Building a Foundation For Living Life That Feels Just Right

By Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, Ph. D.
University of Alaska Fairbanks

First, I would like to thank the conference committee of Greenland for inviting me to speak. I am a Yupiaq from Bethel, Alaska which is a member of the Inuit. I have been involved in education all my life and have experienced the alienation from my own Yupiaq language and lifeways, and a segregated school system in my early years. The things that I will say about what education should be and do for the Native students will be generated from my own experiences and what I am seeing now from the younger generations.

You and I know as we read and hear reports of what young people are doing to themselves, to each other and those around them how life is so irrelevant to these young people. They have no respect for anyone, their families, their possesions, law and order. This to me is due in large part to the valueless education that they have received in public schools. This is not to say that there is NO value in education because everything that is taught to them has the underlying value of consumerism, conformity, linearism, standardization, efficiency, and fragmentation. The students get the understanding that technology has an answer for all problems that confront us. But, did you know that mathematics, science, and their offspring the technologies are destroying our world from what it to be? To give an example, modern medical technology has increased live births and longevity and we are in the midst of a global population explosion. And, it is straining the earthly natural resources. We are polluting our backyards which destroy flora and fauna.

My questions is: How long can Mother Earth be able to connect life web breakages due to extinctions until there is a complete collapse of the ecological system? We, in America, are known to be voracious eaters and consumers, and at whose expense do we live this abundant life? Yours and mine! We, as members of the First Nations, don’t care that that rest of the world is going hungry, live at the poverty level, grow cash crops to feed us at their own expense, deplete their natural resources, receive technological tools and chemical material which are known to be destructive, and learn the “American Dream” which is an unattainable goal for many. So, what should our schools be teaching the youngsters to bring about a turnaround in our narcissistic thinking?

I believe the first step would be to instruct school in the language of its Native people, the language of instruction has to be the Native language. It is the God-given language, developed lovingly and caringly from the mind-in-nature. It is the language of place and tells us how to relate to ourselves, to others, to nature and to the spiritual. It gives us our identity, our uniqueness as a special people. Without our language, we become a people with an identity determined by others especially those that live outside their birthplace. We hear what others think of us, we read what a person thinks of us, we read and see what an anthropologist thinks about us, we hear what religious people think about us. We don’t have a true identity without fluency in our own Native tongue!

We must learn about our own cosmogony, cosmology, ecosophy, ecopsychology, and epistemology in our own Native language. It must use the myths, legends and stories which contain the webbing for what it means to be human, how to interact with others, nature and the spirits. The elders will play a vital role in this endeavor.

Secondly, we must have elders and knowledgeable people explain how, what and why we make certain implements for use in hunting, trapping, cleaning and preserving foodstuffs, and making clothing. Our technology is nature-mediated which is why our ancestors merely modified a natural resource to make an instrument. Our ancestors could see and make use of nature-refined copper but chose not to replicate the process because to do so would change our relationship to Mother Earth and her natural resources especially mineral. This whole process must be value-creating based on the Greenlandic values. The values have to be explicitly explained, examples given, and role models identified. The role models have to be Native people who are at peace with themselves and are living a life that feels just right. In balance physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Thirdly, in determining what from the Eurocentric worldviews is to be grafted onto the Greenlandic worldviews, those that are engaged in the process must ask the following questions:

1.Does adding this particular knowledge enhance or detract from ones Nativeness?

2.Does adding this knowledge increase or decrease natural diversity and cultural adaptability?

3.Is this Eurocentric knowledge useable in place?

4.Are the Native people able to come up with phrases or coin words that reflect the most often used mathematical and scientific words and theories? They have to feel that these are important to know.

5.Are the estimation measurements of our ancestors applicable today? Make use of their sense of pattern and symmetry without mathematical computations to confuse the issue.

6.Are the computers and other technological tools conducive to natural diversity and cultural adaptability? Use these tools sparingly as our memories are getting obsolete.

7.Will the addition of these technological tools add to the environmental and mental pollution?

Fourthly, we must begin to address the psychological and emotional responses to what Native elders, scientists and environmentalists see as nuclear pollution and environmental degradation. Have the elders come into the classroom and talk about their observations from the time that they were born to what they see now. What do they see that is disturbing to them psychologically and emotionally? How do you as student react to this? In this technological world, has life become easier? At what expense? Look around your own community and see if you can see signs of pollution? When you happen to get away from your community, what debris, flotsam, noise, and signs of pollution do you see? If we can begin to think on this level then we can begin to deal with it on a pragmatic level. We and the students can begin to connect with life and everything around us. Then we begin to ask ourselves what can we do to begin to clean our own environment? When we begin to clean without ourselves, we begin our own healing as a people.

These are just a few thoughts on what education should do to make a person and people who are satisfied with self, have needs and wants that are kept to a minimum, whose greatest satisfaction is living in harmony and cooperation with the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the winged, fish, wind, the mountain, and the sea. When we have reached this highest point spiritually, then we have attained connectedness with life and all living beings. Quyana.

Soft Technology:
Adaptations to Culture and Environment

By Oscar Kawagley

And is Man any less destroying himself for all his boasted brain of his? . . . and I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the art of death he outdoes Nature herself … This marvelous force of life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness.

Devil in Shaw’s Don Juan

I begin with an apocalyptic statement for as I survey the villages possessing modern technology, I see a confused Native and a disparity in the distribution of resources, wealth, and goods. Although the Native has ancient tenure on this land, and although he may be sitting on wanted natural resources, he is invariably shunted aside and receives peripheral tidbits of wealth leaving his home. Contrary to what many of my people say about an easier life with access to goods and services, I disagree. I think it’s only because we have not really looked at or are unwilling to admit that many of our villages are the ghettoes of the urban industrial cities.

New technological tools and devices are introduced or forced upon the villagers, and although they may seemingly make things easier, many of these machines have hidden costs to us and our environment. Take, for instance, the snow machine—fast, untiring, and has pulling power to do work. But do we consider what the noise does to us, to the game, the fragile tundra, what the occasional oil leaks and small gas spills do, breakdowns, accidental deaths, the unsightly cluttering of discarded machines and the dehumanizing effect. It has changed our ways of courting and dating, hunting and trapping, and makes a big demand on money resources for gas, oil, repairs and maintenance. These machines were made for affluent middle-class and thrill seeking Americans. The process of development paid no regard for material costs, mechanical and flue efficiency, nor the degree of technical complexity. In fact, the more complex the better. The western scientific method is utilitarian and is not disposed to ecological considerations as its yardstick of success is money.

We Alaska Natives have lived down through the millennia in harmony with our world. It is time that we demand to consider technology before it is introduced to our villages. It is time that we demand our institutions of higher learning make accessible mathematics and sciences to our Native students. We need Native scientists and technologists who are capable of looking at development and research projects from two different perspectives. And, more importantly, are able to work with elders to develop soft technology in tune with and conducive to Nature. Machines are here to stay. But I say it is impossible for us to humanize technology, but we certainly can technologize man with tools that are not violent nor destructive to him and his environment.

There are many ecological niches on earth where primal man learned to live as a part of it. With the onslaught of western man and his technology, his numbers decreased drastically, his identity flagged, and he depended on social services to make him a living.

We don’t seem to realize that when we buy into the technology and services, we reduce our self-reliance, self-sufficiency and identity. Let me use a simple example of these ASHA and other non-profit built with government monies boxes, and assigned out to people as houses. Take a look at it, aesthetically beautiful, good lumber, what insulation used is good, with a non-functional bathtub and shower, a partitioned interior configuration, and elevated off the ground on pilings. This might be a good design for the Louisiana bayou. Why was it transplanted here? Well, it’s cheap and guaranteed to fall apart within five years, if not sooner. Would it not have been just as easy to ask the locals: What kind of home, materials, design, and use would you like? We may have come up with a house more suited to the environment, in fact, fitted to the environment. But we accept without question, because the builders and designers are of the great society, the omniscient, the omnipotent. In our haste to please, we completely disregard our own housing technology as being archaic, damp, dismal, and uncomfortable. We forget that it enabled our ancestors to survive for thousands of years: heat efficient in the winter, naturally air-conditioned in the summer, circular in form for better air circulation, semi-subterranean to make use of the insulative crust of the earth, the framework covered with sod with the vegetation on the inside to make an air barrier, and made with available local materials. By accepting the modern house, we denigrate our identity and we relegate a lot of time and energy to its maintenance, heating and electricity. A larger portion of our income from hunting, trapping, fishing, and job goes to these three items. Just how much easier does this modern house allow for us to make a living? I’ve read where the Natives in neolithic times spent near equal time in foraging for food and free time. Why can’t we say, “Just wait a minute, before you bring in our new houses, or school. Let us examine the specifications, we don’t want another technological dinosaur introduced to our community.”

We have no rural economic base other than fishing, trapping, and government-funded jobs and services. Finding alternatives for jobs is a difficult task which, I think, if undertaken, should involve Native participants to draw up a plan and establish a goal for their particular region. Wage-labor is limited, and isolated cottage industries have been tried without success. Perhaps we can draw an analogy from the Amish. These people have been in constant clash with the American technological society, but have surprisingly been able to endure. The reasons for their success seem to be that they have a language, have a place they can call their own, have a tie to the land, have a history, have selected a limited number of technological tools into their society, and train their people for work to maintain their economic system. However, they have one advantage over us: they have never had their self-esteem crushed. From my perspective, it seems that each region needs to determine if it is going to maintain a quasi-traditional lifestyle having only a few basic culled out Native values to mix with chosen outside values. This, of course, presupposes that the Native are allowed self-determination and to work for solutions to their problems. I would propose they address themselves to wildfowl, animal, and fish habitats and life to increase productivity without resorting to recombinant DNA, hormones, antibiotics, special feeds, and other artificial means that scientists are inclined. Our Native people have always been curious about all living things, the earth and how they interrelate. They have much experiential knowledge learned through keen and patient observation where nothing is left to chance. The subsistence lifestyle leaves little to a gambling proclivity.

The bogs and marshlands are an abundant source of nutrients for many species of birds, fishes, and animals. These with their streams, creeks, rivers, and sea are being rapidly polluted by effluent wastes, erosion, and man’s activities. Trained Native people are needed to protect them from further destruction. This may mean, for example, that we compromise our high-powered motors for less speedy, energy efficient engines cutting down on pollution and wave action. The boats may become smaller and lighter but with a payload comparable to that of the qayaq. The qayaq may get motorized with a light weight solar-powered engine. His hunting weapons might be a combination of the principles of the bow, the scuba diver’s spear gun, and the rifle. His rifle might be designed with a shell containing an inflatable float and high tensile line to keep one from losing a seal or walrus. As the shell hits flesh, the float is automatically released. This would minimize losses due to sinking. So his hunting implements become more humane and efficient. For continuity of his lifestyle, experts cognitive of both the traditional and modern knowledge and skills must be fostered to work in nurturing and enhancing biota and their ecological processes. Since our traditional ontology places a barrier (how could we own and make part of a household these living beings that often possess more power than we?) we then have to seek new approaches. Our earth is the giver of life, we are placed on her to work with her. This is traditionally what we have always done. This would mean a need for a combination of cooperating land and wildlife managers, fisheries biologists, hydrologists, architects, MDs, engineers, ecologists, botanists, economists, and chemists, to name a few—scientists who are in contact with life. For example, the health care services under the village aide program is closing in on integrating traditional medical practices. Psychology and psychiatry remain western treating part of the person without regard to the total being. I think elders have much to contribute through their lives, their mythology, and their ceremonies of establishing balance in the whole scenario. After all, the Spirit of the Universe gave us the ability for rational, intuitive, and mystic communications so that we may know what to do to work balance. Why then are we so troubled?

I can advance one possible variable. We, as Natives, are blinded by western knowledge and its technological products, forgetting it is a means, not leading to an end(s) nor do they help to make reality. These syncopating strobe lights we have made into a myth, a religious play, and faithfully accept the god of the new world. It’s now time for the natural man, the primal man to step in. He has remained quiet, now he must begin to pose questions to young people on the appropriateness of the modern, utilitarian scientific method and its products, a demythologizing task of science for science’s sake, technology for technology’s sake. Much of communications, medical and transportation technologies, and various appliances are good, but for many superfluous gadgets, we pay dearly by surrendering our self-reliance, our self-sufficiency, and our IDENTITY. We confuse our children, whom we recognize as our greatest resource to carry and transmit our culture and values. We voice and espouse the value of our ways, but eschew our traditional and technical tools and methods in every-day life. We leave to the formal school setting the teaching of language, values, and technics by Natives paid through Indian Education and Johnson-O’Malley. I am not saying that this is bad where the school is involved in cultural transmission, but is it a true extension and reflection of the home and community?

We are no longer traditional Alaska Natives. Men are no longer full-time hunters, women are no longer full-time homemakers. Our youngsters are confused because our cultural template has been unrecognizably eroded. The task is to carefully reconstruct and redefine by replacing missing pieces to engender a new Native identity with its infrastructure being valued Native traditions. Right now it is emotionally and mentally costly to try to succeed in either world, much like trying to fit a round peg into a square or triangular hole. So our youngsters enter school confused and graduate confused and disoriented. They may show signs of pride and smugness for being Native, but, I venture, it is merely a fragile facade. Anxiety is skin deep, ready to burst as an antisocial act at any question to its reality, or slight of his being. And is it any wonder when we complain about owing ASHA or HUD for substandard out-of-context housing, the store for a hard-to-fix 4-wheeler, Sears and Roebuck for myriad specialized appliances, the grocery store for less-than-nutritional food, the late general assistance check, and a forced-upon-us outside denial system, but gladly accept? We are trying to become what we are not meant to be—a dependent specialized and centralized people, and we become “A People in Peril,” a consequence of confusion. Who are we? Really?

I therefore propose synthesizing the traditional with modern technologies to create soft technology effecting a people at home in their own dynamic and technology enhanced environment, working as philosophical technicians of earth. I conclude with Marston Bates:

Man has not escaped from the biosphere. He has got into a new, unprecedented kind of relationship with the biosphere; and his success in maintaining this may well depend not only on his understanding of himself, but on his understanding of this world in which he lives . . . It looks as though, as a part of nature, we have become a disease of nature—perhaps a fatal disease . . . I am not advocating a return to the neolithic . . . But long run efficiency would seem to require certain compromises with nature.

Bibliography

Augros, Robert and George Stanciu. (1987). The New Biology. Boston: New Science Library.

Bates, Marston. (1980). The Forest and the Sea. Alexandria: Time-Life Books, Inc.

Siu, R.G.H. (1985). The Tao of Science. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Alaska Native Holotropic Mind and Science

By Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, Ph.D.

Indigenous people have developed complex knowledge and belief systems for living in harmony with Nature. Many of these beliefs are imbedded in our myths, so I begin by telling you a Yupiaq story:

Aka tamani, ellam kainga mamkitellrani, In distant time, when the earth's crust was thin, is a crane flying around looking for a likely place to eat. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, the tundra is warming. The crane decides to check out the weather. He begins to fly in a circle. Each time he completes the circle, he gains altitude. He looks at earth from a very high altitude. He then decides to descend and look for food. He flies over a river and sights a skin boat with Yupiat people in it slowly paddling down the river. He continues his flight and sees a lake. He flies to it and finds many kinds of berries. He is very hungry.

