Interview with Diane Selanoff 1

TRANSCRIPT
Interview with Diane Selanoff
Resident of Valdez
July 8, 2020
Phone Interview by Andrea Floersheimer

AF: We all have stories from our childhoods. What is your favorite story or memory from your days in school?

DS: There are many. I don’t know that I could pick an individual one. All I can say is that everybody enjoys learning and as long as anybody’s learning curve is pointing upward it's a lot of fun. I mean you look at even today where people travel anywhere, they are learning. And I think that is part of the capture of enjoying vacations is the ability to learn and enjoy something new. So, I couldn’t give you an individual story but that education in itself is fun.

AF: That's wonderful. What did you learn from your parents or community that you were not taught in school?

DS: Most of what I know and do today was initially instilled by my Mom and by my community. Education has only helped in the form of paperwork to provide jobs but school can’t teach, you know, ethics or values or any of that. It’s taught at home and by your community and most of what I know and do today was taught by my Mom or my community.

AF: Would you be willing to share something that your mother or community taught you that is very important to you?

DS: Well for example today, I’ll be processing fish and that is something that I learned at home.

AF: Awesome, thank you. What did you like about going to school?

DS: The ability to learn what I couldn't learn in the village. I know you're looking for an example but I got to learn history of the world. One of my favorite subjects in school was English I think when I graduated I graduated with like maybe five or six credits. I enjoyed journalism. And yeah. Thank you.

AF: Thank you. And the next question is what did you dislike about going to school?

DS: Initially what I disliked was leaving my community. But that was put in place by our village to leave home so that we could have one foot in both worlds to know how to be, communicate in larger cities and in our small village, that was what I initially didn’t like, was having to leave home to get an education. But that later turned out to be later an asset when I understood later what they were doing and how it helped me.

AF: That sounds like it would have been really hard for a young child though.

DS: Yeah, when I was in grade school, probably first, second grade, we used to have a teacher, who was a good teacher but there were some things that they did that weren’t very favorable. I know there’s a lot of comments about whether a child should or should not be spanked, but the teachers used it as a disciplinary and sometimes they used that [unintelligible] to do that too freely, and I noticed that with the high school age students, there was a paddle that was made for them, and whenever somebody from the Borough would show up to the village, it was hidden behind a stove in the kitchen so that nobody was aware of what was going on in school. And the other thing was we would be communicated with when we were in grade school to be told stories like one of these days -- poof, you’re all just going to be sitting here and I’m going to disappear, my daughter Michelle is going to disappear, and you’re not going to know where anybody went. And I’ll tell you where we went: we went to heaven. And you guys are all sinners so you’re going to die. And it was like, wow, we’re being taught that in first and second grade. It was their way of kind of doing conversion. We were all baptized Christian, but in their beliefs they believed we worshipped icons and it was of no value and they weren’t, our religion wasn’t recognized as a Christian religion and so they tried to convert us over to be, you know, Baptists. And they used to have stories like we were all going to disappear and were going to all burn in hell and the fires would never go out and burn and burn and burn. So those are some dissatisfying stories.

AF: Yeah. I'm so sorry you experienced those things and thank you for sharing

DS: Yeah it happens, I wasn’t the only one.

AF: What do you...switching to the positives, what do you like about the schools in your community today?

DS: Okay, the schools in the community today, one of the things I enjoyed was, as an Elder in the community, they had all asked, each of the schools, the Elementary, the Middle School and the High school, they all asked if I could share some Alaska History from a Native perspective with their students in the school, and so I was able to do that. They also have state testing and when they’re doing that the students can’t have school at all, so the students that are testing are put into a room, and nobody else can really do anything and that was my opportunity to go in and teach, like, history of the Prince William Sound, a little bit of history about Sugpiaq people, and also to things like beading and fur sewing and stuff like that and we used different materials because they are not all Native so we were able to use things like leather and that type of stuff.

AF: That’s really wonderful

DS: Yeah, so yeah I’ve been able to have large groups of kids at a time. The other thing too is I was actually asked by the Prince William Sound Community College to come in and work with their instructors to have basically have a little conference about, you know, what they can do to be more successful in getting Native students to attend the college and what were some of things they were not getting, why wasn’t their enrollment higher with Native students. And so we did have that ability. So anyway.

AF: Thank you for sharing. What concerns do you have about the schools in your community today?

