We just grew up around it. And we picked it up through that. Especially being Native. I know many people say it, but you learn differently, it's, it's kind of true. You really do learn differently. You can't just like, that's why…I just hate the computer. I can't just be on the computer cause there's so much around you happening and…that never stops. And it's just so much easier to learn about what's happening, you know, outside of Shakespeare, you wanna learn about what's happening now. Yeah. And just, I don't know if we're able to not be pushed to learn everything, then maybe we can focus a little more on what we want to do and that will help kids that want to teach. They don't have to spend their time learning about paleontology. They can teach, they can learn to teach and stuff like that.

A lot of NYO is like you're competing against yourself. You really want to better yourself. Yeah. That's the mindset you're taught to have. You never wanna make it ‘I'm better than you’ or ‘I wanna be better than you'...so ‘I wanna be better than me.'

We're using a lesson study model where one of the cohort will deliver lessons to a class and the others in the cohort might observe or share their feedback - that instructor’s delivery or engagement with learners. So it's an iterative process too, you know, there's no graduation….It's meant to be among the cohort, a chance to use your experience in the classroom, reflect on it, change things up, improve, and at the same time, utilizing this platform we've built in the classroom, in the schools. And to build on it as well. Cause there's an opportunity in the software to author new materials, you know, the 10 units in each of the languages. But the instructors we have can author new material and add to that.

Let's try something new and make people uncomfortable. Be prepared to be uncomfortable if you're willing to have those hard conversations. And that's where a lot of people don't like to be, but you have to be there if you wanna change.

And the concept of time is very important to Indian people because we rely on Indian time a lot and trying to work that into our daily lives is hard also. We always say, “Oh Indian Time!” That means when we get there, when it gets done. And sometimes the school district says you need to be here on time and that adds more pressure for our students.

Because in order for them to be at this level of expertise, their training is not in a formal context. Not provided in a formal context. Their training is provided from birth to whenever they're at that age or that level where their mentors or Elders feel that they are capable of, you know… it's just a natural cycle. You learn from Elders, you learn from young men and women who are at that certain age. And then you just kind of…when you're like a, a young lady, you teach the even younger girls how to do certain things and they're gonna be on coffee and tea duty until they're ready. You know? And, and they're not, they don't, they don't tell themselves that they're ready. It's the people above them that are like, okay, now you can try this. Cut uunaalik.

…In a sense of like, we're Iñupiaq. This is who we are and this is who we're going to be and we're just gonna be bold about it and just learn to take up space because you're, you're teaching the kids how to be themselves. And I think when you, when we don't make ourselves small or shrink ourselves, you know, we learn to take up space in that we're taking ownership of the land and of the people that we are.

There would maybe be over-hunting - There would be more hunters in the community. Our communities will have lots of hunters. - And then some animals will maybe go extinct from over-hunting. Sometimes we've gotta have balance somewhere. Too much of a good thing might throw something else out of whack...we gotta prevent, we gotta still keep the animals of the land healthy even though they’re strengthening something else.

I hope to graduate from here [AVTEC] and I want to go back and I want to work in my hometown.

...for our people, we always say what we want. We want culture and language in our schools. I've been saying that people been saying it since eighties, seventies, sixties, fifties, whenever education came up. Right. And that's what people want, and we're still struggling to, to really get it, you know? And so, let's keep putting it out there. Let's start with the name, let's start with honoring children, you know, who they are. And it's just not honoring children it's honoring the people. They're part of a family and they're part of a community.

What if the school could smell like seal oil? It could smell like drying racks.

Our ways are just as important, if not more important than the other ways, our language, our place names, our way of thinking, our way of taking care of each other, you know, our traditions are just as important, if not more important, and that our families are safe and happy. Just as our community is safe and happy, we're safe and free to be who we are.

We're disconnected as Indigenous people to schools and schools are disconnected to us.

…There was a snow machiner who was missing and he was on the Tundra presumed to be dead. All of a sudden there were sightings of him popping up. People would see him I'm out in the distance walking they'd see him up in trees and he was becoming, they call it, he was becoming wild. They had this belief system that he was stuck in between worlds. He was stuck in between the world of the living and the dead. And that you had to tether him back to the world if you came upon him. And so as a first year teacher we heard all these things. So the school had a whole schoolwide assembly, every grade level, all the teachers had to go. They had Elders coming in and Elders telling us what to do in case we saw him. So there's different belief systems, right? One, you had to touch him, you had to have physical contact, or you had to spit on him to bring him back to the world. So we had this schoolwide meeting on what to do in case we ran into this person, this entity. Then we went back and then I had two other new teachers who were there and they were both from Washington state and they had this look upon them. Like, "I can't believe this just happened. I can't believe that they're telling us this things. I can't believe we're supposed to believe this. I can't believe this is what we're supposed to do." Me, I had zero disbelief. I'm like, okay, hopefully I won't have to do any of these things cause it's a little scary but I didn't have any of the same disbelief at all. So when you talk about education, when you talk about worldview, when you talk about an outsider going into the village, there's things that you have to do.