Volume 33 Number 3
May 1994

Esther A. Ilutsik

I grew up in an Eskimo-Yup'ik speaking home. My father spoke some English and my mother did not. My four brothers, my sister, and I, were taught to be afraid of the white men. Our parents warned us that if we did not behave, the white men would come and take us away. In our experience, even without showing misbehavior, the white men still came and took us children away.

When I was the age of three and a half, both my parents contracted tuberculosis and were sent away to be hospitalized. We were placed in a foster home; fortunately it was in our home village. But, it was like entering another world. We were placed in the local white man's house, where the habits of two cultures clashed. Although this white family had resided in the area for over 20 years, they had virtually kept to themselves. They didn't know the language, didn't eat any meat, and didn't subsist on the local wild plants, berries, or game to which we were so accustomed. They also had other habits that were totally foreign to us. I distinctly remember crying in the kitchen and clinging to my older sister, telling her in Yup'ik that she couldn't leave me to go to school, as I did not know the language and the habits of these people. I remember being torn from her and taken to another part of the house.

After two years, my parents were returned and we were returned to them. Although we were virtually strangers to each other, our family was reunited. For me, it was great to eat meat again and to feel the strength return. However, my youngest brother, who knew only the white man's ways, cried for the white man's home. It was a discovery and an education for him to be served a duck or beaver head for dinner. He didn't have the slightest idea how to eat it.

After living with this white family, we became more leery of the white man. When we saw them approach our island we would run and hide up in the hills and watch these people from a tree until they left. I remember one experience quite vividly. We happened to be home by ourselves–my four brothers, a neighbor friend, and me. We heard a skiff (motor boat) approaching, so we looked out the window and saw a white man coming toward our landing. Remembering our experiences and the warnings of our parents, we were afraid. We hid under the beds, in closets, any place we could squeeze ourselves. We waited and listened. We heard the skiff land on the beach; we heard the skiff being pulled up on the beach, then we heard footsteps approaching the house, the heavy steps on the porch stairs then into the porch and then the dreadful, rapid, and loud, knock-knock-knock. We held our breaths; all we heard was our slow intake of breath and then again, knock-knock-knock. My youngest brother could not contain himself. We heard him whisper, "Come in" and then he yelled, "Come in!" We were dreadfully frightened now. How dare he reveal our presence? The door opened. There was silence, then a voice asked, "Is anyone home?" And then the male voice mumbled that he probably just imagined he heard something, and he shut the door. The footsteps faded away, and we heard the skiff being pushed out and the outboard motor start. We were so relieved. We all came out of our hiding places and reprimanded our younger brother for being so bold. We scolded him, telling him we could have been taken away, especially since our parents weren't there.

Eventually, we had to start school and had to encounter these white men again. We had to interact with them. It truly was a frightening experience, but we survived.

We learned and tried very hard to understand and please white people and their unfamiliar ways. They seemed to always keep to themselves. These white people in the school were different from other white people we knew. I was confused. They did not eat meat, drink tea or coffee, disapproved of movies, and went to church on Saturdays. It contradicted the actions of all the white men we saw in the fish canneries, who enjoyed these things!

We were taught that the white men were to be respected, and that in school we had to do what they wanted us to do, or else they would take us away. Yet at school and in their presence, we could sense that we were never quite good enough for them. Therefore, we always blundered in their presence. Their word was over our word. We were meek in their presence.

I was sent away to a Bureau of Indian Affairs high school located about 1,000 miles away from my home village. The enrollment was totally Alaska Native.

During high school, the realization came to me that I was Eskimo. At that time I really did not care or even understand what culture meant. After all, my people had been confirmed by the missionaries and had long abandoned their dances and other cultural celebrations. Still, my people continued with other cultural beliefs. However, the manifestation of these beliefs seemed to frighten the deeply religious people. It didn't matter to me at the time, but I still did not feel comfortable in the presence of white men.

