Module III

What is culture?  How can it be defined? 

cul·ture/ˈkəlCHər/

Noun:

The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.

 
Culture has been something that I have take for granted all my life.  It is one of those words that we use often but with no clear understanding of what it means. I had a teacher ask me once "Lane what is your culture?" My first thought was well I am 1/2 Norwegian, some Irish, some German basically a mutt. But I have never been to Norway my family has lived in America for 150+ years is that even part of me.  I responded that I had none. 

Baseball and the flag, how more American can you get?

This got me thinking what is culture for a white guy part of mainstream society?

 Is it the same for everyone in the majority?

Obviously not, but if it was not apple pie, baseball and the flag what was it for me?

I did not figure out what my culture was until I was the minority for once. That happened when I got in my truck and drove a few thousand miles north, took a ferry and ended up being the only Smith in town first time in my life. (I don't think people understand how rare that is unless they are a Smith, Jones or another common last name.)

In this small village my way of thinking about many things was challenged and cultural differences became quickly apparent.  This helped me define my own culture more clearly than I would have ever thought and discovered that it is very personal.  No one person has the exact same values, beliefs or background.

1.  My culture involves the importance education and the traditional western views associated with it.
2.  If you have a problem you should confront it or move on if it is not that important.
3.  Hard work will help you succeed.

My culture came into direct conflict with a 97% native town that had an important culture going back thousands of years.  Here family, community were more important than education.

So over this year I have been trying to mesh the two views on life together to make it all work.


How are cultural regions linked to the physical landscape? 


When you look at the linguistic map it becomes very obvious the different patterns of migrations and how the different regions are affected by the physical geography.

Looking at the color pattern you can see that that blue tones on the coast are related.  The three major languages in this group are Inupiaq, Yup'iq, and sugpiq.  This is obviously not a coincidence with all three areas having coastal looking cultures.  They depend on the ocean for their livelihoods, trade and beliefs. While trade may have kept the language close it was also the waves of migration from the north that also unified the language patterns.

The interior tribes have very connected language patterns also and were separated from the coast by mountains and vast areas of tundra. Contact was limited to sporadic trade and so the language stayed contained to the interior.

This map by no means is the only differences in languages.

Chugach region of Alaska

As we have been teaching the sugpiq language in class over the past few months it has become clear that even in the region that sugpiq is spoken large differences have cropped up between Kodiak Island speakers and in the Prince Williams Sound. I can only imagine the difference that have occurred throughout Alaska.


Extend
Consider how the connection between people and place is demonstrated.

Teachers Domain

The connection between the native people and the land was very evident.  One elder described how when fish were caught and cleaned the parts that were not eaten were taken up and placed in the garden so that more food could be grown.  The importance of community and place was clearly show by the respect they paid to the elders and how food would be shared now matter what they had left.  I have seen this in my community with the constant sharing of food and the fact that no is never said.  If you need something they will give it to you.





Evaluation 

This week made me think a lot more about myself than I was thinking it would.  I think that this was because culture is such a personal thing.  It also is because I have had to deal with some clashes in culture this year.  Some of these have been positive and others a learning experience. 
I liked the links that were provided this week especial the different corporations lists of values.  It was interesting to see the different values some the same and some very different. I was surprised when I looked at the two corporations that cover the village that I live in that they don't list their values on either website.
I have appreciated the feed back each week on the blog and the help on how to improve it.


Excellent blogs from around the class!

Alaskan History: A newcomers perspective did a great job of overcoming the difficulty of how to define culture.  It is something that I struggled to do in my blog but I clearly was not as well spoken.

Diane is Exploring Alaska was very good at quickly getting to the point about having to know about the culture in a new place.  I have also quickly had to get up to speed on a new culture.

Peter Explores Alaska I found it interesting to read his right after Diane's blog.  Peter has lived in Alaska all of his life and so for him many of the things that are new to me and Diane were not an issue.  His connection to his hockey life and culture surprised me but made sense.