Module 4 – Sharing Our Pathways: Native Perspectives on Education in Alaska

This important book was published in May 2011 as the Alaska Native Knowledge Network prepared a collection of essays derived from articles first published by the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative’s (AKRSI) newsletter publication Sharing Our Pathways. The primary purpose of AKRSI was to systematically document native ways of knowing, the Indigenous knowledge systems used by Alaska Native people and use this information to develop curricula to be taught in Alaska’s schools. Sharing Our Pathways: Native Perspectives on Education in Alaska was edited by Ray Barnhardt and Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley. Dr. Barnhardt is Director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cultural Studies Department. The late Dr. Kawagley, who passed this April, conceived the notion of using indigenous methodology to teach students in the schools. Kawagley and Barnhardt worked closely together for many years to foster the use of cultural and curriculum resources developed by AKRSI. Sharing Our Pathways is broken into five pathways to education that each represents values held by the Athabascan, Iñupiaq, Tlingit/Haida, Unangan/Alutiiq and Yup’ik/Cup’ik peoples.