DS: Today some of the concerns that I have are I don’t think that education is being... the time the students have in school is not being utilized accurately. Every day should be a learning day, and I understand that in places like work, you know, you have some down time, but it seems like there’s a lot more down time than education time when it comes to the schools today, I don’t think they’re being taught enough, I sometimes see the schools as using homework freely, so that the education is being turned down and taught back at home. As a parent when my children were in school, I was not very happy that they could spend you know at least 7 or 8 hours at school and then come home and have homework. I wasn’t looking for a glorified babysitter when I was at work, I wanted them to get an education but they would go to school and come home and I would need to teach them at home. And that time to me was very precious. For example, when they go back to school, there’s fish out there, there’s berries out there, there’s moose hunting, there’s deer hunting, all of that and I ‘d like to use what hours I have with my children outside of school to be able to teach them how to fish or process fish or get berries or dig berries to make preserves for winter so I didn’t always appreciate that when they’re at school they have a lot of downtime and when they came home they were assigned homework and then I would have to teach them at home. When you are working and the kids get out, you get home at 5 and first thing you do is prepare and have dinner together and then it’s split into homework or other school activities like basketball or volleyball, or any of those things that took up more of the evening so during the school day my time with my children had become limited and so when you try to pull them out to do an activity, you’d have to get pre-make up of course, but if you’re gone more than 10 days out of the semester you may not get credit for the days you were there. And for us, gathering and hunting is very important.

AF: That makes sense, thank you for sharing. What challenges do you see Native students facing in your community today?

DS: Today, well, what I... I have noticed a trend recently: we have our public school and then we have our homeschool. I notice that a lot of students, whether they are Native or non-Native, have convinced their parents to do homeschooling because they felt that they weren't being treated fairly at school by their teachers or by their peers, and that it's harder for them to go get up in the morning go to school and sit around all day and have less of a learning experience and then come home and I think even some of the students have learned that it’s a lot more productive to just be homeschooled and it puts the parents in a position of hardship because they need to continue with jobs and stuff to provide for their families. But the kids who are doing homeschool excel quickly and immediately because they’re not just sitting in a chair behind a desk or behind a computer doing nothing. Yeah. That’s it.

AF: Do you have any suggestions for improving education in your community?

DS: You know, I value subsistence hunting and gathering. But I also do find value in like the extracurricular activities like basketball or volleyball. But more importantly I find value in learning and one of the things that had been hard for a lot of Native students at least from our area was when we first started school we were given a history book or a science book or a book on government and on Math, and we had a lot of books to study and learn from and it was difficult because as a Sugpiaq person we were non-literate people initially and the way education was taught was by hands-on showing, so you know it was showing how to get cockles off the beach, how to walk ,what to look for, what to see and you were taken and you were taught by actually doing it, and that was the way we learned best. At least I do. And then going from being taught how to do everything, being shown, being a participant in all of it to going into a classroom where it was books and stuff, it was difficult. And then as an adult and as a grandparent I’ve been watching how the kids have been doing with education and how they are learning now, and one of the things I have discovered not only for the students but also for myself is when I want to know, for example the battery in my freezer went out and we never used to have batteries in freezers then but we do now! And it makes a lot of noise a beeping sound where there’s too much stuff in there that needs to be readjusted, it beeps. Well the battery went out and it was making this high pitch beep and I knew the battery needed to be changed but I didn’t know how. So I googled it and I watched how it was done by watching a YouTube video. I went back to learning how I was initially taught. Show me. And I believe everybody is doing that today. You know, if you have a question about how to do anything, you google it and you look for a YouTube video or something and you can learn a lot by watching and learning, which was the original Sugpiaq way. So if I have any ways of kids learning today, I would say there needs to be more involvement with the students and the teachers about how to learn.

AF: Thank you for sharing that, and just to continue on that point, is there anything you would like to see taught in school that is not currently being taught?

DS: Yeah, there is. I would like the language to be taught in school. When it comes to language, language is soft. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, you can’t put it on a shelf and dust it off and pull it down when you want it, it’s invisible. You can’t hold it. And so that makes it difficult to learn because you can’t see physical progress, you can physically hear when progress is being made but I would like what’s left of our language reinstated back to the students in some form. I would also like to see cultural activities being brought back into the school. Like I said, I was getting invited in to work with the students on you know har…. At the end of the day when they were done making [unintelligible], it’s usually like a Christmas ornament, they were able to look back and see that they had participated in a cultural activity and here is what they made. Whether an ornament or a pouch or a hat or anything, they are able to look back and physically see what they had done and it made them happy so I want to see that taught in school also. And then some of our culture. When they discuss Alaska History, Alaska history is being taught to us through the perspective of non-Native people, I want the perspective of Alaska history through Native people.

AF: Thank you for sharing all of those, all of those things. You already answered the next question a little bit but I want to ask it to you anyway in case there's something that it makes you think of. Do you feel like the Valdez schools currently promote the culture and history of the Sugpiaq people?