He lands on the river bank. He contemplates going back to the tundra to eat the berries, but his mind cannot forget the Yupiat coming down the river. He knows that he could be hunted. He must think of a way to warn himself when the people approach. He sits there and thinks. He finally decides that he will use his eyes as sentries. He removes his eyes and puts them on a log. He instructs the eyes by telling them, "Now when you see people coming down the river, you warn me. I will come down and get you and fly off."

After telling them so, he goes back to the tundra and starts to eat berries. Soon he hears his eyes shout, "Crane, crane, there are people coming down the river!" He hurries down, finds his eyes and plucks them back in the sockets. He looks. There is only a log drifting down the river. The branches must have resembled people. He gets upset and says to his eyes, "Now you be very careful and make sure they are people before you call for me." He goes back to the tundra and eats. Soon, he hears his eyes calling him, "Crane, crane, there is a boat with people in it coming down the river. Come quick!" He hurries down to the log and picks up his eyes and looks. There is only a chunk of tundra drifting down. Tufts of grass move up and down with movements of the clump of tundra. "Now, look eyes you have made a second mistake. Look very carefully before you call for me. I'm going back to eat some more berries."

Soon afterward, the eyes call, "Crane, crane, people are coming down the river in a boat." This time the crane does not heed the call. He is thinking, "Well, I suppose they see something else that might resemble a boat and people. This time I won't respond." He continues to eat. Soon the eyes call, "Crane, crane, the people are almost upon us. Come quick!" He does not answer.

Some time elapses, then he hears the eyes calling from a distance, "Crane, crane, the people have us, and they are taking us down the river." The crane runs down to the riverbank and finds the log. He feels around, but there are no eyes. He sits down and thinks, "What am I going to do for eyes?" After much thought and consternation at not being able to see, he ambles back to the tundra. A thought occurs to him, "Why not try berries for eyes?" With that he finds blackberries. He plops them into his eye sockets. Lo and behold, he sees, but the world is different shades of black and grey. This can't be, so, he disposes of the blackberries. He finds salmonberries, and tries them. But the world is orange with its color variations and does not look right. So, he gets rid of them. He tries cranberries, but again the world is not the right color. It shows a place of red hues.

Finally, he tries blueberries. This time, the sky is blue, the tundra is green and varied in color, and the clouds are white — these are to be his eyes. And, that is how the CRANE got blue eyes.

Such stories are very mythical (as defined by Joseph Campbell) and magical. The myth is an analogical way of relating to our environment; it reflects the human minds response to the world; it has to do with understanding; it tells us that we humans have the heavy burden of intelligence and thus responsibility to care for the world in all its beauty; and, it provides healing. The Yupiat people accepted this on faith because of the need to know and understand the world around. To them, it made beautiful sense. If people believe in a worldview that includes a language, an ecosophy, epistemology, and eco-psychology all contingent on Nature, why should the things of Nature not be understandable and interchangeable. According to the Yupiat, all have a spirit, therefore a consciousness and an awareness of the world around them. So, the eyes are able to communicate, perhaps, not verbally, but maybe through unsaid words. To the Yupiat, listening not only with the ears, but with the mind and heart are essential to becoming aware of patterns and events that reflect natural laws. The sun will rise and descend each day, the earth will revolve around the sun and bring new seasons, the spruce seeds will germinate and produce new trees, and so forth. These are recurring observable phenomena that occur in relatively predictable ways. We come to recognize these patterns through a life that is lived as a science — a way of knowing.

A case in point is the crane flying in circles and ascending. The Yupiat know that the tundra warms under the sun. This becomes visible when they look out across the tundra and can see the air turbulence as the heat waves are rising. They know the scientific principle that hot air rises and they incorporate it into their story, as the crane uses the ascending currents to get high into the air to look around. Nature is science — science is nature.

The Western scientists tell us that in the growth of a human embryo, a gene or a combination thereof will produce an eye. Through observation, experiment and reasoning we have seen this happen time and again, but there is much we accept on faith. We will never fully understand the creative design behind the genetic mechanism that produces the eye, just as we will never know what creative forces or entity started the physical laws into motion to bring about the universe. The scientific laws of nature merely explain or describe what physicists, astronomers, biologists and others have observed. The preconditions leading to this phenomenon have not been seen and can only be imagined. The Yupiat too observe the natural environment make sense of the world around them, and they accept on faith that which is unknowable, uncontrollable and immeasurable.

The Western scientists tell us many things, such as that there are particles in the atom that are so small that no one will ever be able to see. They exist only as mathematically deduced statistics. But, we as a people accept these on faith. Do mathematical and physical principles really exist in Nature, or are they merely constructs of the human rational mind to try to make sense of this world? The important aspect to consider is that the modern creative scientist focuses primarily on the physical and intellectual essences, in other words the outer ecology of our existence. In addition, the modern scientist generates theories based on sometimes limited facts, and these theories are then used to construct our technocratic societies. However, with an incomplete factual basis, the theories do not necessarily reflect physical reality. When these socio-political-economic-scientific theories do not adequately describe reality, the technologies and social practices they spawn likely will not be useful in tribal societies, where day-to-day survival is deeply imbedded in reality.

To the Yupiaq, such theories and practices are seen as incomplete and often erroneous knowledge. The fragmentary approach of reductionist knowledge generation disassociates the parts from the whole. In trying to understand the parts to learn about the whole, the scientific methods skew our way of looking at things. Disembodied assumptions and expectations can muddle our efforts to see things as they really are. Lack of self knowledge about the reciprocity that exists between ourselves and the world in which we are situated leads to nature keeping its secrets when we most need to let the book of Nature speak for itself. The Native creative mythology/science, on the other hand, deals with the whole — the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual dimensions of our inner and outer ecologies. The Native person realizes that he/she is a microcosm of the whole universe, and therein lies the ultimate difference between the two systems of thought.

The above Yupiaq story is an example of the creative mythology of our ancestors. But is not the physicist who creates the statistics of unseen particles also a creative mythologist? Is not the genetic microbiologist who deciphers what gene(s) cause Alzheimer’s a creative mythologist? Is not the microbiologist who creates a clone of a sheep a creative mythologist? This penchant for channeling knowledge for the manipulation of the physical world thrusts me into the techno-mechanistic realm whereby insights and discoveries are rendered into useful tools and gadgets, such as the jet airplane, snow machine, outboard motor, cloning living things, antibiotics, fluoride toothpaste, skyscrapers, and the plastic raincoat. Much of this technology is intensive in the use of natural resources and non-renewable energy and reflects a tendency to want to gain control over Nature and manipulate it for the benefit of humankind. Yet, we do not always take into account the fact that much of the natural resources and energy sources of Mother Earth that we are depending upon are finite, so we pursue such a course of action ultimately at our peril. Supposedly, technology will evolve to produce more food, energy and natural resources, as though "Technology is the answer!” But what was the question? According to Lovins, it is not whether more and bigger is better — his solution is “soft technology” in tune with the world around us, and thus sustainable (1977).

Generally, our industrial leaders are mainly concerned about financial gains driven by greed and ambition (also known as profit). Technological products and inventions are improved means to an often foggy or meaningless end. When a product such as a television, a snow machine, or new material for clothing are made, it does not change just a small segment of life, but all of life. Psychological, social and economic changes are impossible to measure, just as good and evil cannot be quantified. In introducing such changes, technocracy has no conscience, but those of us who participate do, and it is up to us to exercise it on behalf of ourselves and our offspring.

Mathematics, and the disciplines of science have there own languages and specialty areas of expertise. Too often they are isolated from each other so that there is only limited opportunity for the understanding of interrelationships and interconnectedness of all phenomena in this universe. In fact, each area of study has its own contrived language which makes cross-disciplinary communication and interaction difficult. Within each of these fields of study are an abundance of well-funded research projects generating new bits of information and technological devices. But, what do these lead to? Certainly we are not producing an abundance of new natural resources, natural beauty, and diversity, but too often we are contributing to further degradation of the natural environment and increased poverty and confusion, not only of humans, but of our fellow creatures as well. Our education system and mass media further skew our view of reality by fostering expectations and assumptions without consideration of the long-term consequences. How then do we learn to live in harmony and balance with the world around us? Here we have much we can learn from the creative mythology and science of indigenous people, including the Yupiat.

The Alaska Native Holotropic Mind

The Yupiat people have developed and refined their own ways of knowing and being in harmony with Mother Earth. Following is a diagram using a tetrahedral metaphor to illustrate some of the key elements in the Yupiat worldview.

I have drawn a circle representing the universe, or circle of life. The circle represents togetherness which has no beginning and no end. On this circle are represented the human, natural and spiritual worlds. There are two-way arrows between each of them as well as to the worldview at the apex of the tetrahedral. These two-way arrows depict continuous communications between all these realms and functions to maintain balance. The Yupiat have a saying, Yuluni pitallkertugluni , which refers to “Living a life that feels just right.” One has to be in constant communication with each of the realms to know that one is in balance. If there is a feeling that something is wrong then one must be able to check to see what might be the cause for unease (or dis-ease). If the feeling of being just right comes instinctively and this feeling permeates your whole being, then you have attained balance. This means that one does not question the various functions intellectually, but that one merges spiritually and emotionally with each. The circle brings all into one mind.

In the Yupiat thought world, everything of Mother Earth possesses a spirit, a consciousness, an awareness. So the wind, river, rabbit, amoeba, star, lily, and so forth all possess a spirit. The human consciousness, with its ability to merge into one with all the consciousness of this world, is the embodiment of the holotropic mind. This holistic mind is given to the nurturance of an environmental ethic.

If all elements of the natural world possess a spirit/soul, then all possess consciousness and the power that it gives to its physical counterpart. It allows the Native person to have the ability to enlist the aid of the spirit to do extraordinary feats of righting an unbalanced individual psyche, community disease, or recovering the loss of communication with the spiritual and natural world that has occurred through irreverence toward beings of Nature. Robinson and Wickwire (1992) calls this “nature power,” a life-sustaining spirituality. Grof (1993), in his description of the “holotropic mind,” refers to “power animals” which serve as a source of wisdom or power when humans re-establishing links with them. In today’s world this connection has often been lost through negligence or lack of reverence, or by offending either the animal spirits or one of the greater spirits of the natural world.

These insights are not available through Western scientific research methods, but only through the ancient arts of shamanism or Nature-mediated thought. From this you can see that when we rely only on Western means of research, we are limiting the possibilities for new insights, and yet this is what our institutions of higher learning are expected to espouse and teach. Most areas of formal social and scientific inquiry teach only one way of trying to learn and understand phenomena in the world around us. Our technological and scientific training restricts the student’s mind to these limited understandings, much to the detriment of the learners, who then enter the mainstream world to become unerring progenitors of progress and development.

Alaska Native people needed to take lives of animals to live, so to give honor, respect, dignity and reciprocation to the animals whose lives were taken, they conceived and put into practice many rituals and ceremonies to communicate with the animals as spiritual beings. These are corroborated through the mythologies which are manifestations of fundamental organizing principles that exist within the cosmos, affecting all our lives (Grof, 1993). In consideration of these inherent principles of reciprocity, the Yupiat hunter-gatherer would leave something behind, such as a piece of dry fish, when getting mouse food from the tundra. The mouse food is gathered from the nests in the early fall so that the mouse and its family will have an opportunity to collect more food for the winter. The seal when caught is given a drink of water, so that its spirit will not be thirsty when it travels to the animal’s spiritual kingdom. This is done to show respect to the animal for having shared and given its life to the hunter. Medicinal plants are also gathered respectfully knowing full well their power to heal, and to recognize that these were given freely by Nature and therefore that we share these freely.

The Alaska Native person is aware that if we do not use these gifts of Nature regularly, mindfully and respectfully, they will begin to diminish through disuse or misuse. Earth, air, water, fire and spirit must always be in balance. All the elements and creatures have an important niche to play in the ecological system. With this concept in mind, it behooves us to carefully examine the lifestyles and technology that are extant in the world around us. Our lifestyles have become materialistic and are given to technological devices and gadgets galore that are not really geared to sustainability. Our modern cities with their networks of buildings, transportation, communications, and goods and services distribution centers are and given to homogenization and conformity. Likewise, the management of natural resources is given to conformity and bureaucratization. They are approached in a fragmentary way such that an expert in harbor seals does not know what the expert in herring fish is doing. This type research is geared toward measuring and objectifying the species for commercial purposes and not for sustaining the essential balance on Mother Earth.

In the Western realm of science and technology there exist many alternative approaches to dealing with the world in ways that are nature-friendly and sustainable. These await the time when the global societies evolve from consumerism and materialism to responsible stewardship that is oriented to conservation and regeneration. As Native people, the Yupiat and other indigenous societies have much to share with the modern world. It is much more difficult to live in concert with Mother Earth than it is to plunder her. We must seek to live in balance with the earth, air, fire, water and spirit, using the sciences and there offspring, the technologies, as tools of enhancement, not destruction. With our realization that Western mathematics and sciences and the resulting techno-mechanistic inventions impact and change our thinking in ways that can be inimical to living in nature, with nature, and being of nature, it behooves us as indigenous peoples to learn both ways of knowing and doing, so that we can begin to develop a caring consciousness and a technology that is kind to our being as humans, as well as to the spiritual and the natural worlds.

References

Kawagley, A. Oscar, 1995. A Yupiaq Worldview: A Pathway to Ecology and Spirit. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, Inc.

Grof, Stanislav, M.D., 1993. The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc.

Lovins, Amory, 1977. Soft Energy Paths. New York: Harper & Row.

Robinson, Harry with Wendy Wickwire, 1992. Nature Power: In the Spirit of an Okanagan Storyteller. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

When You Help Someone, and That Someone Feels Better—You Have Given Medicine

By Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, Ph. D.

When first asked to speak to this group, my reaction was: what do I have to offer and share with this group? I am an educator and researcher of Native education. But I thought about it for some time and decided that I do have something to share. After all, the educational success of a student depends on balanced mental health.

It is wonderful to have sight, to be able to see the beauty of a sunrise, the moon, the rosehip, and ripples on a calm lake. But, there is something that is greater than sight, and that is insight. The old people gained this by meditation while waiting for a seal to come up to the breathe hole, while ice fishing, and just plain fasting to cleanse body and soul. This meditative state allowed the person to not be aware of the things going on around them, but to become aware of what is within the person. This is done through communication with oneself. This insight is acquiring an understanding of his/her life and the living that he/she are practicing. Are they complementary to one another, or are you doing things that are not in tune with insights of yourself? Are you in a job that makes you feel good? If you are living a life that feels just right then you are living a balanced life! Your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual elements are on an even plane, they are balanced. You see this meditative state allows one to be in charge of one's life, to function as one in body, mind and spirit. The whole is always greater than its parts and this means a healthy person. This means that when something is wrong with the physical being, not only must the practitioner be concerned with the physical symptoms or etiology of the disease, but also with all other aspects of the self.

