The Cook Inlet Tribal Council Inc. held their annual Fall Gathering at East High School and because my parents sit on the NEAC we were invited to attend.
Many families were there and all were there to honor their students achievements. I liked watching my mother and father's faces when they listened to the awards given to students of all the CITCI JOM Indian Education Programs within the Anchorage School District.
I was particularly interested to hear about one East High School Student who scored so high on her SAT test, her score was the highest in the State of Alaska. Many of the students I attended MEDIAK's summer program with were filming the evening event which included Yup'ik style dancing by West High School.
At one point while watching the dancers, my mother leaned over to me and said "you know when I was growing up - the dancers never wore all the same guspuks - that is a more modern thing, having the same clothes on everyone" "When I was growing up my elders celebrated the uniqueness of each dancer - the young man or woman dancing in regalia showed how well of a seamstress or hunter he or she was by what they were wearing. Nowadays the message is one of sameness and less individualism". She continued, "remember seeing the hoop dancers in Colorado? All those dancers had different regalia on....I do not know if I like this trend in our own dancers - of everyone wearing the same thing."
That small bit of information shared over a Yup'ik dance opened my eyes as to how much my culture is changing. We accept standardized tests in school, we go to schools identified so that we fit in a box - Caucasian, African American, Native American or Alaskan Native and so forth, and we listen to what the media tells us what we should or should not have like a new ipod, computers and more. We now live in houses that are sometimes indistinguishable from each other, other than color.
No comments:
Post a Comment