City students take cultural leap to remote village
JUNEAU-DOUGLAS: Program aims to bridge rural, urban divide.
By ERIC FRY
The Juneau Empire
(Published: March 27, 2005)
JUNEAU -- Five Juneau-Douglas High School students recently got a taste of ice fishing, mushing, trapping, muktuk and beaver tail in Russian Mission, a Yup'ik Eskimo village on the Yukon River near the coast.
The weeklong experience in mid-February was federally funded through the Rose Urban Rural Exchange of the Alaska Humanities Forum. Since the program began five years ago, about 300 students from cities and villages in Alaska have visited each other, said program director Panu Lucier in Anchorage.
An exchange between students from Floyd Dryden Middle School and Napakiak also is taking place this year.
In mid-April, students from Russian Mission -- a village of 330 people 375 miles west of Anchorage -- will visit Juneau, where they will experience bowling, movies, malls and perhaps walk on the Mendenhall Glacier.
"The ultimate goal is to create a sustainable sister-school relationship between urban and rural classrooms," said Ali McKenna, a JDHS English teacher who accompanied the students to Russian Mission.
Juneau and Russian Mission are both isolated communities in their own ways, said Chris Jans, a Russian Mission teacher.
The humanities forum is willing to continue to fund exchanges between participating schools, Lucier said. The goal is for urban students to learn more about rural lifestyles and Native cultures, and for village students to see what it's like to live in a city, she said.
"It sounded like something really different that you wouldn't be able to do anywhere else -- live in a tiny Alaskan village where everything's so in touch with everything," JDHS sophomore Joey Bosworth said.
That and a week out of school was hard to resist, students said.
Students usually stay with host families, but Russian Mission was holding a winter festival when the Juneau students visited, so they lodged with teachers.
The Juneau students said they didn't spend time in the classrooms, but they did see the students at their school work because that included subsistence activities, which then became the basis for studies in the usual academic subjects.
The Juneau students mostly were outdoors, following children or teenagers along their beaver and lynx traplines, ice fishing, mushing and snowmachining or skiing to cabins and staying overnight.
The Juneau students said they expected a barren, flat landscape and were surprised to see hills and trees. But it was the people they remembered most.
"You walk down the streets -- well, they're not really streets -- and everyone says 'hi.' They know who you are," JDHS sophomore Jill Carlile said.
"And by the end of the trip, you know everyone in the village," JDHS sophomore Lindsey Kato said. "The little kids were precious."
The Juneau students chopped wood at remote cabins and cleared the snow off the roofs. They learned that driving a team of dogs is more fun than riding in the basket, where your face gets coated in icy snow churned up by the dogs.
They ate moose, beaver meat and beaver tail, eel, beluga muktuk, and Eskimo "ice cream," which is made of fish oil, berries, lard and sugar.
"It doesn't really taste like ice cream at all," Carlile observed.
"Like sweet, dried tuna fish," Kato suggested.
Beaver tail tastes like wood, the students said.
"Good wood. Really tasty wood," said Bosworth.
The exchange program began five years ago with students only. In the second year, it added teachers. And in the third year, it promoted sister-school relationships.
The King Career Center, a vocational school in Anchorage, made the exchange with Barrow as part of King's natural resources department. The city students learned about resource issues in the Bush, and the rural students learned about job opportunities in government agencies.
"It's basically getting agencies and groups together that don't communicate a lot," said Myroslava Ponomarchuk, the sister-school coordinator for the humanities forum.
"The proper approach to the solution of the gap (between rural and urban Alaska) is you've got to teach the kids how to deal with it because we're about done," said Jans, referring to his generation. "We're not the ones who are going to make a change."
Distributed by The Associated Press
Copyright © 2005 The Anchorage Daily News (www.adn.com)
3.27.2005
3.14.2005
Small Town Technology...Big Time Results
For most folks, when they think about technology, the broadband and the internet, and the 'ultra' rural (as we like to denote in Alaska) communities in Alaska...a manifest destiny vision of 'the lost souls of digital divide' are oft-times conjured-up...visions of folks just 'out of the loop', without access to information resources, backwoods hobo technologists with little or nothing to offer the outside world!
