So if you look at the school district, what kind of like subjects do they teach? There's a subject in almost everything. Iñupiaq? We have to crunch it into like, you know, so many tiny things. But if we could just have it like that where each subject, there's grammar, there's speaking, there's art, dancing, singing, there's so many components to our culture. And if it could just be like that, you know, that would be a dream.

Our youth will have the tools and the ability to pass on the things that have been handed to us into the future. One of the things you always hear about is how much we've already lost. You know when they say, when a fluent speaker dies, it's like losing a library. So we can't take for granted that our youth will always know these things. Now, obviously in a place like Barrow there are some clear advantages, but even the young lady from Wainwright talking about watching 15 whaling crews down to five in her life is scary. And so there could be a day in the near future where there's no whaling crew in Wainwright, which is almost impossible to imagine, right? So I think it gives the youth the tools to be able to flourish and pass it on to the next generation.

The challenge of a standardized test is based on a culture. And it's not standardized, and it's not our culture, that’s the standard…So if, if you take a standardized test and you, and you make it local and cultural, then you're getting results and you're making the school accountable to the system that you want.

Our Future Ancestors know who they are, know where they come from and understand their purpose in life...They're fluent in their Native language and they share that language with others who want to learn. There's language mentors in Headstart. The teachers are patient with children and committed to the shared vision of the community.

...centering white ways, always in our schools. Centering English, centering the way that we think that they're gonna be prepared for standardized tests in our school environments. If we want to create speakers because speakers are, are knowledge holders, then we have to do things very differently than we have… ...I did a fellowship in Europe and I spent some time in the Netherlands and they were talking about how everyone speaks English. We go to all these places, you go to Amsterdam or wherever, and people are speaking English. They really focus their education on making sure that their children in those early years in elementary school really speak their national languages. And there's no concern that they're not gonna be holistic full adults. And I'm like, yeah, yes. Right? They will be full adults. They will learn English if they need to. And I think there's something that I've been thinking a lot about.

It's gonna take one large district somewhere in America to say, “this is what we're gonna do!” And I think Hawaii is that…I think one of the things about them is they have one district across all the islands. So they're able to have the immersion school and it's a public school, so we have to also fund buses…even though it's a two hour bus ride, we get kids…But you want to be there, right? And that's like - parents make that choice. And one of the co-chairs for the local community, she's like, “I drive an hour every day both ways to take my kid because it's important for me they go here.”

Infusing culture into education is because - one, if we look at the way that a communal society lives, adults don't have that luxury of living in a place where somebody is responsible to meet my needs in these various ways. And I again help to meet their need. Children already live in that state where somebody else is responsible for meeting their needs. So they have less restraints on their time, but they also are not in a place where they can actively make a choice to engage in, like language learning or traditional skills. So as adults that shape education, we have to make the active choice to make that their default because their needs are met. And so they have that - well ideally their needs are met - and so they have that space to be able to absorb. But if we don't make it the default of the information there for them to absorb, then it doesn't happen until they're 25. And then it's an active choice that they have to make while also trying to meet their own needs.

We have a Yup’ik immersion class. In fact the day before we left that same day Tuesday, I have two Elders that we gave an honorarium to and I was like, this is not enough money for the value they're offering these kids in this classroom like this almost, it almost feels insulting to say here's a little bit of money for the knowledge you're giving these kids. And you know, there isn't a certification or whatever we can bounce off of...We gotta be able to come up with something. Like I'm not gonna give somebody a $200 honorarium for the whole year to teach kids Yup’ik. That just feels, that's not okay. Like they add so much more value and I don't care if they have a degree, I don't care about any of those things. I wanna make sure they feel like they can share that culture. They are language and culture bearers. They should be compensated for that.

I spent 15 years at Glennallen High School. I know the generation, they were all in my classes, you know, 15, 18, 20 years ago. Now they have kids and now they're looking back and thinking, okay, well I wasn't interested in this when I was their age or in high school at all, but now I am and I want my kids to have what I didn't have. And so they've asked me, I can't tell you how many former students I've seen in these hallways saying, you need to do this. We need to make sure that this happens for the betterment of my kid. I want my kid to have what I didn't have. And so knowing these kids and knowing what they feel like they missed in that window, it kind of makes you, makes me say, well I kind of owe it to them to present a plan here and see if it gets off the ground. So that's kind of what has what, that's the motivation as of right now for me personally.

