Module II

Module II, Part II
Essential Question: How is everything connected from the perspectives of indigenous peoples and Western scientists? What are the advantages to knowing both ways?

While working in the rural bush areas daily and seeing the scientific ways and the (normal) native ways tends to make me wonder the advantage of using this method.  Over time the native people didn’t take advantage of the western ways, until they figured out, it does make things faster for their environment.

Spending time with Elders, parents and students daily listening about their hunting trips and the land that they covered daily for a feasible reward of food. They patrol certain areas due to the greater the hunt and easier terrain on snow machines, boats or four wheelers to make hunt successful, and to get home safely to feed their families.

Now they use more western devices to help them indicate where they are going to and coming from as a safety net.  They also still use their own traditional mind-set and beliefs when all gadgets fail in sum zero temperatures.  One advantage for our school students is that they all have laptops to take out to hunt with, so when they are at camp they make movies and come back to show us their great hunt. Rather than tell us all the stories play by play.  What they enjoy the most is when their Elders goes with them and teach them the traditional ways as well.

Lastly, this advantage of connections gives the native society a connection to the “outside” world; children are able to see what a more modernized society consists of.  One the flip side, westernized societies are able too see what the rural life in Alaska is like through integration of technology as well.