It has always been my pretense that 'once connected' to the 'net' and having the ability to participate via a broadband standard, with full access and complete reliability, rural Alaskans would have a tremendous amount to offer the outsiders.
It wasn't so much that rural residents wouldn't benefit greatly, as the underserved recipients of the digital information age - that was a given. To me it was more that rural Alaskans had so much to offer than most regulators, policy makers, and urban jockeys could ever imagine.
It's been years since my rant was published on MSN...and I'm happy to call-up some new visions of 'the possible'. Rural Alaskans, known for their innovation, acceptance and use of technologies that enhance (and dutifully unaccepting of those that don't) their well-being and improve the quality of life for their communities are here and now!
I'm happy to present a few on this blog...
John and Sheila Wallace, Bethel
http://www.alaskatechnologies.com/
Greg and Kelley Lincoln, Bethel / Toksook Bay
http://www.deltadiscovery.com/
Jim and Esther
http://www.wholewheatradio.org/
______________________________
We're real people. We have an outhouse out back. We don't have a professionally polished webpage, flashy banner ads, overblown self-promotion and lots of glitz. If you came here because you're tired of other webcast's hype and just want to connect with down-to-earth people and great music --- stick
http://www.wholewheatradio.org/
Whole Wheat Radio is an unpretentious, interactive, independent music world community. Our webcast originates from a cramped 12x12 cabin in Talkeetna, Alaska. It's as close to Northern Exposure's funky radio station as you can get. (Yup, there's a moose that hangs around the cabin. And an adorable monkey too.) We broadcast 24 hours/day, 7 days/week, 365 days/year with the help of our tireless DJs - human and otherwise. We've been on-the-air since August of 2002 and have served up well over a million individual 'listens' to independent musicians' tunes.
_____________________________
The Delta Discovery is the newest and most widely circulated weekly publication serving the people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and Bristol Bay regions of Southwestern Alaska.
http://www.deltadiscovery.com
The newspaper was established and continues as a locally owned and operated Bethel newspaper with support from the people of the region who contribute letters, commentaries and columns which shapes the news of rural Alaska.
_____________________________
Purchasing, Upgrade, and Training Assistance. Specializing in remote and creative solutions to the problems of Rural Alaska's needs. Alaska Technologies, LLC (ATL)
http://www.alaskatechnologies.com/
ATL provides IT services to Companies and Organizations that do not need or want an internal IT department. ATL is a FirstClass partner offering what we feel is the best eMail and internal communication product on the market. ATL provides end user and other corporate training. We design individual and group packages based upon YOUR system.
http://www.kusko.net/
kusko.net is the community service arm of ATL and provides web and technology services throughout the Y-K Delta, connecting other community service orgs to their community and the www. Years of development, support and outright contributions to the YK Delta community through technology.
2.28.2005
Civic Journalism...Anchorage Daily News
Editors note: This is correspondance from Tim, "Hey, "I just said I grew up in the village of Teller and that in the village you make it a point to get to know everyone" Pearson. With his ability to network, Tim is in the position to shake-up the status quo...this is the type of action rural Alaskans need to take...not many have the cajones to even try...Tim does!
Tim as an Anchoragite
____________________________
Hello!
A big Quianna!!!
You’ve astounded me. I knew I had intelligent, caring and passionate friends, but I had no idea that you were so eloquent, so civic-minded, and so fast on the keyboard. I’m both heartened and humbled.
I asked 126 of you for story ideas that the Anchorage Daily News could start covering or cover even more deeply in order to strengthen our life together as citizens and Alaskans.
26 (20%) replied. The result was 39 pages of material with an appendix. (attached)
____________________________
I shared your responses on Friday, Feb. 25 with:
Michael Sexton (Publisher)
msexton@adn.com , President & Publisher, 907-257-4210
(no photo found, google/image search feb.28)
and Pat Dougherty (Editor)
pdougherty@adn.com , Senior VP and Editor, 257-4303
(photo, google/image feb.20)
Dougherty
of the Anchorage "“To be the best source of news and information enhancing the lives of Alaskans.”" Daily News.
http://www.adn.com
They even gave me permission to run over the allotted 30 minutes by 20 minutes.
