Our youth will feel confident in Our ways.
Kids would know where food comes from.
Our youth will feel confident in Our ways.
So there was a big earthquake…the 1964 earthquake? My mom was telling me about it…so the whole road system, that part by Long Lake - that's gone. It'd have to be gone. It totally had to be gone. We'd be stuck without groceries. So if something like that happened and you know, a kid knew how to hunt in each household we wouldn't be worried.
Our youth will feel confident in Our ways.
I would say in a school setting that our nutritions, our nutritional services systems adapted to Indigenous ways of knowing and that those foods were in the schools to maintain a healthy wellbeing overall. Feeling our body with things that are meaningful to our communities. And also engaging in providing food.
We bring individuals in and the students make their food. They learn where the food came from. They have to harvest so they know what it takes to do those things. And that movement, that food increases mental health and also provides them with the education needed to do those things with their families. There's a lot of adults who don't have that knowledge. So they're trying to figure out ways, how do I teach my child without feeling insecure about it? So bringing families into the classrooms to do those things, I think it's important.
Our youth will feel confident in Our ways.
I had to teach myself how to moose hunt. Cause my dad never did, you know? And…it was even embarrassing to even admit that I'd never done it before, when I have cousins that are, like, eight that have like three moose hunts under their belts, you know? And it wasn't, in some sense my fault…it was the result of a lot of things…judging from my own feelings of feeling inadequate or whatever, I'm sure that other people share the same kind of things about all sorts of cultural knowledge.
Our youth will learn on the land.
I guess I keep going back to a kid and like, my mind keeps an elementary school age kid. We're talking about education stuff and like, that's the age I'm thinking. So many of our habits are for what we develop, and who we are is developed by like seven, you know, or eight, those crucial ages. That's where I keep thinking... But let's say it's a fall day here in Kodiak. And they like start the morning off with like some movement and stretches. And then they go down to the Buskin and they fish for salmon. And then when they got it, then they get a little dissection left of like, what parts are, what's the liver, what's the lung, what's the gut and that sort of aspect of it. So full circle, dissection kind of thing then coming back to the classroom. It is a blended learning atmosphere of connecting, like what's going on at the time of year. You can do that in fall with silvers. You can't really go down to the river and middle winter and catch that time. So structure like lesson plans around the season.
Our youth will learn on the land.
I wish we had ways to bring back to my, to Our Native cultures and how we berry pick and using our comb to pick our berries or blueberries. And that's how they, the people all the way back in the day, they made it a wooden spoon and they put nails on one side and make a hole on the wood and then just scrape the comb. And that's how we picked our berries. We used our kuspuk, the wind would blow, would just blow the leaves off. And that's how we did, how we berry picked and used our berry picking comb and the leaves off how the wind just blows.
Our youth will learn on the land.
I think anytime that you can learn something and then there's a tangible result, it's much better. I mean, I could sit up and I could say, okay, here's how you pick berries in a classroom. And you can describe it and they'd be like, ah, this is horrible. Everything about it. But if you just take them out in the woods and say, let's pick berries and everybody goes home with a bag full, they're gonna be so proud and happy.
Our communities will further Indigenize.
We have everything we need here locally. And a good example is like when we depend a lot on like western medicine, but we forget that the plants and the greens and the fruits and all the stuff that grow here, like the different things that grow in the nuna, um, we forget that those things are healing in the medicinal….We don't need to go to the hospital. You know, we have stuff that we can pick from the land that we could eat or make or make a tea out of or a salve or you know, put it in a meal or dip it in sea oil and eat it like that...The stuff we find on the land that's so helpful.
Our communities will further Indigenize.
This one is our food stand. That's just out here and it has all sorts of Native food that you can just stop by and buy because in this new paradigm, we're allowed to do things like that for ourselves.
Our youth will learn from and provide for Elders.
A part of that is the processing of our traditional foods is giving back to our community, our Elders, our families that aren't able to go hunting and that instills in your values and they're embedded with the language as well.
Our youth will learn from and provide for Elders.
The Labrador tea. We picked that every fall and it has to be fall-time. And we use that to, we add the Labrador to our regular tea and it tastes a whole lot better. My language we call it ayu tea. We get it in the fall time. Try it with your Lipton tea. Add two or three sprigs of it to your tea.
Our youth will be resourceful.
There would be less reliance on money…If the kids were involved in harvesting and growing and that part of school was taking care of our food.
Freedom from money would be really nice…
I think with the less reliance on money, I think kids are more likely to learn when they have that like base level Maslow’s Hierarchy Security. I know that there's no shortage of food because there's resources that I could use.
Our lands and waters will be healthier.
If we have good food security and if we understand the natural processes, then the land and water will be healthier too. I like the idea that they're all connected and that health, it isn't just in individuals or even in communities - that it would spread to the whole state.
Our youth will be healthy.
So maybe if our food systems were integrated into our learning, maybe there would be successful, like balanced harvesting…
It would encourage awareness of natural cycles. You know, like when in years when the hare and the lynx are up, you eat hare and lynx…
In the Bible it says train up a child, you know, when he's young. Then he'll go that way when he is older. And that's whatever they grew up with. So if they, you know, grew up eating good food, that's what they, their bodies will crave. They're used to that.
Our Alaska will value Alaska Native ways of life.
There could be a sign, a city sign or if there was a location or you had it in a brochure, and then you would show that type of tool that you used. So that you're bringing it forward, that would be a way for a company to say there's berry picking here…Then you could have visual things, that's another step of education to the mass public that's coming out.
Our Peoples will be proud of our traditional foods.
Yeah, involving culture in everything, normalizing culture and making sure that kids know that it's something to be proud of because growing up there's been many times where you feel ashamed for your culture or the foods that we eat and the language, like I was saying, I would say an Alutiiq word, and I would get made fun of, and people would be do things like, “Oh, that sounds so funny”...and eating food and stuff. Because we have, we eat chiton and sea urchins and octopus and stuff. And people are like, “Eeewww how can you eat that?” So you're never really comfortable unless people kind of just shut up about all that stuff you know, so yeah, just making sure that people are in a safe environment and that they're okay.