the science, technology, engineering, and math that is the foundation of NASA's mission success.

Additional funding is provided by... PPG Foundation aims to bring color and brightness to communities around the world.

♪ ♪ (girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪ (Izzie) We need you!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪ (Izzie) Come on!

(girls) ♪ When I need help and I've got a question ♪ ♪ There's a place I go for inspiration ♪ ♪ Got to get to the web, check the girls' investigation ♪ ♪ What girls?

♪ ♪ SciGirls!

♪ Whoo!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪ - I need you!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪ - Come on!

♪ You've got to log on, post ♪ ♪ Upload, pitch in ♪ Yeah!

♪ Want to get inside a world that's fascinating?

♪ ♪ The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting ♪ (girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪ (Izzie) We need you!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪ (Izzie) SciGirls!

Hola.

I'm Izzie, and this is where I live.

This is my room.

I love animals, reading, cooking, and spending time with my family.

[upbeat music] And my very favorite hobbies are soccer, exploring, and building things.

My parents and I hope I'll become a scientist or engineer one day.

And look at this-- more girls who like the same stuff I do.

[computer whirs] ♪ ♪ Science and engineering is for you.

Come on.

I know you can do it.

[laughter] [upbeat music] ♪ ♪ - Hi.

My name is Sienna.

I am Sicangu Lakota and Wahpekute Dakota.

What I like about being out in the wilderness is laying in the grass sometimes and just being able to listen to, like, the sounds in nature.

[gasps, laughs] ♪ ♪ - My name is Emily, but I like to go by E.V.

I'm Dakota, and I'm also Ecuadorian.

I define myself like funny, energetic...

I'm gonna grab an ice chunk.

A lot of other things.

[laughs] That's, like, sad.

- My name is Wicahpi.

I'm Lakota from Cheyenne River in South Dakota, and my dad is Ojibwe from Red Lake.

It's not working.

My full name is Wicahpi Cikala.

It means "little star."

I have five older siblings, and my mom knew that I was gonna be the last one.

And there are five points on a star, and I'm in the middle.

[upbeat music] (Sienna) In this part of Minnesota, my people, the Dakota, were the original indigenous people.

This land was called Mni Sota Makoce, which means the land where the waters reflect the skies.

The Dakota name evolved into the state name.

♪ ♪ We're at the Belwin Conservancy.

This land is used for restoring it to its original habitat the way that the Dakota used to live.

We are meeting our mentor, Ramona.

She's gonna teach us more about the stars and what our people believed in and, like, how it helped us.

Hi.

- Hello.

- Nice to meet you.

- Hello.

- Hi.

- I'm so glad to meet you guys.

So today I wanted to show you some examples of a project we're gonna be working on.

It is a beaded turtle amulet, and this actually is a way of us transmitting knowledge to generations through our beadwork.

- Where did this design come from?

- The best way to get that answer is to go out and look at the night sky.

- Okay.

Let's go.

- Cool.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ (Sienna) The early Dakota people, we didn't really, like, you know, write down certain things.

What we did is we passed down things to younger generations through oral history and also through amulets.

♪ ♪ - This is Wahpekute territory, the land of the Dakota.

So can you imagine our ancestors for thousands of years sitting right here where we are doing what we're doing, sharing the knowledge of the night sky?

- It feels great to look at the same stars the same place my ancestors did.

(Wicahpi) Looking up at the night sky felt like a relief because for a long, long time, my ancestors were not able to teach their children their practices or even speak their language, so I think it's a relief that we can do that now and learn what they couldn't.

[mellow music] ♪ ♪ - What do you guys notice about the night sky?

(Sienna) Well, since it's a lot darker out in the country, I can see a lot more stars in the sky.

- There's the North Star.

(Emily) Oh, yeah.

I see it.

It's right there.

(Ramona) It's like the constant, right?

That one thing you can always count on.

So if you look in this direction, we're starting to see the Big Dipper.

And in that Big Dipper where the handle is, that one star, we call her Wicahpi Towin, the Blue Star Woman.

And she gives us our original instructions as we make our way to the Earth and also greets us as we make our way back to the star people.