The model that I've kind of developed is the curriculum for the core is steeped in the traditional Ahtna values…And the core is taught through the lens of the values that the Ahtna hold near and dear. And that you're, you're really disseminating, or you're constantly going over the value system. And kids learn that through the delivery of the curriculum and the constant reaffirmation of this is what drives this culture. That's the K-3.

All the stories our Elders told a long time ago had a moral to it. So - take the small path or the large path - and then they even had a story that was like Jonah and the Whale. They had a lot of stories about Saghani Ggaay. Some of the stories were like the Bible. And they hadn't even heard the Bible at the time when they made the stories. So I think that through that, if you were telling your stories that are old stories that you would learn a lot of the morals and the values and stuff like that.

It's called Problem-Based Learning. And the medical community first initiated problem-based learning… I had no tests my freshman year. I had no textbooks. I had experiential learning with real world problems or experiences and how you went through the course of that. It wasn't just like a teacher observing if you were engaged or not. It was how did you actually envelop yourself into that problem or that learning adventure, and how did you complete it and come out, you know? Once you completed it satisfactorily, that was the project. That was the core course…I had no tests and no textbooks. And I did all of those core courses throughout my freshman year. There was papers, like insights and reflective, and I would research topics and things…we met in a house off campus, just on the edge of campus, you know, it was a very different learning experience and, and really just changed my whole perspective…it shows that there are methods for an alternative learning and they are successful and it continues to be successful in the medical community. And that's how they learn, is they learn by studying case studies mostly.

I have a heart for our, when we put our, our children, our Native babies at the center, you know, all the politics and all the just, you know, all that stuff kind of falls away from me. So I always try to protect that. And no matter where I'm employed or what it says on my taxes, I'm always gonna be pushing for Tribal control of education because we know these places and we have, sacred sites and a long history of where our families come from and our connections to these lands and waters. So I want that to be strong and taught in school.

Thinking of our languages, cultures and ceremonies as the centerpiece, we would probably have more of an abundance mindset. This learning model would probably bring healing and address the whole person, contribute to a stronger sense of personal identity. Allow the youth to be themselves.

Out in Scammon Bay they were getting moose out there and they would hunt them but they didn't know how to use all of it. They only would take some of it. Like the head, they didn't do anything with that. And [my Uncle] was trying to teach them, “There's a lot of good food there. You can make moose head soup,” and trying to teach them how interior people use that resource. So it's almost like there'd be maybe intergenerational learning between regions of people or cultures to learn how to use some of these resources or process some of the resources that are coming as a result of climate change.

There's 10 languages in our region and many of the languages are down to very small number of Elder speakers, certain languages you could name all the speakers just by their first name. So it's an area I've been focused on. I never feel like I can do enough. There's so much to do.

We were at this potlatch this summer and one of the Elders got up and was like, you guys need to sew. You guys need to sew. You need to, because none of you are sewing and you have to learn how to sew. And she's right. The kids don't know how to do things with their hands.

A lot of our members don't know how to bead or sew a traditional garment. So I believe it's very important for us to continue with these classes. I think my favorite would be knitting cause I've knitted since I was 15 for the Musk Ox Corporation up in Anchorage. So I don't know how to teach anything. I don't care to teach anybody because I'm a horrible teacher. I'd rather just take it from you and do it myself…It was actually during one of our cultural week classes. My aunt was the, um, Cupig teacher then, and that's when she called the corporation in Anchorage and, um, asked to have her students - which was us - learn the pattern and, you know, joined the, the corporation. That's one of the ways I learned from, uh, um, having our cultural week. And I believe some of my classmates still do it to this day too.