You, as a leader in mental health, must seek to look at the world from a high place. In my area, a high hill, in this place a mountain peak, a place that is quiet and gives you a vantage point that is higher than the place you live. Looking from a higher altitude gives you a better perspective, you see more of your place. Getting to a higher place allows you to broaden your perspective, and in so doing raise your attitude to life because you have broadened your surroundings visually and broadened your understandings of your inner ecology, your identity. You, as leaders and policy makers, must ask for guidance from the Ellam Yua, the Spirit of the Universe. Meditate and fast at times you feel it is just right because if you are going to get an idea or a message of what needs to be done, you need to empty your mind to receive that message. The answer and cure lies within you. In the Yupiat world of acknowledging the Great Spirit are many masks used in the ceremonies. Some of these masks are of human beings. A few of these masks may have an eye painted on the human forehead. This represents the Ellam Iina, the Eye of the Universe, the Eye of Consciousness. It says to me that the Great Consciousness resides in my consciousness and that my consciousness resides in the Great Consciousness. Again, the answer and cure lies within each person.

You see, we as human beings think that the answers to mental problems lie within our ability to reason things out that is problem-solving. We think we can find the answers in our rational ability, and through textbooks and journals. These are very small segments of learning and doing, much lies outside there purview. There are some scientists that have come to study and write about "ecopsychology", learning from the models of Nature because of the mind in Nature. If we, as a Native people and a few Eurocentric scientists agree on this, then our surroundings, our outer ecology has much to do with our mind conditions. I may be oversimplifying it, but it seems reasonable in my mind. As you and I recognize, we live in disjointed ecological systems, I mean that there are many things, plants, animals, man-made technological techniques and methods, technological tools and gadgets that have been introduced that make for a jumbled-up place. If we have these new disjointed communities, does it not follow that there will be more disjointed/confused people? If their surroundings are trashed, then many of their minds are trashed also. One pervasive variable is that of advertising in the media. If these mind-benders determine what you should have to determine who you are, then where does the “me” begin, where does it end and where does the “other” start? These advertisements work against environmental and individual sanity. One begins to think that one needs this and that in order to become a complete person, to come to a satisfaction with one’s life and living. What happens when their expectations of reaching the “American Dream” is found to be beyond their reach? A troubled psyche, I would presume. So, perhaps, we should help those that have mental problems to try to understand their environment to relieve or mend their inability to cope with it, and to understand that to have little and need little is not bad at all. And, that it is not bad to be who they are with their own language, culture and ways of making sense of this world. Perhaps, we try to help these troubled people to "simply be". They have to be taught to be accountable for themselves.

Maybe, we do this by making the "home" much more simple and routine-driven. Again, simple because these people living in homes or institutions have to be disassociated from their family, language, culture and place. A double whamy, coming from an already disjointed environment to one that is more in disarray because of the technological design of the home and everything within and without it premised on standardization, linearity, efficiency and fragmentation. You would think that we no longer used technology, but that we are a part of it. Being objectified and separated from our own subsistence ways of survival and realities experienced by family, and community, the troubled become more dulled, impervious to things around them, and slow in thought and doing.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity. George Eliot in Middlemarch.

Talk about presenting a better possibility of posttraumatic stress syndrome in this strange and alien place. "I, alone, and a stranger, in a place of I never made" personified. Indeed, sad!

The leaders and workers must get away from the "I" to "we" and work for the good of the patients as human beings and provide a caring home. Perhaps, we do this by exploring the place and psychological worlds of the patient. We do this by taking into consideration the seasonal growing changes and cycles of the moon. This can be done by asking the ethnic group or community about traditional ways of treating people with emotional and psychological problems. What kinds of rituals and ceremonies were done and why, and ways to communicate with them, a practice of spiritual karate. Kicking out the evil spirits that have invaded the mind. This is getting the grassroots involvement in treatment of patients. How can we meld the modern pharmaceutical drugs and treatment with traditional love, care and communication with the troubled one. We must recognize that most of our psychopathological unbalances begin in early childhood. Our ontogeny, our coming into being, especially as a Native person, carries with it many hurts, fears and disassociations that are transmitted to us through our ancestors, language, stories, culture and our physical heritage. A lot of hurtful garbage leading to a spiritual depression.

Prehistoric man was, on the whole, a more peaceful, cooperative, unwarlike, unaggressive creature than we are, and we of the civilized world have gradually become more and more disoperative, more aggressive and hostile, and less and less cooperative where it matters, that is, human relations. The meaning we have put into the term “savage” is more correctly applicable to ourselves. Ashley Montagu, The Direction of Human Development.

For the board members and leaders, I, as a non-mental health worker, would recommend a few guidelines, I am sure that most have been already addressed:

a. establish a place- and cultural-based format of organization for mental health

b. establish a process of grassroots involvement

c. establish clear goals

d. establish a process for pooling ideas and strategies for treatment

e. establish a process of facilitating methods that work

f. establish a process for highlighting best practices

g. diversify board representation

h. establish life skills training for leaders from communities including students

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" becomes the dictum. We have become so proud of the inventiveness and productivity of knowledge of this century that we have forgotten where we belong in this world. We must strive to regain humility to recognize that we still have much to learn to protect and restore nature and restore ourselves to living in harmony with Mother Earth. We cannot restore our health as human beings unless we restore the health of Mother Earth. Thank you.

Science In A Yupiaq Fish Camp And School:
A Case Study of Ways of Knowing in a Yupiaq Eskimo Community

By Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley

Statement of the Problem

Recently, the U. S. Congress established a commission to work with Alaska State officials and Native people to “develop recommendations to the Congress and State of Alaska that would help assure that Alaska Natives have life opportunities comparable to other Americans, at the same time respecting their cultures, traditions, and special status” (Blatchford, 1990). Having relinquished key aspects of their traditional ways and spirituality in response to an array of physical, political, economic and educational pressures, Native people have experienced an existential and ontological discontinuity (Schumacher, 1977:17), with extensive social and psychological consequences.

The Western idea of a modem technological world has not been readily accepted by Alaska Native people. Many still opt to live in their own made-from-scratch houses, and they use many of their traditional technological tools in hunting and gathering, while adopting a limited number of modern devices. But, there are also many others for whom the home environment has changed so much that there is little to remind them of their Nativeness. They all retain one thing in common, however, and that is reliance on a subsistence lifestyle, which transcends their physical living conditions and technological conveniences. Although, non-Native people tend to view the subsistence way of life as being very simple, the Native practitioner sees it as highly complex. A subsistence oriented world view treats knowledge of the environment and each part’s interdependence with all other parts as a matter of survival, and as such, provides a complex model for maintaining and sustaining a balance with nature.

Traditional Native subsistence technology was based on the use of natural materials for making tools. These consisted of skin, bone, stone, and wood. This was a nature-based, nature-mediated technology. The technology included metallurgy, as nature-refined copper was often used for tool making. The tool-making process was integrated into daily life and allowed sufficient free time for contemplation of natural and mythical forces. Marshall Sahlins (1972), has referred to hunting and gathering people as the “original affluent people.” His research has indicated that traditionally, these people spent less than 40 hours per week foraging for food.

Unfortunately, for many Alaska Native people, this “affluence” is no longer a feature of their lifestyle.

Native people have come to realize that technological solutions as a road to ‘progress” is a myth. Labor-saving tools and consumer-oriented gadgets tend to create a dependency on external resources and expertise that can lead people down a pathway of cultural dislocation and destruction (Berger, 1976). There is a need to demystify and humanize science and technology, and the place where this can begin is in the teaching of science in school.

Science teaching need not be from the textbooks alone, nor espouse the scientific method as the only way to construct knowledge. Rather, what traditionally is understood through myths, collective thinking, experiential learning, intuition and the ontological presence of mind needed to guide, temper, and get things right, should also be included. The ontological discontinuity referred to earlier need not persist. The Native ways, rituals and sense of sacredness can be understood as outward expressions of a highly developed ecological mind set. According to Cajete (1986) Native ways represent an ecological mindset of sacredness, with ecological relationships and a constant “seeking of life.”

Students can be taught to become thinkers, inventors and creators, always mindful of environmental balances. Their awareness of Native and Western science perspectives for visualizing a world where harmony exists, and where there is comfort and security for everyone, could go far to instill the motivation needed to make a better world. Native students’ academic aversion to mathematics and sciences is often attributable to an alien school culture, rather than a lack of innate intelligence, ingenuity or problem-solving skills. The curricula, teaching methodologies and often the teacher training are based on a world view that does not always recognize the Native notion of an interdependent universe. Sioux Chief Luther Standing Bear has said:

... The old Lakota knew that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too (Nollman, 1990:3).

It is toward the (re)integration of the human and the natural, the Native and the Western worlds in the teaching of science that this study is directed. What is needed as a first step in this process is a study of/by Native people examining their values, practices, attitudes and views in relation to their traditional and contemporary ecological perspective. It is my intent to participate in and observe life in a Yupiaq Eskimo fish camp to identify the varied ways in which people incorporate traditional and Western scientific principles in their daily life, and determine how they have been able to reconcile the seemingly antithetical values reflected in each. Can Western scientific teachings and Yupiaq scientific practices be understood and taught through a common epistemological framework? That is the central question to which the case study will be addressed.

Review of Literature

The Random House dictionary defines “science” as “a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws.” If science is but a “branch” of knowledge, it implies that there are other branches as well that make up the knowledge tree. Mixed in with those other branches, with its own complementary “body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws” is the “scientific” view of the world constructed over millennia by Alaska Native people. There are many ways of making sense of the world around us, each branch with its own rules, laws and meanings that form a basis for carrying out the tasks of everyday life. Let us take a closer look at some of the characteristics of these different branches of the knowledge tree and examine what happens when they become intermingled.

Western science tends to emphasize compartmentalized knowledge (by disciplines) which is often decontextualized and taught in the detachment of a classroom or laboratory setting (Berger, 1977; Livingston, 1981; Franklin, 1990). Native people, on the other hand, have traditionally acquired their knowledge of the world around them through direct experience in the natural environment, whereby the particulars come to be understood in relation to the whole, and the “laws” are continually tested in the context of everyday survival. For a Native student imbued with a Native experiential/scientific perspective, the typical classroom approach to the teaching of Western science can present an impediment to learning, to the extent that it focuses on segmented knowledge without regard to how it relates to the surrounding universe.

Another potential interference to learning by the Native student is the domineering, manipulative aspect of western science and technology (Franklin, 1990; Capra, 1984, 1988; Deloria, 1990; Milbrath, 1989; Page, 1989; Rifkin, 1980), which is often contradictory to the Native’s view of who he is, what his place in the world is, and how he relates to it. Native people have learned to live in harmony with the earth for millennia by developing a complex integration of cultural values, traditions, spirituality, and economic base tied to the land. They have not supplanted natural plants and animals, and have acknowledged Nature’s supremacy through its natural forces and processes. They have acknowledged that Nature is dynamic, and concomitantly, that people and cultures must be also.

Western thought also differs from Native thought in its notion of competency. In Western terms, competency is based on predetermined ideas of what a person should know in a certain body of knowledge, which is then measured indirectly through various forms of tests (Franklin, 1990:29). Such an approach does not address whether that person is really capable of putting the knowledge into practice. In the traditional Native sense, competency had an unequivocal relationship to survival or extinction. You either had it, or you didn’t, and survival was the ultimate indicator.

Another possible problem for the young Native learner is the Western notion of scientific objectivity. The potential difficulties are pointed out in the following statement on scientific detachment by Schumacher (1977:52-3):

… We attain objectivity, but we fail to attain knowledge of the object as a whole. Only the ‘lowest,’ the most superficial, aspects of the object are accessible to the instruments we employ: everything that makes the object humanly interesting, meaningful and significant escapes us.

Western science and technology are more than ways of knowing, but also consist of particular practices and methods. According to Franklin, “The scientific method works best in circumstances in which the system studied can be truly isolated from its general context” (1990:39). This process of isolation is expanded upon by Nollman (1990:74) when he indicates that, “The objective viewpoint cannot perceive the context of the whole because the objectivists, themselves, insist upon utilizing only a part of their/our whole being.” Nollman goes on to say that this viewpoint places a perpetual buffer between our conscious thoughts and our “very important gut connection to nature.” One of the interests of the Western corporate world has been the natural resources found in the Arctic. In their desire to exploit and extract these resources, they have overwhelmed and displaced the people indigenous to the land. From a scientific “isolationist” perspective, the Native people are considered transmutable physical elements of the environment and objects that can be removed to a new village site, where they often become “human animals in a cultural zoo” (Hall, 1988:2 17). Already, there are several villages where affluent outsiders can fly in to view the Native in his “natural” habitat, which is demeaning to the people on display.

Another new phenomenon in the villages is pollution. Traditionally, everything that was used was recyclable and biodegradable. Now, the Native people are wallowing in garbage and sewage. Pollution is an ‘inevitable consequence of life at work,” but now, “There is only one pollution.. . people” (Lovelock, 1987:27, 122), and their desire to buy pre-packaged foods and gadgets. The educational and economic system have taught Native people to be consumers, often in the form of inappropriate products, including housing and complex technological tools and machines ill-suited to the Arctic. The cold and harsh environment makes many of these externally designed and overly sophisticated products last a relatively short period of time, though their frozen remains last forever. For instance, snow machines will operate an average of three winters then deteriorate very rapidly. This places an added burden on the owner for maintenance, oil and gas, and ultimate replacement. The villages are strewn with cannibalized and discarded machines. With all these cumulative environmental problems, Native views about the quality of life need to be re-assessed in modern times.

Native people are no exception when it comes to modern wants and needs. The numerous TV stations beamed to the villages by satellite present pseudo-realities for both young and old. They live torn between the desire to retain their traditional hunting and trapping practices, and the desire to obtain the modern advantages gained through exploitation of natural resources. However ambivalent Native people might be, “most people who are on the receiving end of offshore and Arctic oil operations. . . have greeted these enterprises with a comprehensive lack of enthusiasm, because they directly perceive the prohibitive social and environmental costs” (Lovins, 1977:4). Indeed, the syncopating lights of growth and development from the Western perspective can be mesmerizing, but Native people have come to realize that they are dealing with a perception of progress that is no longer appropriate for indigenous survival.

Traditionally, Alaska Native people developed a nature-based and nature-mediated technology to suit their needs, along with the needs of their environment and nature. As Natives have learned Western scientific and technological processes, it has been with an inclination toward ‘soft technology” (Lovins, 1977), which provides a means to temper Western technology and use it as a tool for adaptation to local culture and ecology. The focus of this “soft technology” can be to upgrade and update traditional skills, to develop tools that can be easily repaired, to be conservational and non-polluting in the use of renewable resources for energy and raw materials, and to fine-tune the subsistence lifestyle. In searching for examples of implementing soft technology, Harrison has offered the following as representative criteria for its use (1983):

1. improving an existing traditional technique

2. modifying a modern machine

3. inventing a new machine from scratch

4. finding a useful and economical Western antique

5. applying a bit of indigenous wisdom to the solution of a new problem

In the past, Native people tended to view formal education as a hindrance to their traditional ways, but now they must look at it in a different light. They must control education, and give it direction to accomplish the goals they set for it, strengthening their own culture while simultaneously embracing Western science as a second force that can help them maintain themselves with as much self-reliance and self-sufficiency as possible. They must learn to thrive in a tough environment, and they can make it easier and less harsh, first as humans, secondly as scientists, with a carefully developed technology. Soft technology is intended to help people become the producers of those things that are needed for human support and comfort.

