Role Conflict in Native Communication

Abstract

Those of us who are involved in native education in Alaska are in many ways more fortunate than many of you in this audience who may be concerned with teaching English to the Amerindian groups in the lower fortyeight states and Canada. I am afraid that our good fortune is not because we have pursued a more enlightened course of action with the native peoples in Alaska since the time of contact, but rather because the peoples with whom we work first met white people in quite a different way. One striking difference is the fact that Alaska was never invaded by white people anxious to exploit the land and resources as was the case in Canada and the lower forty-eight states. Alaska's native peoples do not regard themselves as a defeated race. No treaties were signed or broken. The native peoples of Alaska do not have a long, bitter, blood-stained history to look back upon and to brood about.