We discussed the concept of civic journalism: journalism for increased public deliberation, civic problem solving, volunteerism and innovative public policy.
The reception was guarded, but that’s all that I hoped for. The meeting started warily (who are you?) and ended cordially.
_________________________________
The next step on their end:
They said they’d read your responses. I didn’t push them further. You know how it goes with journalists – you want them to think it’s their own idea.
I don’t think they quite knew what to make of me. (Hey, I just said I grew up in the village of Teller and that in the village you make it a point to get to know everyone.)
I’m not sure I know quite what to make of me either. I usually don’t make such public waves, but after reading what was considered to be news this past week, I felt compelled to promote a deepening of our common civic conversation.
For my part, I will take the following 7 actions:
1. Share your responses with all 126 of the friends I surveyed so that everyone can see the quality of ideas you generated.
2. Post the document on my website so that it can be downloaded in the future by anyone at any time.
3. Share your responses with 5 key friends (Kitty Farnham, Alice Galvin, Dennis McMillian, Gwen Kennedy, and Lori Henry) who are actively trying to encourage new civic and leadership conversations across Alaska so that the audience for your ideas is amplified as much as possible.
4. Encourage other friends to send me ideas for stories that would strengthen our civic life together so that best thinking, significant heros, and positive public policy innovations can continue to be gathered and shared.
5. Challenge you to stay focused on strengthening our civic life together. So, I’ll ask you two questions:
(answer how and when you wish)
-- what responsibility will you take for strengthening our civic life together? (rhetorical, answer for yourself)
-- what action will you take to strengthen our civic life in the next 30 days? (feel free to tell me, and if you wish, I’ll
compile those too)
6. Continue to surprise myself.______
7. Follow up with an update in 30 days.
___________________________
Notes from the conversation with Michael and Pat:
--Pat Dougherty says that the number one issue for the Anchorage Daily News is state finances.
--According to Pat, the ADN sees its role in Anchorage and Alaska as being “a forum for the marketplace of ideas.”
--They receive 300 to 400 Letters to the Editor a week – substantially more than many other papers.
--They have 107 reporters. The standard for a community this size would be 60-75 reporters. The number reflects McClatchy’s commitment to the role of the paper in Alaska.
--re: their comments on civic journalism: the concept’s been around for eight years and has been used and abused. It’s hard to define. They said a newspaper did spend significant resources in Maine several years ago and held multiple town meetings the length and breadth of the state on the issue of alcoholism. Even multiple times in each community. Public policy did change as a result. [They didn’t say if the Anchorage Daily News was interested in doing anything similar.]
--my best summary of what they said: they don’t think that they set or have direct influence on Alaska’s civic conversation. They do try to make sure everyone is working from similar information.
--according to Pat: the primary focus is Anchorage – like a bull’s eye – and it moves out from there depending on the story and on resources.
--Michael Sexton, President and Publisher, has been in Anchorage for 5 years. He was in Augusta, Maine previously.
--Pat Dougherty, Senior Vice President and Editor, has lived in Alaska for 30 years (Juneau and mostly Anchorage).
--I did screw up the courage to ask them politely when was the last time they were out in Rural Alaska:
--Pat Dougherty was out sportfishing in the Bristol Bay region in early summer, June 2005
--Michael Sexton was in Togiak two years ago, and leaves for Prudhoe Bay in two weeks.
(“We have decades of Alaska experience in our newsroom. It’s really deep.”)
--they did comment about the challenge of getting Alaskan leaders together: It’s hard to reach Alaskans and Alaskan leaders between May and September because they’re fishing or flying. And Alaskans are often traveling between September and May – focused on their own individual matters.
_____________________________
Tim’s observations:
--The Anchorage Daily News’s mission statement, posted above the exit:
“To be the best source of news and information enhancing the lives of Alaskans.”