(Wicahpi) The way my ancestors taught it, they knew that we came from the stars, and then scientists nowadays are finding out that we have stardust in us.

So it connects to what they were already teaching everyone.

- Over here in the eastern sky, there are those four stars.

Some people call it Pegasus, but we call it Keya.

In Dakota, that's the Turtle.

- Is that the design on the turtle amulet?

(Ramona) Yes.

Exactly.

- The symbol on the turtle amulet that Ramona was showing us, that's what the star constellation looks like.

(Ramona) That design is to remind us that we are the star people.

We come from the stars, and to the stars we return.

(Sienna) The early Dakota people were scientific and systematic with what they did.

They didn't just look at the stars and be like, oh, you know, it's a thing in the sky.

They saw it, and they actually used it to help them.

(Ramona) So there's another part, and that is the Salamander.

And that's also one of the constellations.

And the design on the back is what we call "kapemni."

Do you guys know what kapemni is?

- Doesn't it mean "symmetry"?

(Ramona) That's right.

Kapemni is like two triangles that meet in their center, and it means what's above in this universe is also below and that they mirror each other.

- All of the stories that they taught had something to teach, so I would say they were teaching and learning science.

- That first turtle design that I showed you with the star on the back, that actually came from a painting from my friend, Dr. Annette Lee.

She is an astrophysicist, and she is Lakota.

I'm so excited for you to meet her.

- Yeah.

Me too.

- Me too.

- Me too.

[upbeat dance music] ♪ ♪ - Today we are meeting Ramona's friend, Annette.

- Let's get ready to meet Annette.

(Sienna) Annette is a Native astrophysicist and artist.

(girls) Hi.

(Annette) Greetings.

Mitakuyé Oyasin.

I greet you with a good heart, all my relations.

My name is Annette Lee.

I am mixed race Lakota.

Our family name is Wanblí Lúta, Red Eagle.

About 15 years ago, I started an organization called Native Skywatchers.

And our vision was to revitalize our star knowledge because so much is lost.

So a lot of people today think of the so-called Greek constellations like that's all there is.

That couldn't be further from the truth.

All the different cultures throughout all of humanity has had this relationship with the sky and the stars.

And in our indigenous way of knowing, it's way more than just labelling, but it's a whole relationship and it's where we come from.

So the purpose of Native Skywatchers was to bring together these pieces of knowledge and these teachings.

- How do you bring your cultural worldview into your work as a scientist?

- One of the things that, uh, we always try to uphold is something called "etuaptmunk."

Etuaptmunk means "two-eyed seeing," and this teaching was shared with me by my friend and colleague, Carola Knockwood, who is from the Mi'kmaq nation over in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and her elders, the Marshalls.

It kind of goes like this: to see with the best in one eye, with the indigenous way of knowing, and then to see with the best in the other eye, with Western science way of knowing.

But this is the key part: to see with both eyes for the benefit of all.

- Two-eyed seeing is similar to living in two worlds because one eye sees the cultural way of learning and then the other eye sees the Westernized way of learning.

And she just put them both together for the benefit of everyone.

- Do you have a suggestion for a science activity that we could do that helps us learn more about the stars?

- There's a lot of really great NASA opportunities.

The ones I'm really interested in and especially excited about have to do with exoplanets and finding other planets right here in our own galaxy.

There's one called Disk Detective that's really good where you're working with actual data from different missions or telescopes or science teams.

- Okay.

We'll try it out.

- Yeah.

It sounds cool.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Bye.

- Bye.

- Keep in touch.

Keep in touch.

- Okay.

We will.

- [speaking Lakota] - It was cool to meet Annette Lee on Zoom.

I wish we could have met her in person, but it was okay.

[upbeat music] - Hi, I'm Emily.

You can call me E.V.

if you want to.

I like the outdoors because it's just so fun.

I like to see animals like birds, like blue jays.

And it's just nice outside.

♪ ♪ This is Piper, my bearded dragon.

I've had Piper for three years.

I like to hang out with my family and cousins and go outside to go on hikes and ride horses.

Bye.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ (Wicahpi) Annette encouraged us to continue learning about stars through science by giving us resources that we can do at home.

- This is the NASA Science website.

