| 英文摘要: | This EAGER project is to build the capacity necessary for the development of a full research project, "Culture Change and a Way of Life." During the course of 2016 the researcher will travel to several regions of Alaska to engage with indigenous scholars and educational and political leaders for an envisioned research project. Such a project would by necessity be a collaborative effort between indigenous and non-indigenous community members, leaders, academics, and scholars. The EAGER project is an essential first step in the Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) process that this project represents.
The focus of the research is to gain a long-term historical and comparative perspective on how rural Alaska Native people are coping with and responding to rapid changes in their lives and livelihoods. As such this research focuses on shifts in subsistence practices and out-migration that can be traced across the past half century. Yet, these processes have accelerated over the past decade. The need for this research is pronounced. Understanding how individuals, kin and communities are thinking about and responding to these challenges from generational and comparative points of view has critical implications not only for rural indigenous peoples in Alaska but to many rural communities across the Circumpolar North as well as in aboriginal communities in Australia where similar processes are underway.
Crucial to the success of the full research project, however, is the need to engage with leaders in Native Regional Corporations, Village Corporations, Tribal leaders, indigenous scholars, Native organizations locally, regionally and statewide, as well as educational administrators at the University of Alaska system and Mt. Edgecumbe High School. One of the key elements of the project would be the inclusion of Mt. Edgecumbe high school students as part of the research team. Preliminary discussions with Mt. Edgecumbe administrators and pedagogues have been have been encouraging. However, a community based participatory project necessitates that the PI travel statewide to have face-to-face meetings to discuss the potential design, benefits and merits of the larger. Moreover, the PI will have the opportunity to listen and learn from Native peoples underscoring the collaborative possibilities of a future social science research project.
Importantly this study will contribute to an understanding of the kinds of issues Alaska Native peoples are facing, the effects on kin and the panoply of coping strategies that are utilized by communities. In addition to the academic articles the data produced by this project will be disseminated, orally and written, widely by the entire research team: to local communities involved in the research to tribal organizations, as well as at statewide and international conferences. Several additional methods will be utilized including digital storytelling and web-based platforms in sharing research results. This project is innovative methodologically in that underrepresented groups are embedded throughout the entire research project; Alaska Native high school students will be integral members of the research team alongside an Advisory Council made up of Alaska Native elders and young adults. Moreover, the Alaska Native students involved in the project will gain invaluable hands on training in a range of social science methodologies. A graduate research assistant at the University of Alaska will be trained in research methods and the history and anthropology of the Circumpolar North.
Over the past half-century Alaska Native populations have experienced major socio-economic, political and cultural challenges. Changes in their political and economic circumstances, environmental shifts as well as substantial demographic flux, especially over the past two decades, have reworked the lives and livelihoods of many in rural communities. These transformations, however, are not experienced by everyone, everywhere in the same way, but rather are differentiated by geography, generation, gender and class (Krupnik and Vakhtin 1997, Berger 1984, Martin 2009, Taylor 2011). Using ethnographic fieldwork, key informant interviews, and oral histories the larger study will examine - through an intergenerational dialogue between elders and youth - how a range of kin, community and cultural practices may be utilized to make sense of, give meaning to and cope with significant upheavals in their lives. These transformations are perhaps most visible in declining participation in subsistence production (Callaway 1994; McNeeley 2012; Dinero 2013) and outmigration by young adults. The research will be comparative in that it not only explores these key issues across generations of rural indigenous peoples through notions of history and culture, but also garners perspectives across some of the major ethnic and ecological zones in Alaska. Moreover, this project is innovative methodologically in that eight Alaska Native high school students (to be selected and subsequently trained in anthropological methods) will be integral members of the research team at all key stages throughout the project; from design to data collection and analysis to data dissemination. The students will assume dual roles not only as researchers but also as interlocutors. As such their participation has the potential to push the boundaries between insider/outsider roles by interrogating the tensions between intellectual and cultural authority (Mallon 2012).
Over the last decade Arctic social science researchers, through the Arctic Social Science Program, have contributed much to the development of CBPR theories and methods. By promoting the inclusion of Arctic community members in scientific research projects from design, to data collection, to analyses, to publication, the Arctic social science community has not only strengthened their research but also made it more relevant to these communities. This proposal would build on these efforts and expand the CBPR model across generations in the Arctic. The proposed research project would include intergenerational participation as a new component of the CBPR model developing in the Arctic. Through this award, the PI will engage local indigenous and non-indigenous leaders, educators, and scholars in the project prior to writing and submitting a large research proposal; without their input the anticipated larger project would not be consistent with a CBPR model of research. |