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Sheet
for the Units and Self-Assessment
for Cultural Standards in Practice.
Winds
And
Weather
by Jonas Ramoth and Sidney Stephens
In the winter in Selawik, if it's clear and cold, -20° or
-30°F, maybe there are a few clouds but its nice and calm. The wind isn't
supposed to blow now. If the wind starts to blow when its not supposed to,
people gathered maybe in the store will say –ooo, cold”. In Iñupiaq they
say qiunaurauqtuq which means he's beckoning the storm. You know it will
be stormyăblowing, drifting snow. It makes you decide to stay home. Animals
will stay home too. This is very reliable.
Jonas Ramoth, Iñupiaq Elder
Preface
After almost 3 days of talk-meeting in Kotzebue, when half
the group of educators had left to catch planes or ease weary backsides,
Iñupiaq Elder Jonas Ramoth
got up to speak. With incredibly fresh kindness and consummate humility, he
said that it is not always easy for Elders to speak to groups; "our lives
are just our lives, nothing special to talk about, we just live like we do."
He also said it was hard to speak up when there are others who know more, but
when only he is there to speak, he tries. Jonas then referred to all of the
hunting elders as biologists and spoke of their vast knowledge about the land,
animals, plants and weather gained from close observation and time on the land.
He also talked about "shaman stories that children love and are fantastic
and fun to tell, but make you feel like a liar. We know what we know, but we
can't explain it. That's where we clash with empirical knowledge."
No one spoke in response. They just sat smiling, perhaps thinking as I was
that with utmost simplicity and calm, Jonas had just captured the essence of
our days of discussion about merging Native knowledge and science in ways that
keep each perspective whole and work for kids and communities. Without either
of us realizing it, so began our collaboration.
Later that year our paths again crossed during a 2-week
summer course for teachers held in Fairbanks. Jonas was the Elder member
of a teaching team from Kotzebue
and was there to help his team create a science/math unit based on traditional
Iñupiaq knowledge. Jonas quickly became the "course" elder,
generously sharing his knowledge and stories not only with his team, but
also
with the whole class, which luckily included me. I took notes whenever he spoke
and was continuously amazed by his simple eloquence and the ease and patience
with which he answered our often pointed and most characteristically naluagmiu
questions. This held equally true when I visited him in December of that year,
to clarify my understanding of dominant weather patterns in his home village
of Selawik, as a basis for developing this weather unit. (Notes from this meeting,
as well as a little more information about Jonas are in Appendix A.)
At this point, I wish I could say that Jonas and I continued to work closely
together to develop lessons for students based on his knowledge, but that is
not what happened. Jonas is a traditional teacher who, in addition to raising
his grandchildren and holding a full time job with the National Park Service,
is very active on the local and regional Elders councils and spends much of
his time working with children in schools and during the summer. He is not a
curriculum developer and shies away from any pretense in this regard.
So, having equipped me as best he could with a literal
understanding of Selawik weather patterns, Jonas allowed me to roll on with
development of the following
unit at my discretion. He responded to questions and read whatever I sent him
for comment, but this unit is truly not a representation of the way he would
teach students about the weather. Instead, it's a distillation and a reconfiguration
of his knowledge as an Iñupiaq Elder and mine as a science educator.
As such, it represents a first vision of what I might hope to do were I a village
teacher
and lucky enough to be able to work with Jonas on a regular basis. Hopefully
readers will find some part of it applicable to their own situations, and hopefully
too, readers will be able to smooth off rough edges and fill in gaps to better
represent an approach to teaching and learning about the weather that is tailor-made
for their community.
Sidney Stephens
Unit Overview/Outline
Understanding and predicting winds and weather from either traditional or
western perspectives is a very complicated process, involving multiple variables,
patterns and relationships, and taking years of experience and study to master.
This unit attempts to set students on the road to weather competency by: (1)
grounding them in the practice of locally significant weather observation;
(2) exploring the physical phenomena that drive winds; and (3) connecting local
investigations to global weather studies.*
Standards
Section I - Observing Locally
Section II - Understanding Wind
Section III - Connecting
Globally
Appendix A - Selawik Weather Information from
Jonas Ramoth
Appendix B - Assessment
Appendix C - Weather Resource
List
Appendix D - Interdisciplinary Integration
naluagmiu - Iñupiaq term nor
non-Native, literally meaning "bleached sealskin"
* This unit deals exclusively with winds and not with other crucial
aspects of weather (such as the water cycle) because winds are the most significant
weather sign discussed by Jonas Ramoth for Selawik
Handbook
for Culturally Responsive Science Curriculum by Sidney Stephens
Excerpt: "The information and insights contained in this document will be
of interest to anyone involved in bringing local knowledge to bear in school
curriculum. Drawing upon the efforts of many people over a period of several
years, Sidney Stephens has managed to distill and synthesize the critical ingredients
for making the teaching of science relevant and meaningful in culturally adaptable
ways." |