It has all these Citizen Science projects.

Let's do the Disk Detective one.

(Emily) Okay.

- Citizen Science is when anyone can help to collect and analyze data, even if they aren't actual scientists or have a scientific background.

Let's do the tutorial.

(Wicahpi) "Help us find stars "with hidden disks of dust around them.

"These stars show us where to look for new planetary systems."

- We're helping scientists figure out if stars are making new planets.

We look at the matter around stars, and that's how we can detect, like, planet life.

Okay.

Let's start looking at some of these images.

"The object is extended beyond the outer circle in the unWISE images."

- Whoa.

We were looking at images that were taken on different types of telescopes of the same star and to see the disks around it.

"Two or more images show multiple objects inside the inner circle."

Does that mean inside the inner circle only?

- It doesn't say "only."

- Me and my teammates talked with each other on the questions on Disk Detective and on ways to answer it.

So it moves off the crosshairs?

(Sienna) Yeah, it moves off the crosshairs.

So I think it's like, it's not-- - Not centered?

- Yeah, it's, like, not centered.

(Wicahpi) Okay, so this is one.

- It feels nice.

I helped scientists learn about how new planets are formed.

- It makes me feel like I can be a scientist one day and be the ones that ask people to help analyze and collect data.

- It is kind of cool because it's like I could actually be helping an actual scientist.

(Wicahpi) It was round in some, and in others, it was, like, a oblong shape.

So yeah or no?

(Sienna) Yeah.

(Emily) You don't need to worry about getting it wrong 'cause so many people look at the images and combine the results.

- Let's see how many people are on Disk Detective.

(Emily) Whoa, there's over 8,000 people on there.

(Sienna) That's a lot.

- Disk Detective and the way Dakota people studied stars is similar because they were looking at the way the stars were.

The only difference is that we have the better technology to look at them closer.

[upbeat music] Hey, I'm Wicahpi.

Come on in.

It's cold outside.

This is my shoe collection.

I only started collecting, like, two-ish years ago, so it's not a lot.

Kay, so my favorite shoes right now... [inhales sharply] Now that's where it gets tough.

[clock ticking] [clock dings] Both the cool grays.

I like to play lacrosse.

I've been playing since I was around eight-ish.

I used to use this one, but then after I made my own, that's the one I use.

That's why it's kind of all dirty.

I started off playing modern lacrosse, but now I play traditional lacrosse more than modern.

I like traditional lacrosse better because there's not as much rules and you can be more aggressive.

[grunts] All right, thanks for stopping by.

See you.

[soft upbeat music] ♪ ♪ We're at the Women's Resource Center in South Minneapolis.

♪ ♪ - We're meeting with Ramona because we're gonna be doing a beading project.

(Emily) The designs of the amulet are from the stars in the sky, like the ones that Ramona showed us at the Belwin Conservancy.

- Oh, hi.

[speaking Dakota] Welcome.

- Hello.

Is that a baby's cradle board?

- Yes, it is.

And this is our project today.

This is an amulet that is made when we're expecting a new baby to come into the world.

The turtle amulet represents the women, and the salamander is an amulet for boys.

- The turtle represents the women because a turtle's heart is so strong that it can freeze over, and then when it thaws out, it could move on like nothing even happened.

- The salamander represents boys-- the way that even when their tails are cut off, it grows back, to show resilience.

(Ramona) And when the baby is inside the mother's tummy, it's connected by the umbilical cord, right?

Once baby's born, we take that umbilical and we sew it inside here, and that is now the connection of this child to the star world, and it's a reminder to that child that we are the star people, and we come from the stars and to the stars we return.

- It feels nice to get cultural teachings from Ramona.

(Sienna) Ramona, she's not just, you know, talking about it and showing us the amulets.

We are also making the amulets ourselves.

It's kind of cool to, like, be doing the same thing that our ancestors did.

- It's just fun to do, and I just feel more connected.

- We're gonna start with our design.

As you look at your design, decide what colors you'd like to use, and then color it in.

- So you need to pick out your colors, and then you need to put it on the design, like, on a piece of paper so you know where it goes.

(Emily) It just helps you to know where you're going so you don't mess up or do anything bad.

