Education for Cultural Survival
Editor’s Note: In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. In recent years, that number is closer to just three years leading a classroom. The “On Teaching” series focuses on the wisdom of veteran teachers.
Life in the village of Wales, Alaska—located about 55 miles from the Siberian coastline—can be hard. Here, roughly 150 Indigenous Inupiaq residents live in one of the coldest climates on Earth. All store-bought food must be either flown in or brought in by boat, and the harsh weather and winds can shut down schools or connections with the outside world for days. Most of the Indigenous people of Wales depend on gathering berries and greens in the tundra, as well as hunting whales, seals, and other sea life for survival. This means that access to traditional Inupiaq education—how to read the weather to avoid a life-threatening blizzard, how to hunt in a way that doesn’t disturb the delicate balance of nature, sharing, and cooperation—can be a matter of life or death.
But until the early 1990s, most rural schools in Alaska didn’t teach Indigenous knowledge and languages. Wales didn’t have any Native teachers until Josephine Tatauq Bourdon began her first year of working in her mother’s Native village in 1988. Back then, all of the school’s 60 students were Inupiaq, but none of the classes were taught in the Inupiaq language. Native knowledge was dismissed by.
