Module III: Geography is Culture!

Explain: 

It is very interesting to consider how deep geologic time shaped cultures. Often historians consider more recent time and how it shaped cultures across the world. However, it’s worthwhile to think about how the landforms formed that put the resources in place where people would find them and settle near them. It was tectonics pushed up the mountains that provide for the drainages where water flows for the game, fish and for crops! What would our world be like if its plates didn’t move? Without the ancient systems to create landforms it is likely that resources could be largely unconcentrated and very hard to gather and support life.

Geography shapes culture exactly because of the concentration of resources that is happening on a geologic time scale. Worldwide we can think of these things simply by naming great river cultures and listing how they utilized their resources. A very similar activity can be undertaken in Alaska. Comparing larger regions like the Google Earth activity for the week points out a lot of differences. Looking at river cultures of Western Alaska many similarities can be seen with subtle changes based on geography and later considering influences from European and Russian cultures.

The Inupiaq, Unangan, Tlingit, Yupik and Athabascans all developed very different ways of adapting to their geography, but they also had some similarities because of their proximity on earth and similarities in climate. Certainly all of them want to preserve their environment and pass their cultures on their children. Native cultures that live off of the land have a lot of options about how they could live. It was eye opening to hear a man on a TD clip point out that limiting our options limits our ability to survive!

Extend:

As I reflect on my teaching, I am excited that I am making connecting geography and culture as one of the cornerstones of my 7^th grade course about ancient civilizations. Before this module I had not thought of incorporating and processes of deep time into my course, but I could easily work with the physical science teacher next door to incorporate this material with collaboration between our classes!

Evaluate:

Using Google Earth and other mapping software will continue to be a large part of my courses. I am continually impressed by how much one can learn about a landscape and how to live on it by looking at maps and considering the implications of imprudent vs. careful planning when living in an area.

A popular activity that I was first exposed to when I was a middle-schooler was looking at a topo-map with some resource symbols and trying to pick out the best place to make a camp. Digitized and interactive GIS makes this basic activity much more hands on and adjustable! Showing students a basic map and layering on new data sets to provide clues for the kids helps them learn about how resources are positioned and accessible in a world with limited transportation and creature comforts. 

Colegial Comments Cubed:

http://indiancrkghetto.blogspot.com/ 

http://danadair.blogspot.com/

http://www.alaskanwisdom.blogspot.com/

 

Module II - Signs, signs, everwhere there's signs...of connections!

 Explain:

The most thought changing thing that I learned from this module was that Alaskan Natives undergo scientific activities and experiments each day in their native practices for the purpose of coexistence and survival in the Arctic landscape. This completely changes the frame of science. For a Native the scope that a hypothesis must stand up in is the environment around them; not the cosmos. In Native wisdom, the only science that is important is the science of survival. This understanding needs only to be proven in the surroundings that encompass their environment.

Extend:

From this week’s module I have reinforced the idea that my teaching must be holistic. Not from a standpoint that I teach a lot of Native students, but rather from a perspective that by accounting for the whole of what I teach in stories or concepts of history and geography my students can see how puzzles of facts and names fit together to form interesting and complex systems as well as vivid and enthralling historical tales.

Carrying forward from this module I am convinced that my teaching and relationships must be focused on a strategy of “less is more”. In stating this I mean that it is more helpful to my student’s education to learn one or two stories or concepts a day that they absolutely know than it is to “cover” a dozen different things within a class and have little to no understanding of any of it.

At a personal level this less is more approach might mean remembering a name and one non-visual thing about a person after we meet in stead of trying to connect them to other people that I know or otherwise relate to them as some kind of part to my whole. In fact, that other person is a whole unto themselves and to reduce them by trying to fit them into a self-serving system of mine is selfish and vain.

Evaluate:

It’s a damn shame that life offers so many opportunities to be critical of others. Being critical is easier than trying to be part of something or getting on board and working toward a cause. Anyone can be a naysayer, it takes little effort. However, not many things in life that are worthwhile are easy.