So our core values: Many cultures, one Creator. Respect yourself and others. Honor your Elders. Love, protect, and teach your children. Be proud of yourself, your family, and your Native values. Be honest, work hard, strive for independence and self-sufficiency. Support your community. Respect the diversity of people and ideas. Share and work together. Preserve and protect nature. Be thankful to the Creator for all living things. Live carefully. Have courage and use common sense. Support your leaders or be one. Unity is Tribal insurance. And that's our core values.

…To be out in the elements. To learn...You just learn. I’m more all about our culture and learning how we can hunt and gather and, you know, subsist for our future and have, you know, fish for our future, have the food for future as well. And I want more of our stories, our Native stories told. I want them to live on rather than stop at me if I'm the only one that remembers the Bear Woman story...

I remember a story, it's very similar to the Kodiak Bear Woman story. We don't have any bears on Nunivak Island. The only big game we have are reindeer and musk ox. So when my grandfather told me the story, it was a Culture Week. It was about a woman and her husband who was cheating on her with two other women around the pond. And a little bird told her. The bird says, “Hey you, hey you! Where did you come from? Your husband is around the point with his two new, young wives. He is feeding their family there.” And the bird was actually telling the wife that her husband is cheating on her with two other women across the point. And she had to go and investigate. So she went up on the hill. She saw a homestead, or a camping area, with the two women there. And a kayak coming towards the woman, which was her husband. And so she was enraged, of course, obviously. And let's see she seeked revenge, obviously. So she put herself to make a plan to go and kill the woman. But she told her boys, because she asked her two sons, “If you see a bear, knock it. Knock the nose with a, with an oosik, a walrus member.” And the boys were like “What?!”, because we don't have any, we don't have any bear. They're like, “What are you talking about? We don't have bear.” So they just they took that in mind, but disregarded it. So what she did was she got a bucket made of fish skin. And she put it on her nose for the snout. And she tied it over her, you know, the back of her head. She put two cutting boards. She tied them on the sides of her, her flank. So just in case, you know, the guy was coming to see her rear side. And then she put the bear hide. And that transformed her into the bear. And so when she finally realized that, that actually happened, she took it off. And then she hiked, she took everything that she needed to turn into the bear, and she hiked towards the women's camp. And she needed to come up with a, you know, conversation on how she's going to be able to tell these women because she had the plan. So she grabbed some berries or, or some blue color or something. And she put some marks on her face. And she came to the two women's village. And she introduced herself. She was cordial and kind, and, you know, she didn't introduce herself as the husband's wife. So the two ladies asked her, “How do you get the beautiful markings on her face? We want, we want the same thing.” And so the lady, she goes, “You see that boiling pot of seal oil? You just put your face over it and let the steam, you know, waft over your face and you have markings on her face.” And you know, the two ladies, they were skeptical, but they wanted that, they wanted to look just as beautiful as she did. So they did. They, the one woman did it, but the other woman was just like, “Hmm, I'll wait.” But the other lady was like, “No, you guys do it at the same time. It'll be, you know, it'll be nicer.” So they did that. Hence, she smashed their heads. And their heads, you know, were boiled. They were boiled alive. And after this happens, there's a kayak coming and, you know, it's on the horizon. And she, she knows it's her husband. And so she's preparing for him to come in. She's gathering all her bear, her bear, costume. And she hears the husband calling for the woman. And in our culture, when, you know, the men are coming with their kill, the women are there to come out and, you know, butcher and whatever. So he's calling for his women. But the women are like, propped up. They're dead. They're propped up though. She propped them up. And, they're not going, they're, they don't answer. They don't acknowledge him and he right then and there he knows there's definitely something wrong. Cause the woman, she’d already be there when he's, you know, coming in when they see him coming in. So she puts on the bear costume. And, well, obviously he's trying to fight. He's, he's starting to spear, she's starting to decide. And, you know, she's not killing him. She's, she's not you know, backing down. So she kills him. And I think after she kills him she feels empowered and that her Spirit’s disappearing kind of, and that the Bear’s Spirit is starting to take over. So she's in her mind frame. She's heading towards her camp to her boys because she needs to get back to her boys. And so she's heading there and she sees her boys are playing. And she was hoping that the boys remembered to grab the oosik and knock the bucket off her face, but the boys are too scared and afraid of their mother and she kills the boys. And later after all that happened there's a hunter that saw the bear and did kill the bear. Cause he was like, we had a bear. And you know, we don't have bears on the island. When he killed it, he skinned it. He saw the two, the two cutting boards on the side. That's one of the stories my grandfather told me. And I remember it. Maybe it was because of the bird song. I don't know. I'm not sure. But yeah, that was, that was a very memorable story that he told me. And I've learned, when I went to Kodiak this last fall, I saw the Bear Woman's story, or the Bear Woman book that somebody wrote and wondered to take that to see if they had the same stories.