--Both Pat and Michael would probably be open to traveling outside of Anchorage if there were invitations and opportunities. They both seem like nice white urban men.
--The rural / urban gap is even bigger than I imagined (and I didn’t think I was naïve).
--I’ve now been told by several people (in positions to know) that there is no core group of civic leaders, who cross industry and sector boundaries (private sector, federal, state, oil, fisheries, etc.), who are consistently focused on taking actions that promote the common good.
(The good news: There are no adults in the room. The really fun news: It’s up to us.)
--My bottomline take-away: we Alaskans ARE locked in habitual patterns of conversation. We talk to our friends and mostly to our friends – meaning those we know – so, I’m convinced more than ever of the importance of Kitty Farnham’s insight from complexity science that you can’t manage systems, but that there is value in disrupting systems.
___________________________
So if we want to change the civic conversation in Alaska for the better, it’s up to you and it’s up to me.
Please pardon me, but I turned 45 on Alaska Day last fall.
I’m going to start disrupting the system.
Tim as a Ruralite
Cheers!
Tim
(907) 562-1568 v/f
(907) 952-3498 cell
www.timpearson.net
_______________________________
Additional FYIs:
The Anchorage Dailly News:
http://www.adn.com/help/
Is a subsidiary of:
http://www.mcclatchy.com/
Directed by:
http://www.mcclatchy.com/about/officers/
The McClatchy Company is a leading newspaper and Internet publisher dedicated to the values of quality journalism, free expression and community service. Building on a 147-year legacy of independence, the company's newspapers and websites are steadfast defenders of First Amendment values and advocates for the communities they serve.
Headquartered in Sacramento, Ca., the company has 12 daily and 18 community newspapers with a combined average circulation of 1.4 million daily and 1.9 million Sunday. Over the decades, McClatchy newpapers' many honors have included 12 Pulitzer Prizes, three of which were gold medals for public service.
McClatchy has an Internet subsidiary, Nando Media, that provides both content and business support for interactive media nationwide. Each of the company�s newspapers operates the leading Web site in its area, and most also offer regional portals as well.
McClatchy�s largest newspaper is the Star Tribune in Minneapolis-St. Paul, which it acquired in 1998.
The oldest paper, The Sacramento Bee, was founded in 1857 during the Gold Rush and is the company�s second largest.
The News & Observer in Raleigh, NC, was bought by McClatchy in 1995 and ranks third in circulation. Nando Media was created by The N&O and McClatchy acquired it when it bought the newspaper.
Two California papers, The Fresno Bee and The Modesto Bee, were part of McClatchy�s original holdings and are now the fourth- and sixth-largest newspapers in the group. The News Tribune in Tacoma, WA, purchased in 1986, ranks fifth in circulation.
In 1979, in its first moves outside its home state, McClatchy bought both the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska and the Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, WA.
McClatchy�s presence in the South began in 1990 when it acquired three dailies in South Carolina: The Herald in Rock Hill, The Island Packet in Hilton Head, and The Beaufort Gazette.
In January 2004, McClatchy bought the Merced Sun-Star and five affiliated non-dailies in California's Central Valley. Those newspapers are the Atwater Signal, the Chowchilla News, the Livingston Chronicle, the Los Ba�os Enterprise and the Sierra Star, which is in Oakhurst, CA.
McClatchy�s other operations include Newsprint Ventures, Inc., a consortium that operates the Ponderay newsprint mill near Spokane, WA.
The company has about 9,300 employees, and they remain committed to the same principle that spurred founding editor James McClatchy in 1857: quality journalism is the bedrock of a successful newspaper business.
McClatchy is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MNI.
contact info:
contact@mcclatchy.com
________________
Tim as an Anchoragite
____________________________
Hello!
A big Quianna!!!
You’ve astounded me. I knew I had intelligent, caring and passionate friends, but I had no idea that you were so eloquent, so civic-minded, and so fast on the keyboard. I’m both heartened and humbled.
I asked 126 of you for story ideas that the Anchorage Daily News could start covering or cover even more deeply in order to strengthen our life together as citizens and Alaskans.