  In the past I believe that I would have classified this week’s assignment as not very useful for me because I didn’t learn many things that were new to my knowledge bank. There were no revelations of systems that were unknown, nor were there any exciting stories that I had not heard. What I did learn was much more important that something new. It was repetition of things that I had heard before. It was taking a new perspective on old concepts and gaining new insights from them. To think that Galileo and Einstein would have something in common with the science of the Eskimo’s daily life would have seemed ridiculous before now. Realizing the commonality between them has shown again that “we’re all connected”.

One thing that connects us and these characters from this week’s resources is limits. Locally, Galileo, Einstein and Alaska Natives historically were limited by their scope of understanding. Each of them was looking down their own “beam of light”, as it were. Galileo was limited by the quality of his optics, after Einstein changed the face of physics he had his entire field pass him by, and now Native Alaskans are seeing the limits to their adaptability within a Westernized system that does not share its pretexts or goals.

There are many questions to think about and perspectives to consider. Indeed, we are all connected.

My Birthscape: Kingsford, MI

The landscape and geography around the town where I was born has a lot to do with why the town of Kingsford and other small towns around it exist. The Menominee River provides a natural border between the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Wisconsin here. It also provides for hydroelectric power to supply a large paper mill and most of the towns in the area with electricity. Its backwaters and channels are enjoyed by white tailed deer, black bears, fish and anglers.

Historically the river supplied electricity and mechanical power for industry in the area. Iron mining was the first large industry at the end of the 1800s. Near the turn of the last century large mines in Iron Mountain, Norway and near Crystal Falls all provided for many jobs and supply industries to support the mines. Iron ore is still abundant in areas around Iron Mountain, but the load ores that were close to the surface have been largely removed.

Not long after many of the big mines shut down, industry in the area began to utilize the large amounts of timber to produce wood products. These industries continue today. The most important are super-calendared and coated paper for magazines/catalogs and OSB (chip board) for building. 

The forests provide many jobs for the people of the UP. Loggers, mill workers, mechanics, engineers, foresters…and many more – all of these folks are able to make a living in a beautiful place like the UP because they are helping to utilize, manage and sustain the renewable resource of the forests in the north woods.

It is the sustainability of a resource like forests that make them so special and unique. With interactive GIS students in a classroom can really see how forests and rivers can work together in a landscape like the UP to provide for a community. GIS can help people of all ages get an understanding of what is happening with the amount of forests we have out there. (they are growing!) 

Also good GIS data and metadata can provide important stats that will help students make contributions to managing resources and planning for land use. Students can have inputs to their own future this way and they don’t have to simply rely on what adults tell them as being unchangeable or infallible. A good GIS can not only change the way a person looks at the world, but it gives evidence of resources on the landscape over time, they provide date for applying patterns of management and securing sustainability for the future.

Where I come from...

My name is Jesse Bjorkman I teach history and geography in Nikiski, AK. I was born in Iron Mountain, MI and was raised in the town Kingsford right next door.

The well known Kingsford Charcoal Briquettes  were born in my home town of Kingsford under the original label of Ford Charcoal Briquettes in the 1920s. The BBQ fuel was made from bi-products of the Ford factory there. The home I grew up in was originally built as a part of the "Ford Addition" in Kingsford that housed workers and management of the Ford plant there.

Edward Kingsford, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone were all friends and frequented the Kingsford area. The picture I included immediately below was taken in the summer of 1923 as these men vacationed in Dickinson County.

Left to right: Harvey Firestone, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Edward G. Kingsford

I graduated from Michigan State University in 2007 with a degree in Inter-Disciplinary Social Science. Following that I completed my student teaching in Lansing and St Johns Michigan. During college I worked as a meat cutter, custodian, lumber truck driver, crane operator at a paper mill, and at an archery shop. After completing my internship I was hired by the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District as a middle school Social Studies and P.E. teacher at Nikiski Middle/High School.

I work with a great group of people on the “North Road”. Fortunately, we all share many outdoor interests and a love for kids. I could not have found a better place to work than Nikiski!

My Favorite Place

Hello Explore Alaska!

This is a section of the Upper Kenai that I enjoy fishing with my best friends. This picture could be any place outside enjoying the outdoors really, but I chose this one because the is a photo of me fighting my first fish on a fly rod. Whether it is fishing around the Kenai Peninsula or hunting in the woods near my home, I love hunting and fishing and being outdoors!