ABSTRACT
Th is chapter will describe the context and processes that led to the development of the Alaska Standards for Culturally Responsive Schools and illustrate how the assertion of local initiative by Alaska Native people has served as a model for promoting social justice, ecological sustainability and peaceful coexistence as an educational outcome for all people. Th e original intent of this initiative was to bring the indigenous knowledge systems and ways of knowing that have sustained the Native people of Alaska for millennia to the forefront in the educational systems serving Alaska students and communities today. As part of a larger educational restoration initiative, Native people have sought to reintegrate their own knowledge systems and ways of knowing into the school curriculum as a basis for connecting what students learn in school with life out of school and thus restore a traditional sense of place while at the same time broadening and deepening the educational experience for all students (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005). Imbedded in the “cultural standards” is an emphasis on the role of local Elders, traditional values, experiential learning and alternative ways of knowing, all of which serve as the basis for a pedagogy of place that shift s the emphasis from teaching about the local culture to teaching through the culture as students learn about the immediate environment they inhabit and their connection to the larger world within which they will make a life for themselves.