26 (20%) replied. The result was 39 pages of material with an appendix. (attached)
____________________________
I shared your responses on Friday, Feb. 25 with:
Michael Sexton (Publisher)
msexton@adn.com , President & Publisher, 907-257-4210
(no photo found, google/image search feb.28)
and Pat Dougherty (Editor)
pdougherty@adn.com , Senior VP and Editor, 257-4303
(photo, google/image feb.20)
Dougherty
of the Anchorage "“To be the best source of news and information enhancing the lives of Alaskans.”" Daily News.
http://www.adn.com
They even gave me permission to run over the allotted 30 minutes by 20 minutes.
We discussed the concept of civic journalism: journalism for increased public deliberation, civic problem solving, volunteerism and innovative public policy.
The reception was guarded, but that’s all that I hoped for. The meeting started warily (who are you?) and ended cordially.
_________________________________
The next step on their end:
They said they’d read your responses. I didn’t push them further.
I don’t think they quite knew what to make of me. (Hey, I just said I grew up in the village of Teller and that in the village you make it a point to get to know everyone.)
I’m not sure I know quite what to make of me either. I usually don’t make such public waves, but after reading what was considered to be news this past week, I felt compelled to promote a deepening of our common civic conversation.
For my part, I will take the following 7 actions:
1. Share your responses with all 126 of the friends I surveyed so that everyone can see the quality of ideas you generated.
2. Post the document on my website so that it can be downloaded in the future by anyone at any time.
3. Share your responses with 5 key friends (Kitty Farnham, Alice Galvin, Dennis McMillian, Gwen Kennedy, and Lori Henry) who are actively trying to encourage new civic and leadership conversations across Alaska so that the audience for your ideas is amplified as much as possible.
4. Encourage other friends to send me ideas for stories that would strengthen our civic life together so that best thinking, significant heros, and positive public policy innovations can continue to be gathered and shared.
5. Challenge you to stay focused on strengthening our civic life together. So, I’ll ask you two questions:
(answer how and when you wish)
-- what responsibility will you take for strengthening our civic life together? (rhetorical, answer for yourself)
-- what action will you take to strengthen our civic life in the next 30 days? (feel free to tell me, and if you wish, I’ll
compile those too)
6. Continue to surprise myself.______
7. Follow up with an update in 30 days.
___________________________
Notes from the conversation with Michael and Pat:
--Pat Dougherty says that the number one issue for the Anchorage Daily News is state finances.
--According to Pat, the ADN sees its role in Anchorage and Alaska as being “a forum for the marketplace of ideas.”
--They receive 300 to 400 Letters to the Editor a week – substantially more than many other papers.
--They have 107 reporters. The standard for a community this size would be 60-75 reporters. The number reflects McClatchy’s commitment to the role of the paper in Alaska.
--re: their comments on civic journalism: the concept’s been around for eight years and has been used and abused. It’s hard to define. They said a newspaper did spend significant resources in Maine several years ago and held multiple town meetings the length and breadth of the state on the issue of alcoholism. Even multiple times in each community. Public policy did change as a result. [They didn’t say if the Anchorage Daily News was interested in doing anything similar.]
--my best summary of what they said: they don’t think that they set or have direct influence on Alaska’s civic conversation. They do try to make sure everyone is working from similar information.
--according to Pat: the primary focus is Anchorage – like a bull’s eye – and it moves out from there depending on the story and on resources.
--Michael Sexton, President and Publisher, has been in Anchorage for 5 years. He was in Augusta, Maine previously.
--Pat Dougherty, Senior Vice President and Editor, has lived in Alaska for 30 years (Juneau and mostly Anchorage).
--I did screw up the courage to ask them politely when was the last time they were out in Rural Alaska:
--Pat Dougherty was out sportfishing in the Bristol Bay region in early summer, June 2005
--Michael Sexton was in Togiak two years ago, and leaves for Prudhoe Bay in two weeks.
(“We have decades of Alaska experience in our newsroom. It’s really deep.”)
