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Alaska Natives at the Time of the Invasions: A Cultural Profile Project Draft 3 Do not quote or copy without permission from Mike Gaffney or from Ray Barnhardt at the Alaska Native Knowledge Network, University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Mike Gaffney suggests that one read the Teacher's Manual Preview first to get a good idea about the purpose and design of this secondary school textbook. Mike Gaffney Congratulations – – but don’t stop studying now! If you are reading this, then you have completed your Cultural Profile Project or are close to completing it. If you have dedicated the necessary time and effort to the required research and readings and paid attention in class, then you know more about Alaska Native life in traditional times then most people in Alaska. Congratulations! Now let’s see why congratulations are in order. Although you worked on just one or two Native groups, the concepts and methods you learned can be applied to the study of any Native group. In the Cultural Profile Project’s outline, for example, you have a comprehensive guide to the various elements to be included in the study of traditional Native life anywhere in Alaska. Most important, you now have the actual experience of bringing the outline to life with your own cultural profile work. You know what has to be done and how to do it. In fact, the outline can serve as a framework for studying the life of subsistence-based indigenous societies anywhere in the world. So don’t lose it. You may need it again. Along with doing actual research, you had to do some serious thinking about the concepts and methods often used to study Native societies. You have pondered the meaning of culture and tradition as well as the “pluralism” of Native histories and cultures. You have also explored the world of Native traditional science and technology. You have taken what amounts to a short course on the uses of Native oral histories and how to evaluate historical information from both written and oral sources. You now have a reliability test you can apply to any future historical research you may do or to the historical work done by others. You have been asked, moreover, to contemplate how history has shaped current Alaska Native perspectives on the important civic issues facing their communities. Of course connecting the past and the present was a major reason for the extended side trips we took to explore federal Indian law and ANCSA. Now, for example, You may be able to assist a tribe struggling with the research required for federal recognition. You may even have some good ideas about how to go about researching traditional Native use of the OCS. If you carefully studied the chapter on federal Indian law and related discussions in other chapters, then you join another fairly small group of Alaskans who know the fundamental principles of this American jurisprudence and its historical development. As with Charlie “Etok” Edwardsen Jr. back in his day, perhaps your cultural profile work has given you new ways of thinking about such highly publicized issues as the rural subsistence priority, the powers of tribal governments in Alaska, or on the problems of law and order in rural Alaskan villages. So again, congratulations! Don’t stop studying now. Are you now thinking any differently about your own educational future, maybe thinking about going on to college? Work on the Cultural Profile Project has given you important academic skills and insights. But there is so much more to know and to do. Have you developed an interest in Alaska history generally and in Native histories and cultures specifically? Or do you now have a broader interest in Native American history? Was your curiosity at all sharpened when we discussed Native peoples outside of Alaska? If so, what about pursuing comparative indigenous studies? If science is your academic interest, then what about working toward a degree in one of the natural sciences with an eye toward including traditional Native applied science as part of your program? We certainly know more about bowhead whale populations and behavior because traditional and modern science finally formed a partnership. These are just some of the possibilities in higher education if you have the desire to pursue them. It will be hard work, no question about that. But it will be an extended educational expedition well worth the effort. In some ways it will be an expedition to explore uncharted waters because social change has quicken in the world just as changes in the planet’s climate have quicken, particularly in the Arctic. Who knows what lies ahead ten or twenty years down the road. Well, that’s not quite true. We do know that all of us will be better off if more young Alaskans – Native and non-Native – have the knowledge and inspiration to smartly tackle the social, political, and environmental issues now facing Alaska as well as those issues yet to come. You are needed on this new expedition, so give it some serious thought.
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