Entering college in another state really brought the realization to me that I was Alaska Native, an Eskimo, a Yup'ik Eskimo. I had no knowledge of my own cultural background, especially the way others saw it: dances, ceremonies, rites of passage, and so forth. Other students, especially other American Indians, would ask me questions about Alaska and my cultural background. I really couldn't answer their questions seriously. I made a joke of it! I went to the library and tried to read as much as I could about Eskimos. The library was pathetically limited and all the authors were non-Native. Actually, I began to believe some of the things that were written about us Yup'ik people! So I just existed and joked about my culture.

The indigenous students could not believe the little knowledge we had about ourselves. It was a puzzle and a void within ourselves.

Upon graduating from college with a degree in elementary education, I didn't have the faintest idea what I was going to do. I went home and fished commercially. Luckily, I had friends employed with the Head Start Program out of Anchorage. They had a vacancy that fall and called me. I went to work for them, traveling to remote sites within Alaska and training teachers, directors, and parents on how to be "white." I taught them "white" values, what foods to eat, what games to play with the children, what kinds of toys to make and play with, sleeping patterns, and even cleanliness. I was not comfortable with it; in fact, I was embarrassed, but I did it anyway. It was a job. I was doing this job with a horrible conscience bothering me. I quit after a year.

The next year I got a teaching job in a remote village in the area in which I grew up. Again, I experienced this awful feeling of not knowing about my culture. I knew that it existed, but did not know how to apply it in the classroom setting. I was accused of acting white. This really hit a special nerve. I left teaching and went back to the Head Start Program, but quit again. I was not sure what I was going to do now.

Fortunately, the Cross-Cultural Teacher Education Development Program (X-CED) with the University of Alaska Fairbanks had an opening for a field-based instructor. I applied and was called in for an interview. I was surprised to find a young white man, no older than myself, to interview me. I was insulted because he was young, had very limited cross-cultural experience, and he was expected to prepare our people as teachers. I felt a slow anger begin to rise. To make a long story short, I ended up asking him all the questions. I didn't care whether I was hired or not. I even told him he shouldn't be working for the program, that he came from a different culture and probably didn't understand the cultural group with which he was working. So I was surprised to be hired.

This was the turning point in my life because it made me deal directly with my own culture and the culture of others. The Cross-Cultural Teacher Education Development Program and its emphasis on culture strengthened my own cultural understandings. It also made me more aware of positive differences between cultural groups. These differences are important to recognize and maintain since all my formal education and training was meant for me to become as white as possible.

I worked with this organization for three years. It was intense. I finally began to understand my feelings of inadequacy. None of my previous education had a focus on culture as did the Cross-Cultural Teacher Education Program. It was especially valuable for me to be able to discuss and analyze this focus with fellow Yup'ik prospective teachers. I quit my job to travel and see the world.

Upon my return, I was hired by the Southwest Regional Schools to run their Bilingual/Bicultural Education Program. At least now I knew and understood more about the Yup'ik culture and myself I thought I could make changes in the education world. But was I ever in for a surprise. I was laughed at, ridiculed, and belittled. At one point, I was called into the superintendent's office and told that I was not to put "ideas" into the board members' heads and that I could not talk to them about educational issues. I was shocked since many of the board members were my friends and relatives.

After a few years that superintendent retired and Dr. John Anttonen came to take his place. What a change! He was much more open to our ideas. Yet the white administrative staff did not support him. Anttonen left after a few years. However, before he left, he gave the certified Yup'ik teachers something for which they will always be grateful: an organization in which they would feel comfortable, where they would be able to express themselves without being jeopardized, and an organization that would enhance their own positive image and classroom skills. This was the Ciulistet-meaning, literally, Leaders (see Note 1).

Anttonen organized the Ciulistet in 1987. The group was composed of all the certified Yup'ik teachers who were employed with Southwest Regional Schools. This included Evelyn Yanez, Margie Hasting, Ferdinand Sharp, Nancy Sharp, Anecia Lomack, Vicki Dull, William Gumlickpuk, Mary Alexie, and me, Esther A. Ilutsik.