--they did comment about the challenge of getting Alaskan leaders together: It’s hard to reach Alaskans and Alaskan leaders between May and September because they’re fishing or flying. And Alaskans are often traveling between September and May – focused on their own individual matters.
_____________________________
Tim’s observations:
--The Anchorage Daily News’s mission statement, posted above the exit:
“To be the best source of news and information enhancing the lives of Alaskans.”
--Both Pat and Michael would probably be open to traveling outside of Anchorage if there were invitations and opportunities. They both seem like nice white urban men.
--The rural / urban gap is even bigger than I imagined (and I didn’t think I was naïve).
--I’ve now been told by several people (in positions to know) that there is no core group of civic leaders, who cross industry and sector boundaries (private sector, federal, state, oil, fisheries, etc.), who are consistently focused on taking actions that promote the common good.
(The good news: There are no adults in the room. The really fun news: It’s up to us.)
--My bottomline take-away: we Alaskans ARE locked in habitual patterns of conversation. We talk to our friends and mostly to our friends – meaning those we know – so, I’m convinced more than ever of the importance of Kitty Farnham’s insight from complexity science that you can’t manage systems, but that there is value in disrupting systems.
___________________________
So if we want to change the civic conversation in Alaska for the better, it’s up to you and it’s up to me.
Please pardon me, but I turned 45 on Alaska Day last fall.
I’m going to start disrupting the system.
Tim as a Ruralite
Cheers!
Tim
(907) 562-1568 v/f
(907) 952-3498 cell
www.timpearson.net
_______________________________
Additional FYIs:
The Anchorage Dailly News:
http://www.adn.com/help/
Is a subsidiary of:
http://www.mcclatchy.com/
Directed by:
http://www.mcclatchy.com/about/officers/
The McClatchy Company is a leading newspaper and Internet publisher dedicated to the values of quality journalism, free expression and community service. Building on a 147-year legacy of independence, the company's newspapers and websites are steadfast defenders of First Amendment values and advocates for the communities they serve.
Headquartered in Sacramento, Ca., the company has 12 daily and 18 community newspapers with a combined average circulation of 1.4 million daily and 1.9 million Sunday. Over the decades, McClatchy newpapers' many honors have included 12 Pulitzer Prizes, three of which were gold medals for public service.
McClatchy has an Internet subsidiary, Nando Media, that provides both content and business support for interactive media nationwide. Each of the company�s newspapers operates the leading Web site in its area, and most also offer regional portals as well.
McClatchy�s largest newspaper is the Star Tribune in Minneapolis-St. Paul, which it acquired in 1998.
The oldest paper, The Sacramento Bee, was founded in 1857 during the Gold Rush and is the company�s second largest.
The News & Observer in Raleigh, NC, was bought by McClatchy in 1995 and ranks third in circulation. Nando Media was created by The N&O and McClatchy acquired it when it bought the newspaper.
Two California papers, The Fresno Bee and The Modesto Bee, were part of McClatchy�s original holdings and are now the fourth- and sixth-largest newspapers in the group. The News Tribune in Tacoma, WA, purchased in 1986, ranks fifth in circulation.
In 1979, in its first moves outside its home state, McClatchy bought both the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska and the Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, WA.
McClatchy�s presence in the South began in 1990 when it acquired three dailies in South Carolina: The Herald in Rock Hill, The Island Packet in Hilton Head, and The Beaufort Gazette.
In January 2004, McClatchy bought the Merced Sun-Star and five affiliated non-dailies in California's Central Valley. Those newspapers are the Atwater Signal, the Chowchilla News, the Livingston Chronicle, the Los Ba�os Enterprise and the Sierra Star, which is in Oakhurst, CA.
McClatchy�s other operations include Newsprint Ventures, Inc., a consortium that operates the Ponderay newsprint mill near Spokane, WA.
The company has about 9,300 employees, and they remain committed to the same principle that spurred founding editor James McClatchy in 1857: quality journalism is the bedrock of a successful newspaper business.
McClatchy is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MNI.
contact info:
contact@mcclatchy.com
________________
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