The Western educational and scientific paradigm developed over the past several hundred years need not be dispensed with. However, a shift needs to be made toward a more holistic education in which a teacher-student-community collaborative approach is developed to address the needs of a fast-changing society (Hall, 1988:2 16; Capra, 1989:132). To achieve this, the formal educational system needs to reassess and redirect education to a holistic mindset, in which education is viewed as multi-disciplinary, multi-directional, and multi-sensory, with the total environment serving as the laboratory (Sivaraksa, 1989:103). The critical task is to find ways to help people, and, especially teachers, to begin to recognize (and re-cognize) that the earth is indivisible and that it must be understood as a whole. To do so can help the learning process of the Native student, who enters school with all the linguistic and intellectual tools of his/her culture at his/her command, but seldom is called upon to put them to full use in the classroom setting.

I have observed and taught in rural and urban classrooms in which science was taught from textbooks, using the scientific method, and using age-tested science experiments (Cajete, 1986). My own undergraduate science education was derived from textbooks, and laboratory manuals. These teaching/learning processes do not, however, take advantage of the students’ environment, or the environment’s ecological processes. Nor do they prepare the students to recognize a “Creative Force” flowing in and around them at all times. This removal of the mystical force from scientific processes has rendered a society which places primary credence and faith on observational and rational faculties of man. Once this happens, we have a society in which the quality of man and life diminishes, a society which no longer honors and reveres nature, but often misuses, abuses, and disrespects nature (Schumacher, 1977). One could argue, therefore, that our science education contributes to the decay of society with a concomitant diminishment of morality.

From the review of literature, it becomes apparent that there is a significant contrast between Western scientific and Native world views. The former is formulated to study and analyze objectively learned facts to predict and assert control over the forces of nature, while the latter is oriented toward the synthesis of information gathered from interaction with the natural and spiritual worlds so as to accommodate and live in harmony with natural principles. Native reciprocity with the natural and spiritual realms implies communication which perhaps must be re-learned by the Native, as it is now being learned by Western scientists:

The science of ecology, the study of the interactions between living things and their environments, circles back to the ancient wisdom found in the rich oral traditions of American Indian stories. Time and again the stories have said that all of the living and nonliving parts of the Earth are one and that people are apart of that wholeness. Today, ecological science agrees. (Caduto & Bruchac, 1989:5)

Research Design

I have chosen the Yupiaq Eskimo fish camp setting to explore a more holistic approach to science education. The summer fish camp season is a time of happiness, warm weather, and a place for orderly Yupiaq industry. It also presents a cornucopia of traditional and modern technologies. Although the Yupiaq people do not always have technical names for the natural processes involved, the annual fish camp routines reflect the most concentrated situation in which they use many sophisticated scientific principles in activities such as food preparation, catching and preserving of fish, reading river currents and tides, assessing weather and wind conditions, classifying plants, fishes, and animals, utilizing solar energy, and adapting to seasonal transformations. These principles are an inherent part of daily life in fish camp. In the natural context of the camp environment, Yupiaq people feel they are in the realm of science, the world of inquiry and the process of discovery. In order for the people to live in harmony with nature, they have to learn the skills to live with nature. The secrets of nature have to be learned for mutual nurturing and sustenance, and to develop a holistic world view of the universe (Murchie, 1981).

In the fish camp, the environment becomes the laboratory and thus, all teaching/learning is drawn from an ecological perspective. The sensory data that is collected in the mind is used to formulate conclusions based on values, perspective, philosophy of life, and relations to the world. Over thousands of years, the Yupiaq culture has established a way to make the world accessible to reasoned inquiry and discovery, including ponderous questions about what is real, what is truth, and what is good and beautiful. This knowledge flows and is channeled through Native science, art and practice of the sacred. The natural phenomena in the Native world are explained in terms of characteristics easily observable, or experiences involving a high degree of intuitive thought (Cornell, 1986).

The fish camp-based educational processes outlined above reflect many of the following goals and characteristics, which have been paraphrased from a document on the environment prepared by UNESCO in 1971:

1. apply and blend Native and modern science perspectives

2. practice effective application of the scientific processes in everyday life

3. practice flexibility in levels of thinking and foster effective thinking in everyday life

4. maintain and enhance essential ecological processes and life support systems by using complex scientific technology to develop soft technology in tune with nature

5. practice Native conservation for genetic diversity

6. sustain utilization of species and ecosystems

7. exercise creative writing and creative applications of imagination and visualization to make better the natural environment and enhance natural processes of food production

8. adapt to changing conditions through a blend of Native and modern science principles

9. sustain a network of collaborative thought and effort between disciplines

In an effort to gain sufficient insight into the Yupiaq understanding and practice of “science” to be able to formulate an approach to science education that incorporates the kinds of goals and principles outlined above, I will observe and document the behaviors and related thinking that are reflected in the day-to-day subsistence activities of the summer fish camp. These observations will then be juxtaposed against the ways in which science is taught to Yupiaq children in the local school, in an effort to identify points of similarity and difference, which can then serve as the basis for proposing a more integrative approach to the teaching of science for Native people.

Methodology

As a member of the Yupiaq society, I will be working from the inside as a participant-observer. I will become an active participant with the people at the fish camp, but with constant attention to overt as well as subtle uses of, and comments about traditional and modern tools and practices. I was raised by a Grandmother and experienced seasonal trips for various hunting and trapping activities at an early age. I was taught many of the Yupiaq values of respect for others and nature. I also have an undergraduate major and have taught in the biological sciences and so have an academic understanding of Western science and the scientific method with its emphasis on objectivity. However, my elementary, high school and college education convinced me for many years that modernity was the only way to go. It was only in the last two decades that I began to realize that I was living contrary to my upbringing as a Yupiaq. I have since been searching for a synthesis between the two ways of understanding the world.

The educational process needs to go beyond the limits of sciences which are built around bodies of knowledge that are restricted to objects of the earth. This so-called “objective knowledge”, which is based on factual observation of observable phenomena, is constricting to original thought. In Yupiaq thought there is a similar idea, which is translated as “seeing without feeling.” In Western thought, this way of knowing has the greatest value as being objective. According to Western thought, “subjective” knowledge is less reliable because it is not verifiable through the senses. The Yupiaq word, tangruarluku which means “to see with the mind’s eye”, transcends that which we can perceive with our endosomatic sensemakers, and illustrates how a Native perspective may provide a way of bridging the so-called mythical subjective world, and the objective scientific world. It is necessary, therefore, that both modes of inquiry and sense-making be incorporated in this study, to give credence to the range of phenomena that will need to be addressed from both the Yupiaq and the Western perspective.

Interaction, observations and interviews with villagers will reveal the cultural beliefs, artifacts, and inherent knowledge used in the fish camp. The process will include probing in appropriate cultural domains to try to tease out the subtle patterns and meanings of verbal and physical activities. How do the villagers understand scientific principles? Why do they carry out certain activities the way they do? Has past science education contributed to their knowing what to do and the skills needed to succeed in certain instances? How do the villagers pass on their knowledge and skills? How has their relationship to the life-giving ecological system changed? Are there any differences between the beliefs and practices of the older and the younger generations? It is through the pursuit of information that addresses these kinds of questions in a fish camp setting that an insight into the Yupiaq scientific view of the world will be obtained.

On the other hand, to get an idea of what and how the school is attempting to teach students in the sciences will require the close examination and content analysis of curricular materials, textbooks, and science manuals, as well as observation of and interviews with teachers. Having taught science for many years, I have a preconceived notion of what to expect, however, science curricula have changed during the years since I have been in the classroom, and circumstances can vary from one school to the next. So I will have to find out what kinds of scientific knowledge are being taught, how each succeeding grade is introduced to new scientific principles, what kinds of experiments and equipment are being utilized, and most importantly, how do the teachers and students view the relationship between school-taught and Yupiaq science.

Formal interviews with teachers will be conducted to find out how they use the textbooks and manuals, whether they have students relate science to their own environment, whether they make use of science projects and science fairs, to what extent local knowledgeable people are incorporated in the lessons, etc.. All these question and others that teachers, local people, and students bring up will give valuable information as to what goes on during the teaching of science in school. Open-ended, informal discussions will also be conducted to identify areas that are not anticipated in the formal interviews. A daily journal will be maintained at all times, and tapes will be used when permissible. Through these data gathering processes, appropriate information will be assembled to gain insight into the domains of science teaching, leaming and practice in the school and community.

Analysis

This section will deal with the analysis of data gathered from the two sources, the school and the fish camp, to determine how scientific principles are understood, applied, taught and learned in each setting. There likely will be differences in the way the knowledge and skills are passed on to young people in the two settings, so an attempt will be made to determine what might be learned about the teaching and learning of scientific knowledge and skills in each situation that can be used to put forward curriculum ideas that represent a synthesis between the two. All of this will then be written up in the form of a case study. Based upon the analysis and findings, recommendations will be made for strengthening science curricula in the schools, for Yupiaq students specifically, and for Native people more generally.

References

Berger, P. L. (1976). Pyramids of Sacrifice. New York: Anchor Books Edition.

Blatchford, Edgar (1990). AFN praises passage of Native policy commission legislation. The Tundra Drums. Bethel, Alaska.: 13(20):13.

Caduto, M. J. &. J. B. (1989). Keepers of the Earth. Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers.

Capra, F. (1983). The Turning Point. New York: Bantam Books.

Capra, F. (1984). The Tao of Physics (2nd ed.). New York: Bantam Books, Inc.

Capra, F. (1989). The new paradigm. Spirit for Change. London: Green Print.

Cole, K. C. (1986). Things Your Teacher Never Told You About Science. Kui Tatk. Boulder, CO.: Newsletter of the Native American Science Education Association, 2(2), Fall.

Cornell, E. A. (1986). Preparing Teachers to Teach Science. Kui Tatk, Newsletter of the Native American Science Education Association, 2(2), Fall.

Deloria, V., Jr. (1990). Traditional Technology. Winds of Change. Boulder: AISES, 5(2), Spring.

Franklin, U. (1990). The Real World of Technology. Toronto: CBC Enterprises.

Hall, S. (1988). The Fourth World The Heritage of the Arctic and Its Destruction. New York: Vintage Books.

Livingston, J. A. (1981). The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

Lovelock, J. E. (1987). Gaia. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lovins, A. B. (1977). Soft Energy Paths. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.

Sahlins, M. (1972). Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine Atherton, Inc.

Milbrath, L. W. (1989). Envisioning a Sustainable Society . Albany: State University of New York Press.

Murchie, S. (1981). Seven Mysteries of the Universe. New York: Knoph.

Nollman, J. (1990). Spiritual Ecology A Guide to Reconnecting with Nature. New York:

Bantam Books.

Page, M. (1989). The Tao of Power . London: Green Print.

Rifkin, J. (1980). Entropy . New York: Viking.

Schumacher, E. F. (1977). A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.

Sivaraksa, 5. (1989). The religion of consumerism. Spirit for Change. London: Green Print.

Wylie, P. (1968). Generation of Vipers (10th ed.). New York: Pocket Cardinal.

To Be or Not To Be Thrust Into Antiquity

by Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley

Alaska Native languages and cultures have been carefully crafted by our ancestors for millennia. They are nature-mediated through very carefully borrowed sounds from the natural world, to insert the speaker into the powers of place. The power of speech is such that the words have to be chosen carefully, because words that come from nature can be understood by nature. Thus, Alaska Native people become a part of nature, and the language they have spoken for millennia has helped to craft their reality.

Until recently, Alaska Native languages have been oral and have provided a powerful means of communication. Throughout traditional time Native children were immersed in the language from conception to death through song, storytelling, conversation, which conveyed respect for all things and a connection with the universe. The Native children learned their language first from their mother, then family, peers, Elders and by participating in activities with members of the community. Their play as children imitated the activities of the villagers. As they grew older, they participated in hunting, trapping, singing, dancing, drumming and other everyday activities that conveyed unequivocally their connection to everything in the universe. The symbolism in the arts and crafts of the people were very profound, artistic, beautiful, and instilled within the people the potential for power to make change.

We have been losing the Alaska Native languages and thus, our cultures, as the English language has become the dominant means of communication. "Once we were shape-shifters" writes Calvin Luther Martin (1992), through words engineered by our ancestors. We have become linguistically poor as we have lost the use of the ancient words that have power. Instead, we resort to profanity as we lose our ability to articulate our feelings about the things around us, and we rely on the languages of the computer, mathematics and the sciences as being the primary conveyors of truth. In so doing, we reduce our ability to be connected to our place and we divorce ourselves from nature, which has traditionally been our encyclopedia.

Why is it that, as Alaska Native people, we have so often fallen prey to the interests of the outsiders who have been imposing their own ways on us for the last one hundred plus years? We graciously allow strangers to come to our villagers to write, videotape, research and participate in our most spiritual activities. We explain over and over again what, how and why we do the things we do. How many times do we have to explain what subsistence means to us and other fundaments of Alaska Native life? They in turn write books, articles, produce videos, become lecturers and experts known for the knowledge shared with them by Alaska Native people. Some even make a few dollars from information we have shared with them. This is not to say that all outsiders have an ulterior motive when they seek to learn from us, because there are many who understand and want to relearn how to live kindly and softly with nature.

We are told that if Alaska Natives do not get our knowledge written down and archived, it will be lost. Is this really true? Do we have ancient memories? Are we in essence helping to write our own epitaphs by separating what we know from the context in which it is known and used? If Native people believe that our languages and our technologies come from nature, then their origin remains with us and we can continue to draw on it. There are several small tribes in other parts of the world that almost lost their languages but have regained them in a short period of time. Some have done it without the language being written down, but by making it once again the language of the family and community. This was always the custom of Alaska Native people.

I offer these reflections to provoke our thinking about what we should be doing to maintain our identities and nurture our well-being as Alaska Native people. As we go about writing, videotaping, telling stories, researching and recording our innermost thoughts using the modern technological marvels, let us pause and reflect on what we are doing. Our physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual needs must be brought into balance through the proper use of the nature-mediated languages of our ancestors. After all, "In the beginning was the spoken WORD!"

