Well-Being
On the North Slope and in Barrow women and men have important and complementary spiritual, social, cultural, ecological, and other roles. These balanced roles support families, lands, and communities. With changes, women and men continue to find balance as they seek wage work, continue subsistence life, and care for family and community. Working with families and women and men on the North Slope provides an opportunity to learn more about balance and holism in leadership. By honoring local perspectives on gender that diverge from Western perspectives communities tap into different sources of strength.
“And so it really causes me to wonder how the role of the elders is going to be, perceived for one thing, and change as a result of that. I can’t imagine, you know, I’m gonna be getting there, you know, not too long from now [laughter] hopefully. So I’m trying to think, what is my role going to be as an elder? And you know, in the work that I do, we have in the Iñupiaq Learning Framework we honor our elders and we have performance expectations that relate to the elders and having respect for them and so we have, we’re working with kids to have them thinking about, oh you know what the role of the elder is and how does an elder become an elder and what is their role going to be as elders and what are the qualities that make up these, the elders. And so I’m feeling like hope is not lost because at least in the curriculum work that we’re doing, we’re acknowledging that we have to thinking about that, elderhood. We’ll see where we are in 10 or 20 years.”
