Walkie Charles triggered my interest in doing a digital story about the oppression of the natives and how it affects our community today. Walkie said that as a young boy speaking his native language of Yup’ik was shunned and looked down upon. Because of this he was forced to learn english and basically forget his native tongue. His passion for his language and his culture made me question our society and the people within it.
How many Native families are there in Fairbanks that have experienced similar treatments? Where did it all start? Has it ended? What is the impact on the native community in Fairbanks today?
I would like to make a digital story about the education and oppression of Alaska Natives, that stemmed specifically during the nineteenth and twentieth century.
I found some links that can give us valid information about the topic and its history.
https://ankn.uaf.edu/Curriculum/Articles/CarolBarnhardt/HistoryofSchooling.html – A brief history of the education system.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1550192 – This is a Journal entry entitled The Changing Focus of Native Education in Alaska . It gives dates in history as well as changes of the Alaskan Native education in through time.
I am also interested in interviewing a few Fairbanks residents to talk about their experiences or family members experiences with my topic as well. I would be interested in interviewing Walkie Charles as the project progresses. I was also considering going to the digital archives and looking for these types of testimonies.
Also, I believe there is an exhibit at UAF’s Museum of the North that provides a lot of insight to this topic.
This digital story would be best represented in a digital film. In the film we could use the video or recordings of people interviewed and/or archives. If we cannot get the archives directly transferred into the video it may be possible to do a voice-over to transfer the story.I am interested in have subtitles, pictures, and video clips within the film that we can do with iMovie on Mac computers.
