The Pathways to Zuni Wisdom after school and summer program provides young Zunis with a balanced learning environment that includes traditional knowledge and modern life skills. The program began in 2005 centering Zuni knowledge activities on farming and gardening with informal science teaching based on examination of ancient Zuni garden terraces.

Indigenous wisdom including Zuni wisdom has long been considered by outsiders as being based in superstition, mysticism or taboo. In the latter part of the last century scientists began to focus studies on particular areas of indigenous wisdom calling them ethnopharmacology, ethnobotany or ethnoastronomy to name a few.

However, this categorization subjugated indigenous wisdom to an ethnoscience. We at the AAMHC believe that Zuni wisdom and science are two separate knowledge systems and the challenge for our future lies in how we learn across these knowledge systems rather than combine them.

A major part of our culture and knowledge revolves around farming.  We are people with centuries of experience using dry land, irrigated and garden cropping techniques.  Thousands of years of climate, soil, and crop knowledge are contained in our community.  The Pathways to Zuni Wisdom Program focuses on sharing this knowledge with our youth and emphasizes our culture as the core of farming.  Pathways to Zuni Wisdom is strongly oriented towards transmitting Zuni farming knowledge through activities that begin with the pre-planting season and goes through planting, irrigating, weeding and finally ending with harvesting.  Excursions are also taken to learn about old peach orchards, rain fed irrigated fields, old hand dug wells, artesian springs, prehistoric terrance gardens, scarecrow making, and seed saving.  Partners in this work include the Zuni Sustainable Agriculture Project and Twin Buttes High School.