ALASKA NATIVES COMMISSION
JOINT FEDERAL-STATE COMMISSION
ON
POLICIES AND PROGRAMS AFFECTING
ALASKA NATIVES
4000 Old Seward Highway, Suite 100
Anchorage,
Alaska 99503
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Witness List | PDF
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COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: The next person to testify is -- we move from Southeast to Southwest. Oscar Kawagley (ph.)?
(Pause.)
MR. KAWAGLEY: My name is Oscar Kawagley (ph.) , and I'm Inupiat, and I wanted to comment on a couple of things that I've thought about as far as the state-wide educational system is concerned. And those two items -- two variables are probably two of the things that cause a lot of problems as far as education of the Native person, or Native students is concerned.
One is hegemony -- control; and very often I find that there is a school district
with a Native school board; and in some instances, you might have a Yup'ik
nation, which has supposedly the control in the hands of the Native people;
but when you get right down to it, it becomes an illusion of control; and
I think the state has to give more control to the Native people, in order
for us to begin to make advances in teaching our young people to meet the
regional needs and also the needs of the Native people in that particular
area. And when you give control to the Native people, then they will be able
to pick up the business of successful education in their language and their
life ways, which they had done for many thousands of years. And they've been
very successful. Otherwise, why would we have existed for 40 to 20,000 years?
And so that's one of the things that I would really recommend is that the
hegemony or the control of the school systems be given
to the hands of the Native people.
The other is legitimation or validation of Native knowledge; because, as I take a look at it, I find that down through the millennia, again many thousands of years, that we have been applying scientific principles into our own technology that we have developed. And yet when it comes to going to school, we are handed something that is foreign. It's from the Western world; and they have -- each one of the disciplines has its own language, and it causes a lot of problems; and yet we're already familiar with the things that they know. For instance, meteorology. By gosh, when you go to the University and you begin to take a look at meteorology, and all the vernacular, the words that they use are so confusing, that it's very difficult; and yet our elders can go out there and read the surroundings early in the morning when it's -- before the sun rises and as it rises, and get a good idea what the weather is going to be like for the next day or so; and very often it's more correct than the meteorologist that has all the technological aids at his hands.
And so I think that we need to speed up the process where our Native knowledge is legitimated, and when we have control, then we'll be able to study our language, study our traditions and our customs; because it's not good just to study the language, you have to have the values, traditions, and customs; because those are intermeshed, and they cannot be done one at a time; so they have to be taught one of the -- at the same time. This way it also would enable the Native people in a particular region, because each of the regions -- the bio-regions are entirely different from one another; and the needs of the particular area is different. And one of the things that bothers me again is that the state always says:
"Okay, this is the curriculum, or the curricula
for the English. This is the curricula for the physical education. This is
for social studies, and so on."
And what room does it really leave as far as control is concerned, as far as a Native person out in the village is concerned? We have to try to meet those, because the state and the federal government are giving us moneys; and there are strings attached to 'em; and what kind of control can you really have? And the University system, and we ourselves have to encourage our Native people to go into education, so that we can have Native administrators and Native teachers; and that's when we'll really begin to make some advances, as far as our own lives are concerned.
Very often, you find that in the schools it becomes a battlefield; and I was appalled one time last summer -- last winter when I went to a village, and I stayed there two weeks; and within that two weeks, I learned that there was three young ninth-grade boys that had dropped out of school. And you begin to see that there is a problem there. And I think, basically, it's because you see a lot of high school students out in the villages that don't have a job and can't really live in their own subsistence lifestyle; nor are they able to successfully step into the modern world. And so we need to bridge, or meld, the two in order for them to work.
Evaluation is another one. By gosh, when we start giving
the IOWA tests of basic skills, and the superintendents make -- place such
a heavy weight on how the students are doing in the IOWA tests of basic skills.
Tests that are not made by us. They are made for somebody in the dominant
society, and what it does is merely homogenizes our language and our culture;
and roboticizes the Native students. I think it takes a lot away from the
Native creativity. And language, to me, is very important; because language
contains our world view. It contains our philosophy of life; how we are to
live as a person; what our identity is; and how we’re to interact with one
another; how we're to interact with our environment; and how we are to interact
and interplay with the creatures and the plants of the universe. And ours
is to maintain a balance; whereas, the Western world seems to -- in its science
and technology especially -- seems to have inherent in it, a destructive
creativity, and not something that we have to teach our young people to really
look at technology.
And I read somewhere where a scientist said that you keep technology guilty until proven innocent. And that's something that we need our Native people to learn, just so that when we get a new technological gadget, we see what kind of a dam -- what kind of damage it's doing to you as a person; what is it doing to the environment. And those are types of things that we need to address. Technological advances -- who gains? Who loses? Thank you.
(Applause.)
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Thank you, Oscar.