- I love when beadwork, like, fades into, like, a different color and it's, like, super-- it looks like it's almost, like, painted.

(Sienna) Yeah.

- So these are gonna be, like, my three colors all around the whole thing.

- It had to be nine beads by however long you wanted to do it.

I chose three different colors so it'd be easier to make.

- The animal I decided to make is a turtle.

I'm thinking about maybe giving it to my niece, my baby niece.

- I did the salamander design, and I did the fire colors.

- The amulet I'm making is a salamander, and I'm planning to give it to my sister and her baby because she had a boy.

Just get one of every color that we need?

(Ramona) Yep, drop it in the tray and then cut.

Gently pull them off.

There you go.

Sometimes I just say, "Just spill the beads," because we gotta get it out of our system.

[laughs] Get in your box and find the beeswax, the thread, and I have the needles.

Kay, the amount of thread that we're gonna use is two arms' length.

The reason we use the beeswax is because this thread has elastic in it, and if we sew with it, your beadwork's gonna sag.

So you're gonna press it into the wax, and you're gonna pull.

So that double thread, once it's waxed, becomes a nice, tight single thread.

You did it.

- There we go.

(Ramona) That was easy.

Okay, are we ready to start beading?

(Sienna and Wicahpi) Yeah.

(Emily) Mm-hmm.

(Ramona) All right, take out your amulets.

So this is hand-tanned elk hide.

For the Dakota, we use every single part of that animal because we never want to just disrespect any part of this hide.

- The most fun part is learning new ways that you can bead, because I started my bead project off the way I knew best, and then Ramona taught me a different way to do it, and it was so much easier for the project we were doing.

- You can just go, girl.

She's got this.

She gonna teach the class next.

- [chuckles] [upbeat music] (Sienna) My favorite part was probably sewing the beads onto it because it's like, when you're doing it, it's kind of like you're a bit nervous about it, but when you finish and you pull it back, it's like you can see the design coming together.

♪ ♪ (Ramona) No black.

Do you see black there?

On your map?

[laughs] (Emily) No.

Dang it.

(Ramona) That's okay, 'cause you know what?

When you make mistakes, it helps you to learn how to fix 'em.

♪ ♪ - Just looking at what you did is fun, but getting poked by the needle's not fun at all.

But once you get the hang of it, it's not--it's not hard at all.

(Ramona) How are you doing?

(Emily) I'm doing good.

- Wow.

It looks beautiful.

You did such a great job.

(Sienna) I finished this part.

- [Ramona gasps] That's beautiful.

Wow.

You're almost done.

It's beautiful, my girl.

[bright music] - Hi, my name is Sienna, and welcome to my house.

Come in.

I'm working on a project for my drawing class, and what I really like about it is that it's kind of, like, more independent and stuff and, like, I get to, like, choose what I want to draw and, like, what certain elements I have to put into it.

Like, I can choose if I wanna do pattern or value.

My favorite book right now is "Poet X," and it's by Elizabeth Acevedo.

It's like a journal, but in the form of poetry.

This is my dog Coco.

We've had her for, like, four or five years or something like that.

She's, um, Yorkie and then a Maltese.

I'm cooking with my siblings right now.

We do this especially, like, on the weekends 'cause then I have more time.

This is Sophie.

She's ten years old.

- I'm turning 11 next month.

(Sienna) And this is Demian.

He's five years old.

- Okay, I think that's good, right?

- Yeah, that's good.

Bye.

Thank you for visiting.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ - We're in Minneapolis at the American Indian Center.

- And today, we are finishing up our amulets.

- So the next thing we're gonna do is, we're gonna add some beautiful adornments, because in the Dakota language, there is no word for art, but we make things beautiful to reflect the way the Creator made the world.

- It's all part of our culture and the way we make things.

So we don't think it's art.

It's just the way we make it.

- We are going to add some of the things that make sound, right?

So we're gonna use either the brass beads or the glass beads and then these really nice brass cones.

- We filled it with buffalo hair and sage.

- And the--some scraps of the elk hide that we could not use on the outside of it.

- So this is an awl, and this is the bone of a buffalo.

