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OPINION: 'Fifty Miles From Tomorrow' resonates

May 25th 2:29 pm | Etta Fournier Print this article   Email this article   Create a Shortlink for this article

This book has reminded me of my childhood and how it was before statehood and how subsistence is still our way of life today. It makes me at ease because I know our younger generation will know what struggles our people have endured and are able to move forward with dignity.

Just like William L. Iååiåruk Hensley I was raised by my grandmother culturally adopted. Grandmother Etta Ekolook raised me in a little shack house made of wood from a wooden ship. Page 20, he say's " She taught me much of the old language and the ways of our elders. It was from her that I learned much of what I know about our people and their values." This has been my legacy and I know exactly where I stand today because I am passing on the Iñupiat language which is being revitalized today.

Some of the Bureau of Indian Affairs teachers that Mr. Hensley had like Virginia Powell were instrumental in helping us achieve English language usage. She helped me to learn to communicate my opinions about the issues that affected me as a citizen. Ms. Powel was my speech communication teacher at Mt. Edgecumbe High School. He says in parenthesis on page 86, (Today, I often think about how they taught and what they must have thought about the BIA educational philosophy, so carefully designed to suppress Native languages and culture.) I know that what the previous educational philosophy has done, it made us who we are today as Iñupiat people, able to live in both worlds. It's the younger generation that is learning our language and culture that need our knowledge of language and culture and to pass it on just as our forefathers have done. Today we have the capability to live in both worlds and we as Iñupiat people have the intelligence, wisdom and knowledge to move forward for the sake of our future generations.

True the naluaåmiut did not know our intelligence but we have survived for thousands of years in our homelands and we are today able to use the educational system of today to pass on what our forefathers have always done, share the bounty and educate our young people in our own culture. Essentially it's the ones that know our language intimately that were punished for speaking their first language that will have to help revitalize our language and culture.

The Iñupiaq people are alive and well. We have taken our education system and used it to include our languages in our public school system. It is not hard to convince the Iñupiat people to become involved with our children. But it is just hard to do when the grandparents of today have been suspended in time. Hope is still here because I can hear them speaking already with tears of hope and my heart is hurting to hear my children speak to me in my language.

It is time to include everyone in our revitalization of our Iñupiat language and not exclude anyone who wants to learn the Iñupiat language. The language nest has to be thought of as holistically and include everyone from the infant, toddler, children, teens, young parents, young adults, adults, grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles and anyone else wanting to learn our homeland language.

I will hear my children speaking my Iñupiaq language past on from my grandmother, relatives and community members who will be this generation of grandparents that endured being slapped on the hand with a ruler because we uttered our Iñupiat language and were punished for speaking our first language. We could not understand this sudden cruelty and pain. Because we were never slapped or spanked in our entire childhood and coming into the school taught us if we spoke our language it was a bad thing. What does the child think? Can you imagine being that child?

Put yourself in their shoes and figure out the pain we have carried for so long, shame of our language, and not able to talk about it, because as an Iñupiaq we are told to manimmi, "to tolerate something unpleasant, pain etc.,".

Page 78, " Children never forgot the message that our language was inferior, that it was inadequate to our future. Year after year, day in day out, the children of Alaska Natives were told that who they were was not good enough, that they should leave behind the world of their parents and grandparents and become something different." This paragraph tells me about the time when the grandparents of today have been suspended in time. They are the parents who attended boarding schools and have said that they only speak to their children and grandchildren in English because they don't want their children to be punished like they were. I have done the same for my children I have been that generation that by not speaking and passing on my culture have hurt them with identity issues, shame and passing on the inferiority taught, learned and suppressed for years.

It is time to talk to my big brother in our language because it was not our fault. I know you can speak our Iñupiaq language because I heard you when we were children. It is time for you to talk to Unalina in our own homeland language because it is our body, soul, mind and our homeland environment where we love our niqipiaq, (Iñupiaq food). We are also protecting our environment for our future generations let us pass on our language that belong to our children.

I know my people will prevail because we have endured enough and our young people need us today. They want to laugh with us, speak with us without shame, learn how to survive living the Iñupiat lifestye. Our ancestors prevailed so can this generation of grandparents who have the wisdom, knowledge, intelligence, foresight and holistic attitude of our forefathers to speak the truth and move on to have our younger generation achieve their dreams of living the Iñupiat lifestyle and speaking fluently with intelligence like our forefathers tongue.

 


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