References:

Martin, C. L., 1992, In the Spirit of the Earth: Rethinking history and time. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Yupiaq Education Revisited: Alaskan Native Education: History and Adaptation in the New Millenium

By Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley

Nature as Metaphysic

For the Yupiaq people, culture, knowing and living are intricately interrelated. Living in a harsh environment requires a vast array of precise empirical knowledge to survive the many risks due to conditions such as unpredictable weather and marginal food availability. To avoid starvation they must employ a variety of survival strategies, including appropriate storage of foodstuffs that they can fall back on during the time of need. Their food gathering and storage must be efficient as well as effective. If this were not so, how could they possibly hope to survive? To help them achieve this balance, they have developed an outlook of nature as metaphysic.

Not only are humans endowed with consciousness, but so are all things of the environment. The Yupiaq people live in an aware world. Wherever they go they are amongst spirits of their ancestors, as well as those of the animals, plants, hills, winds, lakes and rivers. Their sense of sacredness is of a practical nature, not given to abstract deities and theological rationalization. Pragmatism is the theme of their sacred ways. The Ellam Yua., or Creative Force, is not given the same ultimate stature as the Biblical God. Because nature is their metaphysic, Yupiaq people are concerned with maintaining harmony in their own environment. The Creative Force is acknowledged and often given gratitude, though it is the immediacy of nature that is most important.

The Yupiaq people have many taboos, rituals, and ceremonies to observe and practice that poignantly signify a harmonious ecological orientation. They behave accordingly because of what their culture has taught as well as an abiding belief in what they and others have experienced first hand. There are mysteries of the world that to Yupiaq are unfathomable, such as the Ellam Yua, but these are accepted. Such mysteries keep them humble and ever mindful of the powers around them.

There were members of the Yupiaq community that transcended all human levels of knowledge. These were the shamans, the dreamers, and others who were receptive to nature's voices and intuitively deciphered a message which was passed on by myth, taboo, ritual, ceremony or other forms of extraordinary happening. The shamans were gifted to travel freely in the unseen world, and they often would return with new songs, taboos, rituals or ceremonies to teach. They were skillful with their knives and were able to reify their remembrances and impressions of the gift from a spirit with wood, bone, skin, feathers, and stone. These would become sacred objects to be used in special ceremonies. Amulets were also prescribed by the shamans to those requesting and willing to trade for them. These often consisted of animal parts and/or other pieces of earthly creations. Taboos were often conferred with the amulet or medicine bag, which was usually worn as a necklace or sewn somewhere on the parka. There are many stories of how they were used when encountering an antagonistic spirit, animal or another human being. This kind of healing is not new to the Yupiaq people. The patient's belief in its healing power most likely had a lot to do with the results.

The Yupiaq are told that if they take from another persons traps, the person may not know, but the Creative Force will see that people learn of their deeds and recognize the kind of person they really are. People may try to change a person's tendency for stealing by joking and embarrassing him or her in public. However, if there is no change, then he or she might be shunned by the community. Taking another's life without cause is considered a heinous crime with banishment from the village traditionally being the justice rendered.

The Yupiaq people were admonished to never do harm, abuse or even make fun of animals. Since Yupiaq people live in an aware world, the animals and everything else will always know. Several years ago, there was a news account of several walruses found dead on a beach with only their heads missing. The Fish and Wildlife managers lamented the fact that this was a wanton waste of meat and hides. One old Native man's comment to this was that it was unfortunate that it happened, and that the walruses had not been properly cared for. He concluded by saying that these animals would not be returning to earth. According to him, the misuse, abuse and disrespect shown the animals would cause the spirits not to return to earth to be born and renew their kind again. From a Yupiaq perspective, this is why certain plants and animals have gone into extinction, and many others are on the endangered species list.

Certain animals represent power, e. g., the bear, the wolf, raven, eagle and beaver. Their commonality is strength and a strong will to live, along with cleanliness and care of self. Each possesses certain characteristics which set them apart from all others: the bear with its strength, the wolf with its social organization, the raven with its ability to remain airborne for great lengths of time, and the eagle with its visual acuity. The oil gland of the beaver is used for amulets, as well as for medicinal purposes. If a person has a shortness of breath, they can chew on a small piece and swallow the juice, thus relieving the stressful feeling. It is also thought to be particularly strong against spirits, so that merely having it in the hand is enough to keep a spirit at bay.

When the Earth’s Crust was Thin

Stories and myths abound from Distant Time, when the earth's crust was thin, when it was easy for people and animals to communicate or transform from one to the other. Some tell of animals and birds wearing special parkas with hoods. If they needed to communicate with man, all they needed do was raise the hood, very much like taking off a mask. Lo and behold, there would be a human face underneath able to communicate in human language. This was an excellent way of learning about animals and how they wanted to be cared for once they gave themselves to the hunter. There is one important difference between human beings and animals. The animals seem to have not been given the knowledge of death. It is only the human who possesses this dubious knowledge. However, the Yupiaq person does not consider death the end, but rather a completion of a cycle which continues. As such, most have no fear of death.

The following story, told by William Oquilluk (1981), an Iñupiaq Eskimo from the Bering Strait area whose ways are very similar to the Yupiaq, provides an illustration of how observations of the characteristics of animals are integrated into the fabric of the Native mythology.

It is a story of "Two Brothers" living with their mother and father. They are young boys always roaming around their environment. One day the boys are walking amongst the trees when they spot a camp robber nest. The younger boy says to his brother that these birds always steal from the camps and that he will sharpen a stick and kill the young birds. This he does. He climbs the tree and as each bird opens its mouth, he thrusts the stick down their throats killing them. Finally, there is only one left and the older brother forces the younger boy down, thereby saving one bird. Meanwhile, the parents are flying around making frantic noises.

One winter, when the boys are hiking around they spot a rabbit. They give it chase. They get separated and are lost. Many animals help each boy during the year. They are invited to homes very often housing small people. They are housed and fed for a few days. When it is time for them to leave, they are told to go a certain distance before looking back. One time when leaving a home, they looked back and saw a beaver house with two beavers swimming about.

The younger brother ended up in a large community house with many couples living inside. He stayed with them many days. Finally, the eldest man said that he hasn't much time to live, and that the boy will have to leave. The wife tells him how he had killed her children, save one. Because one had been left alive, she would spare his life, but he would have to take the girl as his wife. The little human beings changed to a variety of birds, and left in pairs each singing its own special song. He turned to look at the girl. She had changed to a full sized human being. They departed and went to their camp which turned out to be quite close by.

The older brother is shown by others the direction to go home. He soon joined the other brother. They grew to a ripe old age, and eventually the older brother died followed closely by his younger brother. The latter slipped into another world and immediately saw his brother walking toward him. He could see that his brother had a cut on his lip. He noticed that he too had a similar cut. He told his brother that this was his punishment for killing those birds. They pondered the question of where they should go. The older loved the land, while the younger felt at home in the ocean. They decided that they would separate and go to the place of their liking. The older brother became a rabbit, the younger a seal. To this day they are classified together as they both have cleft lips and are brothers!

Mythology is an invaluable pedagogical tool which transcends time. As the storyteller talks, the Yupiaq listeners are thrust into the world of imagination. As the story unfolds, it becomes a part of their present. As you imagine and visualize in the mind's eye, how could you not become a part of it and it a part of you? There is no separation. The story and words contain the epistemological webbing; how is it we got to know these truths? The storyteller's inflections, play on words, and actions give special meaning to the listener. How the participants are to act and interact in the whole are clearly conveyed. To the outsider attempting to understand the meaning of the experience, it may appear to be merely a story, but to the insider it becomes reality leading to a spiritual orientation in accord with nature. This is quality knowledge whose end is happiness and a long life.

The Yupiaq people are admonished not to take themselves too seriously, but to laugh at themselves, with others, and make light of a lot of life's triumphs and tribulations. Joking is a necessary part of life. No matter how serious a ceremony, there will be joking and laughing interspersed between singing, dancing and moments of silence. Silence is embraced as a time for introspection and collective mindfulness for a greater and better life. Because of this collective mindfulness, the individual man or woman becomes greater as a provider or as a homemaker. And as rational thinking would have it, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.

Through the millenia of their existence, the Yupiaq people worked as stewards of their world and maintained a balance between their culture, technology and the environment around them. Their psychological satisfaction with their nature-mediated technology was on an even plane with their technological attainments. This allowed for nature as their metaphysic. However in the last sixty years or more there has appeared an ontological discontinuity. This is the period of time in which they have participated in the destructive acts of misuse, abuse and disrespect of the ecological processes which produce life in their environment. How did they come about making this destruction of life? What has happened to cause their social organization to disintegrate with concomitant decay of their morality and disillusionment with their way of life?

Yupiaq Lifeways

Traditionally, men and women had very defined roles. The man was the provider, the one to work with nature in hunting and trapping. It was a solitary effort - solitary in that he did many activities by himself, but in reality was always acccompanied by spirits and in close contact with the animals and earth. His role as provider was to learn as much as possible from his father, extended family members, elders and others, so as to be a success.

The woman, on the other hand, had to learn womanly duties from her mother, grandmother, and others. This included child rearing, food preparation, garment making, observing taboos having to do with menses and giving childbirth, and mindfully supporting her husband. The man's success as hunter was just as much her responsibility. They made up a team, complemented one another, and were very much equal in standing. The community members bondedness to each other was mutual, adding to their wholeness and vitality.

When a child was born, the name of a recently deceased person was anointed to the newborn by pouring a little water into the mouth or sometimes sprinkling onto the head. Thereafter, that was his/her name. The gender was unimportant. The relatives called the baby by that name and the kinship term associated with the person whose name was bestowed on the child. For example, if the deceased person's wife addressed the child, she would address it by name then follow it with "my husband". Thus a "new relative" was made whether blood related or not.

The traditional houses in which families lived were constructed of sod in a semi-subterranean fashion. A high, dry location was chosen, a circular hole dug down three to four feet in depth, and then a framework of driftwood was constructed. Sod was cut and carried to the site and placed on the wood frame with the vegetation covered side next to the wood. Sometimes grass was placed between to serve as a natural vapor barrier. An opening at the top was covered with a seal or walrus gut canopy. This was removed when a fire was made in the firepit for cooking or a fire bath. The house was a circular and domed structure with an enclosed entranceway much like the snow igloos of Northern Canada.

The structure of the Yupiaq sod house has been likened to the woman's reproductive system. The ceiling's name in the Yupiaq language means "the above covering" a term which is now used to mean "heaven." The skylight is likened to the umbilical cord leading to the Ellam Yua, the interior to the womb, and the tunnel-like entrance to the birth canal, or "the way to go out." In the old days, when a person died, he or she was never removed through the entranceway, but through the skylight. The body was lifted and passed through the opening to the place of interment. The act was very symbolic of the spirit's journey to the spiritual land. The body was then placed with knees to the chest and arms around the knees bound together at the wrists—a fetal position, signifying completion of the life cycle and readiness for reincarnation and renewal. The body was then covered with driftwood or rocks, or sometimes with wooden planks, a canoe or kayak overturned with the body inside.

The qasegiq, or community house, was mainly the domain of men and boys prior to puberty. This is where much of the storytelling, teaching of arts and crafts, tests of skill and strength, and learning of rituals and ceremonies took place. It was the site of reintegration and renewal of spirit and where balancing occurred. When special ceremonies were conducted, participants from other villages were invited. The whole community and visitors from invited communities all participated and enjoyed the generosity of the host village. They renewed acquaintances and made new friendships, acknowledged the unseen greater powers, paid respects to their ancestors, celebrated the animal spirits, and even made a few marriage arrangements. The ceremonies reaffirmed the truths that the people chose to live by.

Much of man's and woman's activities were patterned to the landscape. For those living on the upper riverine systems, the activities were bound to catching and perserving fish and hunting for land animals. Those on the coast hunted sea mammals, fish and seasonal birds and eggs. The technological tools and implements were made from natural resources most abundant in their location, or were gained in trade from other areas. The materials consisted of wood, bone, stone and skin, or sometimes nature-refined copper. They may have intuitively known that their technology would be restricted to unrefined natural resources, and that this would conform to their nature-adaptive orientation.

They may have observed themselves and others aging, tools wearing out, rivers getting shallow and changing course, trails where nothing grew, and that death and decay occured everywhere. When a certain amount of matter and energy are no longer in usable state, some degradation is inevitable. Were they to refine natural resources, they would speed up the entropic process.

A few years ago, there was an old Native man on the Kobuk River speaking about the tundra fires raging about the state. He said that the earth is like a human being; it is aging, its skin is drying and greying. Therefore the fires never burn themselves out, rather they have to have firefighters or heavy rains put them out. He recalled fires years ago that naturally burned themselves out because of lush greenery and moisture. He talked of the earth as a living being, aging, decaying, and perhaps, needing to be renewed. The Creative Force has not the patience nor compassion to accept a people that defile and destroy, and will take the shortest route to heal a festering sore.

Consequences of Adaptation

The encroachment of Western civilization in the Yupiaq world changed a people that did not seek changing. The Yupiaq peoplesí systems of education, governance, spirituality, economy, being and behavior were very much in conformity with their philosophy of life and provided for harmonious living. The people were satisfied with the quality of their life and felt that their technology was in accord with it. The culture- and nature-mediated technology was geared to a sustainable level of self-sufficiency.

The people in general were sufficiently content with their lifestyle that they did not readily accept Eurocentric education and religions when the first envoys of the dominant society set foot in their land. Eurocentric knowledge and technological might did not bring the Yupiaq people to compliance—rather it was the incomprehensible diseases that decimated the people. A great number of elders, mothers and/or fathers, shamans and children succumbed to these new diseases. Whole villages were wiped out. The missionaries began to open orphanages and schools for the newly dislocated exiles in their own land. A hospital was located on the Kuskokwim river near Akiak and the Moravian Church established a "Childrenís Home" a short distance up river. The Federal Bureau of Education established "contract schools" with religious organizations. Money was paid to these organizations to establish schools and pay for the missionary teachers. The children were taught a new language (English) along with new knowledge and skills to become servants to the newcomersí needs and as laborers for newly established businesses. The Compulsory School Attendance Law was enacted, requiring families to remain in one location for many months of the year, thus ending the Native peoplesí practice of moving from place to place according to the seasons and migration patterns. The restrictive law initiated a twelve-year sentence given all Native children to attend school. Today, that sentence has increased to thirteen, including kindergarten. This has greatly reduced the freedom of people to be who they are, to learn traditional values and to living in harmony with their environment. It has meant that the families and children no longer experience the great freedom of earlier times.

The schools do not require that the Yupaiq children learn their own languages and lifeways, but rather they are expected to learn a foreign language and the related humanities and sciences. The majority of teachers are from the outside world and have little or no knowledge of the people with whom they are going to be working. To the original people of the land, these are an immigrant people with a different way of being, thinking, behaving and doing from the Yupiaq. Few teachers recognize that the indigenous Yupiaq are not like other European ethnic groups, such as the Irish, French, or Italians, who have chosen to leave their homeland. By not teaching the Yupiaq youngsters their own language and way of doings things, the classroom teachers are telling them that their language, knowledge and skills are of little importance. The students begin to think of themselves as being less than other people. After all, they are expected to learn through a language other than their own, to learn values that are in conflict with their own, and to learn a "better" way of seeing and doing things. They are taught the "American Dream" which, in their case, is largely unattainable, without leaving behind who they are.