This is a tool that Dakota women used always and actually had a place for it on their belt because it served so many great purposes.

- We use an awl to help the string go through.

It actually really worked.

[laughs] ♪ ♪ - It was, like, really nice to see 'cause, like, when you shake it, like, it jingles and stuff like that, and also just, like, getting to see all the beads together and, like, how it looks is just really nice.

- This is exactly what our ancestors wanted us to do.

So now you learned how to make them, and so your responsibility will be to pass that on to someone else.

- When you're making the amulet, you wanna pass on the story that comes with it.

So you're teaching your babies and your kids that you're connected to the stars.

(Emily) The responsibility is, you have to pass it on and keep telling people so they can pass it on for generations.

- They came out so beautifully.

Your designs, your colors.

For us, this is transmitting knowledge.

This is cultural lifeways.

But we never really connected it to science, but it is.

And so it would be really exciting if we were able to put this into an art competition with NASA.

Would you like to do that?

(all) Yeah.

(Wicahpi) We finished working on the amulets that we were doing with Ramona, and we're doing an art project for NASA.

- "What do you think we'll discover "when we #UnfoldTheUniverse?

"Show us what you believe the Webb telescope will reveal by creating art."

You really just have to create, like, a piece of art, whether it be, like, a picture, a video, or like, a dance.

(Emily) So first, for the art project, we all sketched out our ideas.

♪ ♪ - We started, uh, sharing our ideas and trying to combine them all together to have one idea.

(Wicahpi) I just wanted to see if they could find planets with more vibrant colors.

- I drew, like, this star, I guess, kind of, like, forming and creating life.

- I'm gonna take a picture of my amulet and then put it on our poster.

For the art project, we each had one good idea we liked, and then we put it together for our art project.

- Do you want to do a picture of your turtle?

- Yeah, I'd be fine with that.

We could take my idea of the star creating, like, other planes.

- And so I just thought that we should take my planet with the stardust coming down forming their amulets.

(Emily) You guys want it to be this big or smaller?

(Sienna) You could clean up the sides a little bit.

(Emily) Okay.

♪ ♪ (Wicahpi) I think it turned out pretty nice.

(Emily) Yeah, I like that you guys outlined it.

- I'm gonna go take the picture.

[shutter clicks] (Wicahpi) Our art challenge poster starts off my planet, and then the stardust going into making new life, and it incorporated what we learned.

(Ramona) I am so excited to show this to you.

Look at this social media post about you guys.

(Sienna) "This is awesome.

Congrats to you young ladies for sharing your talents and knowledge."

- Oh, look at this one.

They're from NASA.

"This is really wonderful.

"Thank you so much for sharing what you have learned and your visions for what we might find."

- Oh, my gosh, my mom replied.

(Ramona) How are you feeling?

(girls) Good.

- It felt good to work with everybody on the project.

- I hope that the Native youth that see this know that we have always been here and that they know that we have also always been scientists too.

[dinging] [percussive Dakota music] ♪ ♪ (Wicahpi) Science has reinforced my connection to the stars by showing that stars are constantly creating new life.

(Emily) Now, when I look at the stars, I'll think about the Blue Star Woman and the salamander and the turtle and how they made us.

(Sienna) What I'll think about when I look up at the stars now is my people and how we're all connected in the universe and also about how life is all connected and how we need to take care of it.

♪ ♪ (girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪ (Emily) It feels great to look at the stars same place my ancestors did.

- Welcome to our star party.

(person) Say hi to the sky.

(person) Hi!

- Cut out a circle with your arms.

And that's your circle of observation.

(person) We're gonna focus on isolation.

(person) I like how cozy our design is.

- [speaking Spanish] (all) Uno, dos, tres.

[all cheering] - Would you girls call that a success?

(all) Yeah.

(person) We're like NASA girls.

(all) We're NAScigirls.

[upbeat music] (Izzie) Funding for "SciGirls" is made possible by NASA.

NASA inspires the future generation of space explorers and scientists to engage in the science, technology, engineering, and math that is the foundation of NASA's mission success.

Additional funding is provided by... PPG Foundation aims to bring color and brightness to communities around the world.

♪ ♪ (girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