Our Way of Life

You know, looking back on it now, at the time it was a conference where it was just bringing the elders together to talk about these things. And you just say, wow, that was a stroke of genius.

On March 1st through the 3rd, 2004, a historical event took place in Juneau, Alaska. The original list was actually from Dr. Walter Soboloff's work, and that was, was the original intent of this project. What would that model look like When we go out to our communities and say, we want to wrap around you, we want to be here to be in a supportive role, what kinds of values do we— what is that foundational values that we want in developing our programs? And so this was meant to be a poster to hang on the wall to help non-native students understand who Native students were. So the importance of this gathering is to hear from you as our respected elders, to help us learn from your wisdom.

And to listen to some of them tell the stories and talk about their experiences. Explain what value means to me. Means my way of life. It goes a long ways. What am I going to tell my children?

What am I going to tell my grandchildren? And they want their culture to survive. The beauty of our culture is we're an oral society. We learn our values in our stories.

Something that was taught to me when I was a young man, where, you know, a tree standing by itself in a windstorm is going to fall down. You know, it doesn't have deep roots to hold itself up when things get rough. But when you have a group of trees, all these roots are blended in together, they're meshed in together, and that one tree can now stand up and be strong because the other trees are there supporting it and holding it up. Pass this knowledge to the next person. So they could feel their culture, they can know who they are, they can be calm in their mind and their body.

It seems like the cornerstone for values has always been respect, and from that everything else falls into place. We should start off with respect, you know, for self and others. And for all creation. And when you respect each other and your tribal values, it just becomes part of your daily life. So when I go out and I harvest Devil's Club, I like to take a moment and honor the space where I'm at.

And then before I harvest the Devil's Club, I was taught that you thank, thank the Devil's Club before harvesting it and just having respect, respect and not taking too much. You know, I don't think we even at the time understood what we were doing. We were there just recording our elders talking. And I don't think we understood the impact that it would have on our tribal society 20 years later. It really didn't have that thought or that feel that it would be on everyone's fridge.

Everywhere you go, you see these tribal values listed out, and it's, it is, it's kind of pretty cool how far-reaching this project is. And what it means to us today. The final product was a list of 14 traditional tribal values. It is the hope of these elders and the hope of Tlingit and Haida tribes of Alaska that this list becomes a legacy for the children of the region, the state, and the nation for years to come.