The messages from the school, the media and other manifestations of Eurocentric society present Yupiaq students with an unreal picture of the outside world, as well as a distorted view of their own, which leads to a great deal of confusion for students over who they are and where they fit in the world. This loss of Yupiaq identity leads to guilt and shame at being Yupiaq. The resultant feelings of hurt, grief and pain are locked in the mind to emerge as depression and apathy, which is further reinforced by the fear of failure in school, by ridicule from non-Natives, and by the loss of their spirituality. There are many contributing factors as to why Native children do not excel in school. I advance the following as a possible variable. I will do this by telling you a Yupiaq story:

Aka tamani, ellam kainga mamkitellrani, In distant time, when the earth's crust was thin, is a crane flying around looking for a likely place to eat. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, the tundra is warming. The crane decides to check out the weather. He begins to fly in a circle. Each time he completes the circle,, he gains altitude. He looks at earth from a very high altitude. He then decides to descend and look for food. He flies over a river and sights a skin boat with Yupiat in it slowly paddling down the river. He continues his flight and sees a lake. He flies to to it, and finds many kinds of berries. He is very hungry.

He lands on the river bank. He contemplates going back to the tundra to eat berries, but his mind cannot forget the Yupiat coming down the river. He knows that he could be hunted. He must think of a way to warn him when the people approach. He sits there and thinks. He finally decides that he will use his eyes as sentries. He removes his eyes and puts them on a log. He instructs the eyes by telling them, "Now when you see people coming down the river, you warn me. I will come down and get you and fly off."

After telling them so, he goes back to the tundra and starts to eat berries. Soon he hears his eyes shout, "Crane, crane, there are people coming down the river!" He hurries down, finds his eyes and plucks them back in the sockets. He looks. There is only a log drifting down the river. The branches must have resembled people. He gets upset and says to his eyes, "Now you be very careful and make sure they are people before you call for me." He goes back to the tundra and eats. Soon, he hears his eyes calling him, "Crane, crane, there is a boat with people in it coming down the river. Come quick!" He hurries down to the log and picks up his eyes and looks. There is only a chunk of tundra drifting down. Tufts of grass move up and down with movements of the clump of tundra.

"Now, look eyes you have made a second mistake. Look very carefully before you call for me. I'm going back to eat some more berries."

Soon afterward, the eyes call, "Crane, crane, people are coming down the river in a boat." This time the crane does not heed the call. He is thinking, "Well, I suppose they see something else that might resemble a boat and people. This time I won't respond." He continues to eat. Soon the eyes call, "Crane, crane, the people are almost upon us. Come quick." He does not answer.

Some time elapses, then he hears the eyes calling from a distance, "Crane, crane, the people have us, and their taking us down the river."

The crane runs down to the riverbank and finds the log. He feels around, but there are no eyes. He sits down and thinks, "What am I going to do for eyes?" After much thought and consternation at not being able to see, he ambles back to the tundra. A thought occurs to him, "Why not try berries for eyes?" With that he finds blackberries. He plops them into his eye sockets. Lo and behold, he sees, but the world is different shades of black and grey. This can't be, so, he disposes of the blackberries. He finds salmonberries, and tries them. But the world is orange with its color variations and does not look right. So, he gets rid of them. He tries cranberries, but again the world is not the right color. It shows a place of red hues.

Finally, he tries blueberries. This time, the skies are blue, the tundra is green and varied in color, the clouds are white. Whew, these are to be his eyes. And, that is how the crane got BLUE eyes.

This is very mythical (as defined by Joseph Campbell) and magical. The myth is an analogical way of relating to their environment; it reflects the human minds response to the world; it has to do with understanding; and it tells them that we humans have the heavy load of intelligence and responsibility to have a beautiful world to inspire them; and it is healing. The Yupiat people accepted this on faith because of the need to know and understand. To them, it made beautiful sense. If these people believe in a worldview that includes a language, an ecosophy, epistemology, and ecopsychology all contingent on Nature, so why should the things of Nature not be understandable and interchangeable. All have a spirit therefore a consciousness, an awareness of the world around them. So, the eyes are able to communicate, perhaps, not verbally but maybe through unsaid words. To the Yupiat listening not only with the ears but with the mind and heart were essential to become aware of patterns of events that natural laws describe. The sun will rise and descend each day, the earth will continue to revolve around the sun, the spruce seeds will germinate, and so forth. These recurring phenomena will continue to occur in a given way. We accept these on faith that life is science.

Case in point is the crane flying in circles and ascending. The Yupiat knew that the tundra warms under the sun. This becomes visible as one looks out across the tundra. One can see a disturbance over the tundra, heat waves rising. They know the scientific principle that hot air rises. This is the principle that the crane is using to get high into the air to look around. Is he not a scientist? Nature is science, science is nature.

The Eurocentric scientists tell us that a gene or a combination thereof will produce an eye. After seeing this happen time and again, we accept on faith. We will never understand the creative design behind the genetic mechanism for producing the eye, just as we will never know what creative forces or what entity started the physical laws into motion to bring about the "big bang". The scientific laws of nature merely explain or describe what physicists, astronomers, astrophysicists and others have observed. The preconditions leading to this phenomenon has not been seen and are unimaginable. The Yupiat accept that which is unknowable, uncontrollable and immeasurable.

The Eurocentric scientists tell us many things, such as that there are particles in the atom that are so small that no one will ever be able to see. They exist only in mathematical statistics. But, we as a people accept these on faith. Do mathematics and physics really exist in Nature, or are they merely constructs of the human rational mind to try to make sense of this world? The important aspect to consider is that the modern creative scientist only deals with the physical and intellectual essences, in other words the outer ecology. In addition, the modern scientist makes theories based on sometimes limited facts, and these theories are made to fit their constructed technocratic societies. They do NOT necessarily fit reality. If these socio-politico-economics and scientific theories do not describe reality, they most certainly will not work in tribal societies because they are transrational. Perceptions can be far removed from what is real, and in Yupiaq thought are incomplete and often erroneous knowledge. This fragmentary approach disassociates them from the whole. In trying to understand the parts to understand the whole, and their scientific methods skew their way of looking at things. Their assumptions and expectations muddle their efforts to see things as they really are. The Native creative mythology deals with the whole ñ physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual of inner and outer ecologies. The Native person realizes that he/she is a microsm of the whole, the universe. Therein lies the ultimate difference between the two.

Another problem is that the scientistís own identity remains a mystery. They try to control nature for narrow dehumanizing purposes. They invent antibiotics and weapons of mass destruction. Their lack of self knowledge leads itself to nature keeping its secrets when we most need to let the book of Nature speak for itself.

The above Yupiaq story is a creative mythology of our ancestors. But is not the physicist who creates the statistics of unseen particles a creative mythologist? Is not the genetic microbiologist who determines what gene(s) cause alzeheimerís a creative mythologist? Is not the microbiologist who creates a clone of a dog, not a creative mythologist? This latter thrusts me into the technomechanistic world whereby things discovered are rendered into useful tools and gadgets, such as the 747 jet, the snow machine, outboard motor, cloning living things, antibiotics, flouride toothpaste, skyscraper buildings, and plastic raincoat. All are intensive in the use of natural resources and energy. They do not consider that the natural resources and energy sources of Mother Earth are finite, but the ultimate is to gain control over Nature and manipulate it for purposes of humankind. Supposedly, in the Eurocentric eyes, technology will produce more food, energy and natural resources when they are used up. "Technology is the answer! (But what was the question?)" is a quote from Amory Lovins. Often, the industrial leaders are mainly concerned about financial gains which are driven by greed and ambition. Technological products and inventions are improved means to an often foggy or meaningless end. When a product such as a talking doll, cellular phone, new material for clothing are made, it does not change a small segment of life, but all of life. Psychological and economic change are impossible to measure, just as bad and evil cannot be quantified. Because of this technocracy has no conscience.

Mathematics, and the disciplines of science have there own languages and areas of expertise. Each are isolated from the other so that there is no understanding of interrelationships and interconnectedness of all phenomena of this universe. In fact, each area of study has its own contrived language which make disassociation with other disciplines and Nature easy. In these fields of study are an abundance of well funded research projects generating rampant information and technological devices. But, what do these means lead to? Surely, not to abundance of natural resources, natural beauty, and diversity, but, maybe, to natural degradation and poverty and confusion not only of humans but creatures too. Our educaton skews our view of reality because of expectations and assumptions it produces as to what it should be.

I now delve into the Yupiat ways of knowing and being in harmony with Mother Earth. I have enclosed a diagram of a tetrahedral metaphor of the Alaska Native worldview.

I have drawn a circle representing the universe or circle of life. The circle represents togetherness which has no beginning and no end. On this circle are represented the human, natural and spiritual worlds. There are two way arrows between them as well as to the worldview at the apex of the tetrahedral. These two way arrows depict communications between all these functions to maintain balance. The Yupiat say Yuluni pitallkertugluni , "Living a life that feels just right". One has to be in constant communications with each of the realms to know that one is in balance. If the feeling is that something is wrong then one must be able to check to see what might be the cause for unease or dis-ease. If the feeling of being just right comes instinctively and this feeling permeates your whole being, then you have attained balance. This means that one does not question the other functions intellectually, but that one merges spiritually and emotionally with the others. The circle brings all into one mind. In the Yupiat thought world, everything of Mother Earth possesses a spirit. This spirit is consciousness, an awareness. So the wind, river, rabbit, amoeba, star, lily, and so forth possess a spirit. The human consciousness with its ability to merge into one with all consciousnesses of this world produce the holotropic mind. The holistic mind is given to the nurturance of health, and an environmental ethic.

Thus, if all possess a spirit/soul, then all possess consciousness and the power that it gives to its physical counterpart. It allows the Native person to have the ability to have the aid of the spirit to do extraordinary feats of righting an unbalanced individual psyche, community disease, or loss of communication with the spiritual and natural world through irreverence toward beings of Nature. Harry Robinson (Robinson, 1992) calls this nature power, the life-sustaining spirituality. Dr. Grof refers to "power animals" (Grof, 1993) which gives its possessor the power to communicate with them, adopting aspects of their wisdom or power, and re-establishing links with them when the connection has been lost through negligence or lack of reverence, or by offending either the animal spirits or one of the greater spirits of the natural world. These are not available through Eurocentric scientific research methods but only through the ancient art of shamanism or Nature thought. From this you can see that when we rely on Eurocentric means of research, it is a limiting factor, and this is what our institutions of higher learning espouse and teach. All areas of social and scientific research teach one way of trying to learn and understand phenomena. Our technological and scientific training imprison the students minds to its understandings much to the detriment of the learners who enter the mainstream Eurocentric world to become its unerring members of progress and development.

The Alaska Native needed to take lives of animals to live. To give honor, respect, dignity and reciprocation with the animals whose lives were taken, the Native people conceived and put into practice many rituals and ceremonies to communicate with the animal and spiritual beings. These are corroborated through the Alaska Native mythology which are manifestations of fundamental organizing principles that exist within the cosmos, affecting all our lives (Grof, 1993). It then behooves the Alaska Native person to leave something behind such as a piece of dry fish when getting mouse food from the tundra. The mouse food is gathered in the early fall so that the mouse and its family will have opportunity to collect more food for the winter. The seal when caught is given a drink of water so that its spirit will not be thirsty when it travels to the animal spiritual kingdom. This is done to show respect to the animal for having shared and given its life to the hunter. Medicinal plants are gathered respectfully knowing full well its power to heal. It is also to recognize that these were given freely by Nature and that requires that we share these freely. The Alaska Native person is aware that if we do not use these gifts of Nature regularly, mindfully and respectfully, they will begin to diminish through disuse or misuse. Earth, air, water, fire and spirit must always be in balance. Its elements and creatures have an important niche to play in the ecological system. With this concept in mind, it then requires that we carefully examine the lifestyles and technology that is extant in this world. Our lifestyles have become materialistic and given to technological devices and gadgets galore that are not geared to sustainability. Our modern cities with their network of buildings, transportation, communications, goods and services distribution centers are destructive and given to conformity. Likewise, the studies of natural resources are given to conformity. They are approached in a fragmentary way such as an expert in harbor seals does not know what the expert in herring fish is doing or has discovered. This type research is geared for measuring and objectifying the species studied for commercial purposes and not for sustaining Mother Earth.

In the Eurocentric world of science and technology exist many alternative approaches that are nature-friendly and sustainable. They await the time when the global societies evolve from consumerism and materialism to ones that are oriented to conservation and regeneration. As Alaska Native people and other indigenous societies, we have much to share with the modern world. I believe, it is much more difficult to live in tune with and in concert with Mother Earth than it is to plunder earth, air, fire, water and spirit using the sciences and there offspring the technologies as tools of destruction. With our realization that Eurocentric mathematics and sciences and the resulting technomechanistic inventions impact and change our ways of thinking and present new tools to think with, including the computer and other means of communications. These modern inventions and thinking are inimical to living in nature, with nature, and being of nature. It behooves us as indigenous and minority peoples to learn both ways of knowing and doing, so that we can begin to develop a caring consciousness and a technology that is kind to our being as humans, to the spiritual and the natural.

The question now is: How do we counteract the depression, hopelessness and despair that derive from the unfulfilled promises of the modern world, and what role can schooling and education play in this effort? To address this question, it will be necessary to take a closer look at how traditional education and Eurocentric schooling have fit into the lives of the Yupiaq people.

Learning From Nature

It is through direct interaction with the environment that the Yupiaq people learn. What they learn is mediated by their cultural cognitive map. The map consists of those "truths" that have been proven over a long period of time. As the Yupiaq people interact with nature, they carefully observe to find pattern or order where there might otherwise appear to be chaos. The Yupiaq peoples' empirical knowledge of their environment has to be general and specific at the same time. During their hunting trips into the tundra or on the ocean in the winter, they must have precise knowledge of the snow and ice conditions, so over many years of experience and observation they have classified snow and ice with terms having very specific meanings. For example, there are at least thirty-seven terms for ice, having to do with seasons, weather conditions, solar energy transformations, currents, and rapid changes in wind direction and velocity. To the Yupiaq people, it is a matter of survival. This knowledge is passed down from generation to generation by example, by showing, and by telling with stories to reinforce the importance of knowing about the varying conditions. This comprises the rational side of the Yupiaq people.

The rational mind has the ability to see and store many bits of observed information, which can then be mulled over and shared with others for more ideas of what it may mean. This may evolve into a tentative assumption of how and why something is the way it is. Being self-aware of the subconscious and intuition, the Yupiaq people let it play in their minds until a direction or answer evolves. They observe nature's indicators and come to a tentative supposition, followed by testing with further observation of variables that may affect the conclusion. They know that nature is dynamic and they have to change with it. Thus their conduct of life changes with nature. They pass on the truths to the next generation, knowing fully well changes in interpretation will occur, but that certain of their values, such as caring, sharing, cooperation, harmony and interconnectedness with the created whole of their environment, will continue. This then validates and gives dignity to their existence.

