CULTURALLY NEGOTIATED SCHOOLING: TOWARD A YUP'IK

• Main Author: Jerry Lipka
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1994
• Subjects: Indian; eskimo*; Yup'ik; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.500.1760; http://www.uaf.edu/mcc/award-recognition-and-oth/culturally-negotiated-schooling.pdf

This paper describes one aspect of a long-term collaboration between the author and a Yup'ik teachers ' research group, Ciulistet, focusing on the processes and development of Yup'ik culturally based mathematics. The premise behind this work is that the Yup'ik language, culture, and worldview, particularly subsistence activities, contain mathematical concepts. These concepts include a number system that is base 20 and sub-base 5, and ways of measuring and visualizing. This has direct applications to school math. However, just as important, the project participants are increasingly realizing the potential of using their culture and language as a means to change the culture of schooling. Numerous calls for transforming American Indian and Alaska Native education have been made and gone largely unheeded. This lack of responsiveness by the educational establishment continues to underscore the colonial nature of schooling which too often undermines indigenous language and culture. Research from the 1928 Meriam Report to the 1991 Indian Nations at Risk study indicates that increased local autonomy and actively valuing elders ' knowledge will strengthen indigenous schools (Meriam, Brown, Cloud, & Dale, 1928; U.S. Department of Education, 1991). The present paper describes a deliberate process to change the context and culture of schooling in a few Yup'ik Eskimo communities in southwest Alaska. The process of changing and negotiating the culture of schooling is one of collaboration with Yup'ik elders, teachers, community members, administrators and university faculty