|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Alaska Natives at the Time of the Invasions: A Cultural Profile Project Draft 3 Do not quote or copy without permission from Mike Gaffney or from Ray Barnhardt at the Alaska Native Knowledge Network, University of Alaska-Fairbanks.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 Introduction: what you will do and why Think about this textbook and its assignments as an educational expedition into Alaska Native history. As with any expedition – whether to explore unknown territory or collect scientific information or find new trade routes and trading partners – it aims to accomplish certain objectives and perhaps discover exciting wonders along the way. Our expedition has three objectives. The first objective is found in your major assignment. You are asked to do historical research on what Native life was like in traditional times. By traditional times we mean those times before Native societies were changed forever by sustained contact with the cultural habits, economic ambitions, and contagious diseases of invading Russians and Americans. As the title indicates, we call this historical research the Cultural Profile Project. You will select a Native group to study, perhaps from your region of Alaska. Using both oral and written historical materials, you will develop a “cultural profile” of that Native group’s way of life at the time of the Russian and American invasions. Cultural profiling means to focus on essential features of your selected Native group’s traditional life. We do this by first researching and describing elements of their natural environment. Then we explore how that environment influenced the way they settled and used the land and how they socially organized themselves. Here we begin to pay special attention to the concept of environmental adaptation. Then we research their system of values and beliefs, which is called their worldview. Lastly, we focus on the material side of their culture – their “cultural products” – which is their science, technology, and art. Many times expeditions have a guide to show the way. Our guide is found on page 3 of Chapter One. There in front of you is a complete outline of all the cultural profile elements you will work on. Take a quick look if you wish, but hurry back. Your instructor will decide whether you will do the project individually or as part of a student research team. Your instructor also will decide whether the final product of your work is a written report or a class presentation. Perhaps you will be required to do both. The second objective is to get you thinking seriously about Alaska Native history and how it is studied. From the very beginning you are asked to think about many of the words and ideas we use to organize the Cultural Profile Project and direct our research efforts. For example, you are asked to consider different ways of thinking about such often used terms as tribe, Native, Native American, tradition, culture, cultural identity, and cultural pluralism. We also examine topics such as language and culture, ethnocentrism, mythology, historical legacy, traditional Native science, and forms of Native artistic expression. But let’s not forget that this is a historical research project. Therefore you are also asked to study the issues arising from the use of both the written historical record and Alaska Native oral histories. Understanding these and other subjects is required because how we describe our life in modern times may not be very helpful when attempting to describe Native life in traditional times. Our experience as students in modern schools, for example, will not help us fully understand how Native youth were traditionally educated. You are also encouraged to argue with this textbook. Some of the perspectives it offers on Alaska Native history will not be shared by everyone. For example, what do you think about the use of invasion to describe the coming of the Russians and Americans and their impact on Alaska Native societies? Rather than describe the Russians and Americans as invaders, do you think it more accurate to describe them as “newcomers, or “outsiders”, or “new immigrants?” Each of these terms have been used by others to describe the early Russian and American presence in Native Alaska. How would you describe the coming of these foreigners to your region of Alaska? If everyone agreed with all that is said here, then the Cultural Profile Project would hold few challenges for you. You probably would find it boring. It could even be accused of lacking intellectual backbone. Rest assured, however, that every effort is made to challenge you and avoid boredom. Sometimes expeditions get word of an interesting object or event requiring a side trip to understand it more fully. We will take side trips during our expedition into Native history as well. Our side trips explore useful ideas and information from various fields such as anthropology, sociology, and political science. We will take major side trips to investigate federal Indian law and the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) and how they relate to our cultural profile work. Our third objective is to show how the study of Native life in traditional times can provide us with greater understanding of modern Alaska Native perspectives on cultural values, subsistence, land use, and self-government. To illustrate this connection between the past and the present, let’s tell a story taken from modern Native history. On a bitterly cold January evening in 1966, Charles “Etok” Edwardsen Jr. addressed a public meeting in Barrow. There were about one hundred and fifteen people in attendance, mainly elders and other Iñupiaq Eskimo community members. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss Etok’s new organization, the North Slope Native Association, and its role in the Alaska Native land claims political and legal struggle taking place at the time. The 22 year old Etok anxiously faced his elders, relatives, and neighbors. As often felt by players in competitive sports just before game time, he had “butterflies ” to the point of feeling sick to his stomach. According to the account Hugh Gallagher gives in his book, Etok: A Story of Eskimo Power, Charlie first told the audience that even at his young age he had learned to cherish the cultural traditions of the North Slope Inupiat and sought to live by the values expressed in these traditions. He went on to say that no matter how virtuous these traditions, the achievement of a just and beneficial land claims settlement along with other Native rights under American law required new ways of civic thinking and organizing. Referring to research he had done on the 1867 Treaty of Cession, the 1884 Organic Act, and the 1959 Statehood Act, Etok explained “how the white men were violating their own laws and promises when they took away the traditional lands of the Eskimo.” He said that “the only way left to save Inupiat land for the Inupiat was to use the white man’s law against the white man.” But how did Etok know that researching the Treaty of Cession, the Organic Act, and the Statehood Act would significantly strengthen the Natives’ legal argument for a historic land claims settlement? As the story goes, when Etok was a student at Mt. Edgecumbe boarding school in Sitka, the textbook for his Alaska history class was Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of Alaska. In reading Bancroft he came upon a section describing early Tlingit resistance to the U. S. Army’s assertion of federal authority over their lives and lands. Bancroft describes how the Tlingits argued that the United States had no right to purchase their lands from Russia without their consent. And to add insult to injury, they received none of the benefits, financial or otherwise. It is important to understand that Bancroft’s book was published in 1886 and was certainly not about Native rights. Nor did it contain a Native point of view on early Alaska history. Nor was Mt. Edgecumbe teaching Native land rights when Etok attended in the late 1950s. What he did was take whatever Alaska history materials were available to him and thought about what he read in a different way – in a very different way. Although still a high school student, he began to consider the possibility that by its own laws the United States did not truly own Iñupiaq lands or, for that matter, any other lands traditionally used and occupied by Alaska Natives. It was this new way of thinking that later led him to ask two questions: What land rights did Natives possess under American law? And had these Native rights been properly honored by the United States? * What, you may ask, does this story have to do with the Native history research project I am about to undertake? Good question. Like Etok, you are required to study Alaska history. In so doing, the hope is that like Etok, perhaps new questions and ideas will occur to you about how the Native past shapes current Native affairs. In fact, the Cultural Profile Project is designed to help you do this kind of thinking. Indeed, upon completion of the Project, perhaps you will think differently about the role of subsistence in Native village life. Or about tribal sovereignty and self government. Or about village law and order. Or about language and culture. On the living connection between the past and the present, the prominent Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes said this:
With Mr. Fuentes words in mind, let’s begin our expedition into Alaska Native history. Native Peoples of Alaska From: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska-Fairbanks
* The Etok story is taken from two sources: Hugh Gallagher, Etok:
A Story of Eskimo Power, Putnam’s Sons, 1974, pp. 121-122, and from
Donald Craig Mitchell, Take My Land Take My Life, University of Alaska Press,
2001, pp. 124-128.
|
||||||||||||