At our first organizational meeting, Anttonen gave us the opportunity to empower ourselves by stating that we knew the educational system better than any educator coming into the area. He said, "You grew up in the area. You went through the educational system, and you even went further–you got certified! Now you are the teachers, parents, and community members. Who can better understand the educational system than yourselves? You should be the ones to advise the school board and the administrative staff on educational issues." What a wonderful, positive feeling, to be thought of so highly by an outside educator. Yet many of our own people and many other educators were painfully aware that we were different, and that difference-based on culture and language had been internalized in a negative sense. In that respect, we had to get over our feeling of inferiority, especially if we were truly going to be the "leaders" in education as the term Ciulistet implies.

One of the first goals for the group was to work with the school board and provide them with direction in education policy. But what happened was miscommunication. Let me illustrate this point with symbols familiar to Yup'ik culture. When I was a little girl we did a lot of storyknifing in the mud and snow. Storyknifing involves telling stories in the snow or mud using a knife and using specific symbols to represent the various characters. The symbols we used for an adult male, an adult female, a male child, and a female child are shown in Figure 1. The symbols for the white people or strangers who came into the village also are shown in Figure 1.

What we saw happening is that many of us left the state to go to school for teacher certification; we returned as women, with Western educational training and techniques for the classroom. So we looked like the symbols shown in Figure 2. With the Cross-Cultural Teacher Education Development Program, the teachers looked like Figure 3, as most of the teacher training is based on the culture, while still using Western teaching methods and practices. These teachers are aware of the Yup'ik culture, but they haven't been taught how to integrate those ideas effectively into the classroom setting.

When Superintendent Anttonen asked us to help the board make educational policies or decisions, our school board members usually sat in a square building, at a rectangular table as noted in Figure 4. Traditionally, we sat in a circle. The white man is displayed bigger because he controls these people (school board), and because our school board wants our educational system to look like a Western institution. So here we were trying to communicate with them about how Yup'ik culture and language are important. Communication was not good. It drew out the negative powers from both sides.

Fortunately, there was Dr. Jerry Lipka who supported us and who had worked with the majority of our teachers in the X-CED program. Dr. Lipka came from Massachusetts to interview for the X-CED field coordinator position and began working with us in 1981. The Ciulistet group really wanted to validate their own way of teaching, realizing that we were not teaching in a totally Western way. So money and experts were sought to help us undertake the group's first study, looking at validating our own way of teaching. We were helped by Dr. Lipka, Dr. Sharon Nelson-Barber of Stanford, and Dr. Gerald Mohatt of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who at that time was the dean of the College of Rural Alaska. Recently, we completed a series of studies investigating our teaching styles (see Lipka, 1990a; 1990b; 1991). These studies underscore some of the ways in which Yup'ik teachers organize their classrooms, relate to their students, and bring in Yup'ik cultural values, and they highlight some of the key issues involved in teacher evaluation.

As Yup'ik teachers, we continue to strengthen ourselves and our identity, and we hope that we can pass these values on to our students. With a strong self-identity and language we can do anything.

Though I continue to be actively involved in Ciulistet and my own development as a Yup'ik educator, I have changed my position with the district. A new superintendent was hired, a non-Native educator whose total experience lay with minority people and who had been a Vista volunteer, a teacher, a principal, a curriculum coordinator, a small school principal, an assistant superintendent, and superintendent. The board was impressed with all his "bush" experience and hired him. However, despite his many years of experience in "bush" Alaska, he still had not crossed the bridge of respect and sensitivity for another cultural group. Knowing full well what lay ahead of me with this man in power, I left my position as bilingual coordinator. I did not want to go through the struggle I had gone through earlier, since now I have children of my own. I transferred to a teaching position in the village where I grew up, and that is where I am today. I have committed myself to take things slowly and to approach cultural barriers in a positive way, daily, deliberately, and carefully!