COMMISSIONER MASEK: I have a few questions to ask you. One thing is why do you think so many of these ninth graders or other students dropped out, and why don't they have jobs in the villages? Is it all on account of the education system?
MR. KAWAGLEY: I think mainly it's an educational system which we -- which carries with it a foreign curriculum; meaning that we're supposed to new -- learn a new language and the new lifestyle entirely: and I think that's where a lot of the problems come in. And students begin to say to themselves, what use is education, if I can't be able to make a living as a Native person; if I wanted to live as a quasi-subsistence-type of a hunter; and then can't be able to do it; nor be able to successfully step into the other world -- the Western world of education?
And I think that poses a lot of problems. Like I said, very often the school room becomes a battlefield for the Native student.
COMMISSIONER MASEK: Well, I think a lot of the, you know, school districts, they -- the school -- the local school boards, they do have a voice, and they do have, you know, some say-so about the education. Why isn't -- why aren't there any more Native people working toward that goal to, you know, put out this curriculum that can be good for the Native children?
MR. KAWAGLEY: That's where I think the illusion of control comes in. They think --
COMMISSIONER MASEK: I think they're --
MR. KAWAGLEY: -- because --
COMMISSIONER MASEK: -- given the good --
MR. KAWAGLEY: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER MASEK: -- the opportunity to do that. Why aren't they exercising their, you know, rights to sit in on the board and, you know, implicate the different problems there are with the system?
MR. KAWAGLEY: I think, in many instances, we are sitting on the boards; but who are implementing the decisions that are made by the school board? It's not a Native person. Look how many superintendents there are. How many Natives do you see among them? And take a look at the number of principals and the teachers that have been taught from a different world view. And then you begin to see that there definitely is an illusion of control. We think that we have a control because we are board members; we're on an advisory school board; and they can listen to us; and sometimes the principal may be sympathetic, but he doesn't really know how to carry it out.
COMMISSIONER MASEK: Well, you as individuals, or as parents, would you like to see your children do better in both worlds, or -- you know, in the Native village and out of the village? Would you like to see the children succeed in both, you know, criterias?
MR. KAWAGLEY: Yes, most certainly. I want the educational system to prepare my children to be able to fit in wherever they want to. And, hopefully, they'll make a world that is better, where the two are meshed together; not saying one world and -- the Yup'ik world and the outside world.
COMMISSIONER MASEK: Well, it se --
MR. KAWAGLEY: When they're meshed together, that’ll be
a lot better.
COMMISSIONER MASEK: Well, it seems like, with a lot of the Native communities, the Native people are fighting and not trying to work together, or what the structure of that is now. Or can you try to maybe put in some system where you can work, you know, problems out, so that it'll balance, and for the children to get the education in both worlds?
MR. KAWAGLEY: Yeah, I think we -- there's a certain amount of unifying that has to be done. Until we become of one mind and we're attacking the problems in education, or health, I don't care where --
COMMISSIONER MASEK: Yes.
MR. KAWAGLEY: -- if we don't have the unity behind us, then we don't have the strength. At least we have to keep fighting, and AFN, I think, is a good beginning; where they try to unite people, so that we begin to think, not so much homogenize us, but to fight for things that we think are needed to us -- to make us better.
COMMISSIONER MASEK: Okay, well, thank you.
MR. WILLIAMS: Oscar, I have several concerns on the governance issue, on the illusion of the school -- regional school boards or policy-making school boards. You know, do we have more control of our educational system than we had ever before in the history of Alaska Natives? Do you think we have more control over what we have now than ever before?
MR. KAWAGLEY: Oh, I think so; but I think we also have a long ways to go; where we really have control in our hands; where we can begin to say:
"This is the curricula that we want, and the structure,
or the format for that is going to be based on the way our world of view
is structured."
And then we can add what we want from the outside world; and then we truly have strength.
MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Thank you, Mr. Kawagley. I'd like to introduce one more Education Task F -- a couple more that just came in. First of all, Commissioner Walter Soboleff of Tenakee Springs; and then Nettie Peratrovich. I don't know where (laughing) --
MS. PERATROVICH: I'm really a Haida, but I live here in Anchorage. (Laughter.)
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: I don't like to --
MS. PERATROVICH: I always say --
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: -- say where she's from, because she's been all over.
COMMISSIONER MASEK: Commissioner Covey (ph.) is here also
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Okay, yeah.
COMMISSIONER MASEK: I'd like to recognize him.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: We'll welcome in here, the Department of Education Commissioner from Juneau. There are copies of the Education Task Force report in the back, if you want to see some of the stuff that we've done so far. And I'm really encouraged by the discussions, because some of that is being reiterated here at the meeting; and while it's in a different vein, it also reinforces some of our thinking as well.
This document was ocr scanned. We have made
every attempt to keep the online document the same as the original,
including the recorder's original misspellings or typos. However,
Oscar Kawagley's last name has been corrected.