...a big focus for me right now, and this has been building from the moment I set foot into the classroom in Perryville, is blending traditional knowledge with conventional science or Western structural in place…that braiding or blending with the two value systems, the western system, and then traditional Native values and particularly here, the Suqpiaq value system.

So we do Iñupiaq hour, you know, with our students on our campus, every two weeks. And we talk about different things. In the past I've done cutting beluga - fresh beluga, we cut maktaaq. We've sewn, I've brought people in to talk about all the different things that we do in the community. Whaling. Kivgiq was just going on. We were talking about Eskimo dancing, we talked about welcoming back the sun. And we just do a bunch of, you know, cultural stuff. And when we introduce our Iñupiaq culture to the people up here, it makes you appreciate, you know, the life that we live here. Cause you know, you see it in books, you see it in movies and you hear it from people, but it's one thing to experience it for yourself.

How deep are we going with instilling these values in not only our own children, but our community? How deep are we practicing them on a communal level in ensuring that, you know, we're, we're going about our daily lives, really practicing them. And I think that we've lost that in translation, actual practice, not just talking about them, not just, you know, looking at them on the poster on the wall or seeing them highlighted every month since there's 12 of 'em. You know, it's in the calendar. But really thinking about, you know, what does this actually mean and what does this actually look like…in that whole context of like being a contributing member to community.

If we think of the school system and if it reflected our culture and our community, we would have stronger students. I tell people that, you know, you'll be stronger if you know your own history, your own culture, And you'd have a, we'd have a strong people, stronger people, if it reflected completely our community and our culture.

When we went to Bethel, we went and saw their immersion class. And if it was Martin Luther King Day they take that and then they add somebody from their local region as an example cause they could relate to the local leader, but they can't relate to Martin Luther King.

We can learn about all the other regions other than our own.

I have all boys and I can't teach 'em how to be a man, but I could teach 'em how to be loving and caring and respectful in that manner.

We are the ancestors of tomorrow. Who we are and how we live with through time. Let us lift up our voices. Let our character glow. That our children's, children's children may hear the echo singing, “Iya.axch’ighei” - Can you hear it? “Iya.axch’ighei” - Can you hear it?

So in our region we have St. Lawrence Island Yupik and Iñupiaq. So even starting at the conversational, or even if you're competent and then being a lifelong learner, and at least having that start of having those conversations with their children. Having that knowledge of the land, hunting, gathering subsistence, and then our children are actually in their environment. We were the first stewards of our land for thousands of years, to have this overall system of working together and it transitioned into namesakes. That was raised in their expectations of who you are, where you come from and building off the expectations of family and kinship, which transitioned into reinforcing our family value system.

What it would look like if it was reflective of our, our community and culture? I think it would be that number one, that the kids see themselves as part of the community and the education system and that they have the ability to help shape the future. You know, that it's not just passive, that it's not check all the boxes. And if I can do all these things that the outside systems say are important, then I can get my diploma and go get a job. It's, “How can I give back? How can I be a part of this? How can I help shape the future of our state and make a difference?”

I think, rather than the old thing of "learning our way", they need to turn it around and "our learning ways." Yes. Everyone learns differently. Yes. Everyone perceives, no matter what anyone tells you can see as well, you can hear as well, but you're not seeing or hearing it the same way and people don't, and you might, you might not even care about it. You know, little kids don't, they tell me that doesn't make any sense. Sometimes you really don't make any sense. And we just think we do, you know, to a little kid. So it's, it's a whole process. And we, and I, the main thing is to get others to recognize that, just to recognize it, accept that as tools.