One cannot be conscious of the world without first being aware of oneself. To know who you are, what your place in the world is and that you are to strive to seek life is what self-awareness is all about. It is the highest level of human knowledge, to know oneself so intimately that you are not afraid to tell others of life, and to help those that need help with compassion without being dragged down by the troubles of those being helped. Knowledge of oneself is power, and you acquire it by looking into yourself to see what strengths and weaknesses you have. You accomplish this through looking at your own reactions to everyday situations, both good and bad.

To achieve a secure sense of oneself involves meditation, visualization, intuition, and tempering all thoughts and actions with the "heart," which is on a higher plane than knowledge of the mind. "Heart" can best be explained by giving examples: to give freely of oneself to help a person with personal problems; to bring a little bird home with a broken leg and care for it to restore its health; to come upon a moose mired in soft snow and shovel the snow away to free it; to be motivated by kindness and care—these all involve the exercise of heart. You can recognize people with heart by the respect shown them by others through kind words, inclusion in community activities, and acceptance as a stable and common-sensical member of the community.

The Yupiaq's careful and acute observational ability taught them many years ago the presence of a Creative Force. They saw birth and death in the human, and in nature. This Creative Force flowed through everything—the years, months, days, rivers, ligthening and thunder, plants, animals, and earth. They were awed by the creative process. They studied, they connected, and nature became their metaphysic. It gave them empirical knowledge. Products of nature extended to them ideas for developing their technology. The spider web provided the idea for the net; the snowshoe hare's feet and tracks, their snowshoes; the mouse's chamber lined with grass, their houses; the moon's phases, their calendar; the Big Dipper and the North Star, their timepiece at night; wind directions, their indicators of weather; flint and slate, their cutlery. Certain plants and herbs gave them their healing powers and they discovered that certain living things were adapted to live in certain areas, while others were able to make physical adjustments through changes in coloration, forming a heavier coat for winter, hibernation, estivation, etc., all under trying conditions. They noticed change across time and conditions, and they recognized that they too would have to change with time and conditions to survive.

It was meaningless for Yupiaq to count, measure and weigh, for their wisdom transcended the quantification of things to recognize a qualitative level whereby the spiritual, natural and human worlds were inextricably interconnected. This was accomplished through the Creative Force having endowed all earthly things with spirits, which meant that they would have to deal with all things being alive and aware. Having a Raven as creator of man and woman and everything else ensured that humans would never be superior to the other elements of creation. Each being endowed with a spirit signified that it possessed innate survival skills. It had the will to live, propagate, and care for itself, thus the need to respect everything and to have taboos, rituals, and ceremonies to keep the three realms in balance.

Nature's indicators and voices give much knowledge for making a living, but the intuitive and spiritual knowledge gives wisdom to make a life. Therein lies the strength and tenacity with which the Yupiaq people continue to maintain their identity, despite assaults on the philosophical, epistemological, ontological, economical and technological fronts. Their template has certainly eroded, but the continuity of their ways to comfort and create harmony persists. As long as the Yupiaq peoples' spirituality is intact, they will withstand.

A Yupiaq Educational System

If the Yupiaq people are to really exercise the option of educational control it will require that the schools become Yupiaq controlled, Yupiaq administered, and Yupiaq in practice. Outsiders have to realize that outsiders' control, and the resulting forms of curricula and teaching are not well synchronized to Native consciousness. The Yupiaq people have not been dehumanized to the level that they are unable to devise and implement their own programs to release them from the clutches of poverity and self-degradation. Why should someone from the outside come in with foreign values and forms of consciousness and impose them upon another? The people know their reality far better than anyone else. The Eurocentric models of education and progress have not been able to bring to fruition their promises, so they must acquiesce in their "cognitive imperialism" and allow the Yupiaq people an opportunity to plan and work for their own destiny.

It is for the Yupiaq people to strive for an educational system which recognizes their language and their culture, including their methods of doing science, by which they have learned from their environment and have lived in harmony with it. They do not have to become someone else to become members of the global society, but can continue to be their own people. Yupiaq spiritual values are still applicable today because they are nature-based. Yupiaq consciousness has enabled them to be survivors for many thousands of years up through the 20th century. This survival continues as Yupiaq values, beliefs, practices, and problem-solving strategies are modified and adapted to fit contemporary political, educational, economic, social and religious institutions. Doing this allows the Yupiaq infrastructure to expand out from the village to encompass institutions such as Native corporations, schools and churches. The values embedded in these modern institutions are often in conflict with the Yupiaq, so a blending of traditional and modern values becomes necessary.

As Yupiaq people assert greater influence on the educational system, there will begin to emerge a Yupiaq educational philosophy and principles which give cultural and cognitive respect to the Yupiaq learner. Formal schooling can be coupled to the community in such a way that the natural learning that is already taking place can be validated in the same way as the formal learning which occurs in the school. Students can first learn their language, learn about themselves, learn values of their society, and then begin to branch out to the rest of the world. They may later make a choice as to what they want to do and where to live. Given such a foundation, they can fearlessly enter any world of their choice, secure in their identity, their abilities, and with dignity as human beings.

There is a crying need for healing among the Alaska Native people. One desideratum of this process is the need for Alaska Native people to retain their unique Native identities. This is best done through the use of the Native language because it thrusts them into the thought world of their ancestors and their ways of apprehending and comprehending their world. In the use of the Native language, the students begin to appreciate the richness and complexity of their philosophical and spiritual worldviews. Thus, the need for Native languages to be the foundation upon which the camps rest. The camps must also take place in all the seasons with the Native elders being the prime movers. The Native language description of traditional activities best convey the relationships between a Native concept and practice.

The bridging camp must not only include Native languages and practices but also Eurocentric scientific concepts and practices. All daily activities must be coordinated to effectively and efficiently teach and validate both thought worlds. The bridging camps must not overlook the Eurocentric mathematics and scientific concepts. The students have to have a keen understanding of science and research as many of there findings corroborate Native observations and also show why Mother Earth is suffering. Many research activities may be for the sake of science or research, but they do show globally stressed arenas. This makes it absolutely necessary that they learn Eurocentric concepts as well as their own ways of recongnizing patterns, symbols, estimation/intuitive measurement, and ways of keen observation of place. The Native students have to realize that our ways of measuring and knowing are identity-building processes. Native students can then pursue careers in mathematics and the sciences but buttressed in a Nature-way worldview giving them a kind and polite disposition to the world.

The following are merely suggesions and may be revised to suit your own situation and needs. Three types of Alaska Native camps are described for our needs. The fourth are the AISES camps that are geared for the Eurocentric world.

Immersion camp: students who have a good command of the Native language or dialect of a particular region.

•all activities are done in the Native language only and addresses things done to make a life and a living;

•all planning and implementation always includes Native elders

•all activities are explained by elders and other knowledgeable Native people explaining what and why things are done the way they are for cultural adaptability and survival

•use of plants and animals, times for harvesting, how and why certain rules are followed to ensure continuation of species; explain the traditional preparation and preservation techniques; explain how the process contributes to natural diversity and cultural adaptability

•medicinal plants there use and how they have been preordained by the Ellam Yua to have power to heal certain diseases; harvesting process, preparation, preservation, how to use being mindful of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual inclinations of the person; how does it contribute to natural diversity and cultural adaptability

•explore the Nature-mediated technology of the Alaska Native people—materials, preparation methods, explanations of why certain parts of materials are used, how the idea came about, function of parts, use and care of the item; does it have to be unrefined natural resources and why?, biodegradable, spiritual aspects, how does it contribute to natural diversity and cultural sustainability and adaptability

•knowing the natural sensemakers of Nature for weather, seasons, and flora and fauna

•knowing time, its measurement

•finding direction using Nature and sometimes stars

•using song, dance and drumming for transmission of culture, especially its spiritual aspect; bring to a realization that everything that a Native person does is a form of prayer and paying homage to the Ellam Yua or whatever name a tribe has for the Great Being

•use mythology and stories for value creation and teaching what it means to be human, "the entire process must be value-creating and give a cultural orientation—an identity"

•live off the land as much as possible using techniques and technology traditionally used

•the scheduling must be flexible and determined by the elders to do things when it feels right

Language development camp: students who have little or no understanding of the Native language, or have little or no speaking ability. The process is best determined by the elders and teachers. But, it would seem logical to start with the Native language being used with English interpretations, then progressing to an hour or two in which only the Native language is used. The last week may be all in the Native language. Otherwise all of the above apply.

Bridging camp: adding from the Eurocentric viewpoint to the above

a)All or most of the above activities apply. All activities are coordinated to best bear understanding. The tradition activities are not separate activities from Eurocentric mathematics and sciences but are planned to be compatible with one another.

b)determine the most used Eurocentric scientific terms and coin Native words for those words with help from elders and students

c)in using Eurocetric science knowledge and theories determine whether that knowledge will add to or detract from one's Nativeness

d)determine whether that Eurocentric knowledge is useful and applicable in place or is it just show 'n tell/extraneous knowledge

e)use traditional estimation/intuitive measurement, recognition of pattern and symmetry without mathematical equations to confuse the issue—the universe is not all numbers

f)use computers and other technological tools sparingly, "our memories are becoming obsolete"

g)does adding this Eurocentric knowledge to the traditional enhance or detract from natural diversity and cultural adaptability

h)does adding these technological gadgets to the camp add to environmental and mental pollution

i)does it produce the value of cooperation and harmony or competition and individualism

j)in what to include in the camp from the modern world, the planners and implementers should always have the values in front of them "for guidance"

To make the changes indicated requires a teamwork effort between the elders, parents, younger community members and tribal leaders. The elders have heard statements made that life in these modern days is much easier. They say that this is true only from the material point of view. It is easy to buy nets, traps, refrigerators, microwaves, snow machines, outboard motors, and so forth. It is easy for them to get general assistance and other social service monies to buy their needs. But, the elders say that there are hidden costs attached to these material benefits. They are taking part in the exploitation and control of natural resources with a concomitant development of personal avarice and ambition, making them more like the white man. Along with this change is pain and suffering due to conflicts with fellow Yupiaq people. The money will not flow forever, and what will the Yupiaq people do then, if they loose their language, natural knowledge, and their hunting, trapping and gathering skills. The elders say they are loosing the knowledge and skills needed for survival in a fast changing world.

A Yupiaq Curriculum

The educational process must begin with the consciousness extant in each Yupiaq location. The school should not be compartmentalized into subject areas, but should strive for the care and nurturing of skills such as communication (in their own language and English), decision-making (through the use of common sense), analytical and critical thinking, and recognizing that there are many different ways of doing things. Teachers should use the community and environment as sources of instruction and learning. Elders should be included often to share their life experiences and observations. Schools are usually bereft of mnemonics to the communities' Yupiaqness. Artifacts, photos and posters pertaining to Yupiaq people, values, and admonishments to leading a good and long life should be highly visible. Local and visiting Native leaders should be invited to speak to classes sharing what it took for them to get to their positions.

Although exposure of students to Yupiaq arts and crafts is important, the philosophical, epistemological and ontological aspects of Yupiaq life should be woven throughout their educational experience. Art is an important avenue for opening new unseen worlds as well as getting to know oneself.

Science and art should be taught together. The Yupiaq technology and its applied science should be incorporated into all science courses. Students should be given opportunities to tinker with gadgets and work on projects for Yupiaq science fairs. At the secondary level, the students should be challenged to try to think of alternative ways of doing things, such as making new tools and making things simpler. For example, they can use complex technology to develop simpler, easy-to-fix, less expensive, more energy efficient tools made of local materials and adapted to their needs and environment.

Students should be mindful that people are not the only inhabitants of earth, but that we share our environment with "others". All teaching should embrace ecology. What happens to one part of a system ultimately affects the whole. They should be invited to dream and talk about eco-development projects which would enhance the environment rather than detract from it. How might technology help to make the environment more beautiful and productive without artificial means such as chemical fertilizers, hormones, and chromosomal splicing? These modern technological methods try to emulate the Creative Force when we cannot know what the consequences might be.

Organic gardening should be explored using a wood frame with modern plastic covering to grow vegetables and berries. Many fish camps throw away the heads and viscera of the fish being split. A project might include students from different families collecting these and placing them in barrels or drums to make fish fertilizer. The fertilizer can be used to help grow vegetables and berries, with the students rotating responsibilities for the care and maintenance of the plot. Grown vegetables and berries can then be traded for fish, moose meat, and so forth, or put away for special ceremonies in the village. Some might even be used for school lunches.

The students can find out from elders about plants and herbs with medicinal value and begin to cultivate them in the classroom or hot houses. They can explore ways of using the available sunlight during the winter. They can talk about traditional housing technology—what it was made of, how it was constructed, and how it took advantage of the insulative quality of the ground and sod. Modern housing is built with attention to aesthetics , but often is heat inefficient. How might the houses be made better? What materials are available locally? What modern materials might be used as new building material?

Historically, the Eurocentric educational system told the Yupiaq people that their ways of doing and thinking were inferior. The schools took pains to change the Yupiaq cognitive map and introduced them to new kinds of houses, tools and gadgets. This not only cost the people in terms of their values, traditions and self-sufficiency, but as a result they became wards of the government—a despondent people dependent on the "good will" of others. Education has made Yupiaq people consumers instead of producers in charge of their own livelihood.

The time has come for the Yupiaq people to pick themselves up and remember the spirituality, common sense, intelligence, creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness of their ancestors. They must return to an emphasis on "soft technology"—technology that is adapted to culture and environment. They have been victimized, as have many other people in the world, by the myth of progress and development. Their minds are imprisoned by the modern world, with its syncopating lights and gadgetry that is hypnotic and desirable, but in reality presents a mishmash of images in a shotgun fashion, with little connection to the vagaries of real life. It is time for the Yupiaq to get in rhythm with their own culture. There is no need to forsake all that has been presented by others. Technology and schools have their place, but they must be used with reason and in a sacred way to edify and enhance Yupiaq peoplesí culture, environment and the world as a whole.

Reference:

Oquilluk, William (1981) People of Kauwerak (Anchorage, Alaska Methodist University) Published in the Journal of American Indian Education, Vol. 39, #1, Fall, 1999 (special issue 2).

An Alaska Native’s Theory on Events Leading To Loss of Spiritual Life

QUESTION: Why do the Native American/Alaska Native people think in terms of cycles and circles? What caused the circle to break in the last one hundred plus years?

The tools of mathematics have given us some ideas about patterns and forms as well as abstract and esoteric formulae that leave most of us confused and questioning the use of such illusionary magic tricks. For example, when will the hunter need to know the exact distance across a river using trigonometric functions? But, we agree with a lot of mathematical and scientific theories and ideas, such as the shortest distance between two points is a straight line; that a circle is a line that keeps falling in toward the center; that the radii are equidistant, that the circle has no beginning and no end; the quantum and relativity theories and so forth. These are commonsensical ideas that indigenous people can readily subscribe to.

To the Native people there are many things in this universe that are cyclical and go in a circle. Examples of these include the seasons, the solar system, the Native timepiece of the Big Dipper going around the North Star, the atom, The raven’s path across the sky visible at certain times (part of the Milky Way spiral), an eddy in the river, a whirlwind, and many other examples. In each instance there is a drawing force in the center. In the Native worldview, we can think of this as the circle of life. In each Native person’s life the central drawing force is the self (Fig. 1). Down through many thousands of years, this is what kept the individual in balance. The energy (self) kept the values, attitudes, and traditions from being flung out. It allowed the Native individual to be constantly in communications with self, others, Nature and the spirits to check on the propriety of existing characteristics of life. Many of the values have remained the same and are very applicable today.

With infringements of new people from other parts of the world, came a weakening of the self with all its strengths of what to be and how to live. At first the circle remained strong.

However, with the encroachment of missionaries from various Christian religions, traders, trappers, miners, and explorers came diseases unknown to the Native people. Following this came a calamity surmounting any experience that the Native people have ever had. Many elders, shamans, parents, community members, and children died as a result of these superior diseases. With the loss of so many people, especially the shamans who until this time were the healers, left the Native people questioning their own spirituality. Was it really the devil and his evil allies that the Native people subscribed to and believed in? A crushing blow to a people who had direct access and communications with the natural and spiritual worlds through their shamans. The first rent to the circle was in the spiritual realm (Fig. 2), and we have been suffering from a spiritual depression ever since. The Alaska Native spirituality can in no way be replaced by orthodox Christian religions, Eastern or other ways of knowing about a spiritual life.

Where the break occurs, one side of the line straigthens out becoming more linear. Through this break leaks in new ideas, values, and ways of life that cause much doubt about their own world and beliefs. A maelstrom of values, beliefs and traditions results causing a confusion of what to be and what to do. The sense of self becomes weakened, thus its drawing force is debilitated causing some original and traditional ideas of life to be lost. The turmoil like that of a tornado continues. The amalgamation of Western and other cultures from throughout the world are completely mixed with Native traditions. The Alaska Native people did not readily accept modern education and religions. There was resistance, and if conditions had been different the Alaska Native people could have controlled what was allowed into their worldview. But, such was not the case. The encroachment of various peoples and their cultures overwhelmed the Native people. Not only did they come with new ideas, but with new species of dogs, plants, domesticated animals, bacteria, viruses. This not only caused turmoil in the human beings but also caused ecological havoc. Their new technological tools, hunting, trapping, and fishing devices along with the need to make money to buy these “needed” brought down sacred ideas of harmony in many Native people. All four quarters were assaulted at they same time, but they did not all break at the same time. I think, with the records of diseases, they occured more in line with what I am presenting here.

The next, I think, was at the emotional realm (Fig. 3). Not feeling good about themselves because of the message being told them by the missionaries, teachers, miners, trappers, traders, Federal agents, and so forth. They were told in no uncertain terms that their languages and cultures were primitive and had no place in the Western or modern world. The educational system was established to dissipate and destroy their languages, spirituality and cultures. The barrage came in many forms from institutions of the colonial hegemonic force. The once proud hunter/provider and successful homemaker now felt little worth living for in their ravaged world. There was nothing really good left to allow them to feel good about themselves, or self-governing or self-reliant. Only despair is left.

The intellectual arena was the next rupture in this circle (Fig. 4). Rationality and empiricism coupled with intuition had been the Native peoples’ forte. Nature was their metaphysic and thus lived in reality. They had successfully devised their worldview to allow them to live in reality with all its concomitant coping tools and skills. Now with their spirituality and emotions on a downward spiral, the people became intellectually dysfunctional. They became docile and robotlike, expecting everything to be done for them. Their clear consciousness or awareness was now viewed through a stigmatized and scarred corneal lens (worldview). Things were unclear and confusion followed.

The last fissure occured in the physical whereby the Native people in their demoralized state became susceptible to diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza, cancer, and many psychosocial maladies (Fig. 5). The foundations upon which a whole person was produced by the culture was now broken asunder, and a new fragmented culture, a mix of many cultures represented by newcomers, produced fragmented Native youngsters susceptible to new ideas, diseases and yearnings.

The ruptures allowed some aspects of these characteristics to flow out or become modified while allowing new ideas, ways of being, thinking, behaving and doing to seep in. This has caused much confusion among the Native people.

The Native way of sciencing has always been, at least, three-dimensional to include the human, natural and spiritual worlds. This was a conscious effort to keep in balance. Everything on earth, including earth, was endowed with a spirit, therefore life. And because of this spirit or energy from the Spirit of the Universe, the Native people must do things in such a way that no harm nor disrespect happen to life on earth. It then required that the Native people come up with elaborate rituals and ceremonies to pay homage to all, to maintain or regain balance in one’s life or that of the community. They had transcended the need for quantifying and establishing laws of Nature. They must have realized that these would become prisons of the mind and lead to a life that is one-dimensional.

All the schools’ curricula in all disciplines are one-dimensional because they are linear. The vaunted mathematical and scientific tools and their off-spring the technologies, are one-dimensional. These tools have the wonderful capacity for new discoveries in other worlds but because of the Western need to learn to control Nature they lead to confusion and a feeling of being weaned from the life force and its inherit relationships. They are bereft of the values extant in the indigenous societies which open doors for new world discoveries. Western mathematics, sciences and technologies do have values, however, they are proscribed to ambition to learn in depth and greed to use this knowledge for gain. This is the foremost senseless and meaningless ambition leading to disintegration of the human experience. The more we know, the less we know about life. Which says to me that Western mathematics, sciences and technologies have merely been superficial never getting to the meat of things. What has been missing from the great potential of these and all other disciplines?

It has been said that “Nature abhors a vacuum”. Could it also be said that Nature abhors a monocivilization? One way of being, thinking, behaving and doing? From all indications, Nature thrives on diversity. Look at the permutations of weather during a day much less a month, or year. The climates differ from one part of the earth to another. The flora and the fauna differ from one region to another. The continents and their geography differ. No two snowflakes are exactly alike. The stars, constellations, and other heavenly bodies seem to be unchanging, yet our advanced astronomers tell us that many changes are taking place. According to them, novae, supernovae, black holes, stars dying and being born, and so forth, are happening in the universe. The new sciences of chaos and complexity show us diversity of patterns we never thought existed in Nature. These all point to diversity and this is what makes Nature thrive. The Alaska Native people knew this and strove for harmony with all of life.

The Alaska Native people have come full circle. “Seggangukut”, we are awakening, we are being engergized, is what the Yup’ik word means. They have Nature as their metaphysic and have drawn energy from earth whereby things traditionally were often quite clear and thus could be attended to or a resolution reached. The one thing that has often been spoken of by Native people who are ill is that of being visited by various people from the community to show care and love for the ill person. They have expressed the feeling that some people will cause the person to feel worse while another person will make the person stronger and clearer of mind. It is said that in the former case, a person who does not have the right mind or balance in life will draw energy from the ill person thereby making the ill person worse than before the visit. On the other, there will come a person who is kind, upright and is with a mind of making you better. Instead of drawing energy from the ill person, this person shares some of his/her energy with the sick person. The ailing one feels better.

Another is the story of a man out on the ocean. He gets caught on an iceberg that gets cut off from shore and drifts out. He has no choice but to try to keep warm and survive the night. The next day, he finds that the iceberg is stationary but is not attached to the shore ice. New ice has formed overnight in the water between. He remembers the advice of his elders that to test the newly formed ice and its ability to hold up a person, he must raise his ice pick about two feet above the ice and let it drop. If the weight of the ice pick allows the point to penetrate the ice but stops where it is attached to the wooden handle, he can try crossing on the ice. If, on the other hand, it does not stop at the point of intersection, then it will not hold up the man. In this case, the former happened. The man then looked around him, looking at the beauty, the might of Nature, and realizing the energies that abound. When he gets on the ice, he must maintain a steady pace for if he stops or begins to run he will fall through because he has broken the rhythm and concentration. The story tells that when he began his journey across there was a lightness and buoyancy in his mind. This feeling was conveyed to his physical being. Although the ice crackled and waved, he made it to the other side. He drew energy from Nature, and was in rhythm with the sea and ice, and coupled with lightness and buoyancy made it safely to the other side.

In the “Bear Woman” story, two youngsters come into being. They find themselves in an abandoned village. It has been some time since the people disappeared by indications from the decay of semi-subterranean houses and artifacts in the village. One possible explanation of why the people were gone might be that these Yupiaq people may have reached the apex of spirituality which is pure consciousness. Their bodies became the universe and their pair of eyes became part of “Ellam iinga”, the eye of the universe. This could explain how some communities became mysteriously deserted.

Western physics with its quantum and relativity theories say that we are mostly energy. Why then should not our spirit or soul be energy? Scientific technology has given proof of energy fields, personal aura, findings from near death experiences, and many other human experiences. Theory of relativity tells us that matter is condensed energy and also conveys that the world is made up of relationships. This seems to say that our spirit is made up of energy. Then if this is true, the Alaska Native person must be able to draw energy from earth because we are a part of it. All life comes from earth. Alaska Native peoples’ metaphysic is Nature becomes corroborated by the Western theories. This also strengthens the argument that the laboratory for teaching and learning be place where one lives. Being outdoors in Nature enjoying its beauty, energy, amongst messages to be learned, and becoming a part of it. This would bring back the respect of personal self, and if one respects oneself then, certainly one would be able to respect others, Nature and the spirits that dwell in and amongst all things of Nature. The students will be able to whet their obervational skills while learning from Nature and drawing energy to themselves. They can again attain love and care with all its concomitant values and attitudes that give life. It is imperative that the students from all walks of life begin to experience and get close to Nature.

It is this drawing of energy from Nature that will allow the self to again become strong so that the circle becomes closed (back to Fig. 1). But the individual and community will allow chosen outside values and traditions to filter in that they think will strengthen their minds, bodies and spirits. The Alaska Native people will again become whole people and know what to be and what to do.

Calista Region: Are We Too Dependent on Entitlements and Resource Extraction?

If one views the History and Military channels on TV for any length of time, it becomes clear that we live in a perpetual war economy. Eisenhower and Kennedy were among the few presidents who recognized this and attempted to make domestic policy changes favoring a more sustainable approach in the areas of natural resource development, education, health care, mass transportation and long-term industrial development. They were met by a formidable enemy in the form of defense contractors, politicians and others associated with the “military-industrial complex,” (as President Eisenhower put it).

I look at the Calista region and it seems to me that we acting no different. We have become lovers of money from government entitlements such as HSS, BIA, housing, highway funds, transportation subsidies and so forth. These end up serving as the equivalent of steroid shots, making us feel euphoric and strong until the devastating effects, such as confusion, anxiety, paranoia, dependency and violent activities begin to take hold. Eventually we begin to think this is normal, indicating that an addiction has taken place. Likewise, I wonder about the plans of Calista Corporation to build roads, construct a coal-fired generator, develop the Donnelly Creek gold mine, and initiate other projects that are of the same unsustainable genre as the U. S, war-saturated economy—this at a time when Europe and Japan are looking at alternative energy and ways to save natural resources,

What has happened to the Calista Board and management who are descendants of the Yupiat and thus should be inclined to live in harmony with Nature? Perhaps they are Yupiat only in blood and no longer retain the cultural outlook to take this route? Should we not be concerned about our own subsistence resources and how to enhance there habitats for better sustainability, supporting regenerative projects and reclamation of devastated areas with the Seventh Generation in mind? At the risk of being labeled “a disgruntled old CEO who failed,” I question such policies and would argue that the aforementioned steroid shots will only make things more difficult for a people already under tremendous stress.

We must look for sustainable energy sources (this is not a choice, it is a must for the region); devise an alternative political system using limited hierarchical structures that are given to equality for all; re-establish an economic system that values the natural resources as givers of life and not money; initiate an alternative health care system more dependent on mind over body; and create an educational system that upholds and edifies all the new alternatives for the next generation. Power wielded without regard to the long-term greater good, in this case the well-being of the shareholders, is tantamount to exploitation and manipulation of the many for the benefit of the few. This is not the Yupiat way.

Why Should Yupiaq Literacy Slow Student Progress?

By Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley

The imposition of Western names, linguistic constructions and literary forms was an insidious attack on the psychological and spiritual nature of Native people and very destructive of the social order … Rather than accepting the world as 'given', or indeed a 'gift' as many oral cultures do, literacy brings with it the challenge to 'edit' the world, to remake it as one would craft a written text … Literacy destroys the unity of the spoken word (Eastham, 2003).

In the above statements Eastman highlights some of the profound changes that are brought about with the introduction of literacy into an oral society. The impact of literacy on the indigenous universe is immediate, for “language is the way we participate in the living reality of that universe” (Eastham, 2003). As an act of self-preservation, Native people metaphorically adapted to living in a cocoon of Native language and culture from which they are now beginning to re-emerge as a mature, self-organizing people with a regenerative and harmonious synergistic life-way that can contribute to a new social order.

The Euro-American educational system has made only feeble attempts to acknowledge the existence of Native languages, and even less attention has been given to the impact of literacy on oral traditions. Classrooms are filled with eager youngsters wanting to learn the Native language, but they are often stymied by having to learn to read and write that language at the same time. How many times have parents, teachers and aides observed that the Native youngsters know how to break the written word into its constituent parts and construct its enunciation, but cannot carry on a conversation with their parents or grandparents. This vaunted linguistic process thrusts the Native youngsters into using the adopted orthographic form to make an artifice representing the spoken word. In other words, Native language learners enter into an unreal world of meaningless letters to make a word that abstractly represents something from the real world.

Nature is our metaphysic, and to fully appreciate our relationship with the world around us we need to teach for mastery and fluency of the Native language at the level of everyday conversational use. This fluency in the Native language is a desideratum needing immediate attention. For example, in the Native communities dealing with the effects of global warming we need to make the Native language the working language during those deliberations. When sharing our collective knowledge, we must draw upon the deep knowledge embedded in the Native language because “Nature speaks in wholes” (Eastman, 2003). It is the Native language that is best equipped to represent the meaning of community and place. This process allows us to psychologically and spiritually address the original condition of place and the changes that are now taking place. It is this collective knowledge that will guide us in adapting to changes to place, in forming talking circles to deal with grief due to loss, in planning and bringing to fruition new shelters, food and means of transportation, and in working on a new Native identity that will be necessary as we are thrust into an altered reality and lifestyle.

This we can do successfully even without outside help. However, there will be a few occasions whereby we will need to consult with “experts” knowledgeable about the effects of contaminants, sea level rising, climate change, plant and animal extinction, introduction of new flora and fauna, and so forth. All this will require careful planning, organizing, implementing and assessing the success or failure of our efforts. Our problem-solving tools that are embedded in mythology, stories and life ways will give us strength, intention, and hope for success. More than ever, the Native characteristics of sharing, cooperation, teamwork, consensus, determination and use of a living Native language will give us the strength to deal with the changes that are impacting our lives.

Reference

Eastham, S. 2003. Biotech Time-Bomb: How genetic engineering could irreversibly change our world. Auckland, NZ: RSVP Publishing Company Limited