DS: They do but not consistently. It’s when there’s down time or opportunity but it’s not always the first thing that is thought of either. Going back to Valdez, one of the pros of what they’re doing is they actually have an event after school and it’s a recognized sport is Native Youth Olympics. That is, that is appreciated. Everybody whether you’re Native or non-Native needs a sense of belonging, every person does, you need to belong to your family, your community, your state, your country, everybody needs a sense of belonging and when you have students like here in Valdez they need a sense of belonging. I know that when I went up and when I taught those different classes the Native students from this area that were in those classes had a sense of pride. This is my culture. These are my activities. This is what I do. It was an interesting thing to see when our students from this area who are Native got a sense of pride because of what was being taught and that they had ownership in that. A lot of times we don’t have ownership in what we’re doing like Alaska history. It does affect them, it truly does, but they don’t have a sense of belonging. This is mine. This is how I grew up, or this is what my Elders or my community or my ancestors did, there’s none of that. That’s why even camps are so enjoyable because they’re out there learning their culture, their language, their method of working, hunting, fishing, gathering, processing.

AF: Yes, thank you for sharing. It's amazing to hear how your love for history and stories when you were a child has been something that you are still working on now today but as a teacher

DS: Yeah, it's not, it’s when I can get in. I had been working for about 25 to 26 years here in Valdez, so every opportunity I got to sneak away and work with the students I did and I enjoyed it and it was never about looking for recognition from it, it was and today is still about the desire to give back because in my community and in my immediate family I learned a lot and when we were growing up we were considered to be very, you know, poor, below the average income level, but I never realized that until when I think about, think back to it today. My mom worked in a cannery for, what, 3 months out of the year, at a really low wage and that provided for us for the entire year. And so I didn’t realize that we were not well off because if we needed medicines my mom would go out and gather herbs to process for medicines. If we needed food she would go out and get fish and be able to get them from the creeks and put them up. We didn’t have a boat, we didn’t have a vehicle to transfer them so when they came in and they were in the creeks or at the beach level she was able to get them then. During the winter when fish wasn't available there was always gathering of different types of shellfish like titans or cocles or crabs or clams. And she knew how to gather them to bring them in and process them and put them away. And we had a freezer, and I look at myself today and I have 1,2,3,4,5, freezers. [Laughs] My mom had a freezer because she was never worried about not having food because there was so much food all around her and she knew how to get it and process it and provide with it, and it was always fresh. If we needed greens, she picked seaweed and that was added to our meals. If we needed oils there was seal oil. Back to saying, financially we were below the low income line, way below it. But when it came to knowledge, education and understanding of our environment and how to utilize everything within it, she was like A+. And today that education is more valuable than that book on government, that government book. The plants she taught me was more valuable than the science I learned from a book. Molecules and cells didn’t help me provide a life, but the science she taught me on the beach, what to look for and how to look for it, and you know how to dissect and clean a clam, that science was way more valuable than what I was taught in a book. [Unintelligible, beeping]

AF: Thank you so much for sharing. We just have one more question for you. Is there anything else that you would like to share about education in your community?

DS: All I want to say is education, again, is important, and everybody loves to learn but you need to teach them at a method that works for them, not wanting all of the students to conform to your method of teaching. I think the teachers need to be good at what they do, whether it’s one subject or many subjects, they need to learn how to teach it so that their student understands, not if the student doesn’t understand, fail them because they failed to teach it at a level that would most likely capture their interest. Science is amazing. Math is wonderful. Don’t get me wrong, those are all great things if it’s taught to the students learning ability, not taught only a certain way where only a few will get it, but being able to teach it so it’s diverse enough that it will capture everybody’s method of learning. And try different things for teaching a student! And I always go into a classroom with a win-win attitude. When I was asked to teach at the school I told them, I said well you guys are used to testing so you will be tested after this, so pay attention, and I’m not going to try to snag you up on anything, I want you to learn everything you can possibly learn and I’ll let you know when, these are some things I feel are important and I’ll let you know that this will be asked of you later so you know pay attention. I wasn’t trying to give them clues to help them like, oh, take note on this one. I want you to learn and understand and ask me questions and we’ll go over it from there, but I want to win by knowing that you have learned and I want you to win by having learned from me. I want it to be a win--win and whatever method it takes to get there let’s get there, and if you have questions, ask them. And that was nice to see at the end of the day that what was put forward was actually captured and learned. Whether they retained it or not for how long I don’t know because it wasn’t re-instilled through activity, and I’ve had at least a couple, but several students who I’ve gone in and taught them the language through song. I was being sung to as I’d be like going to the store or something and a busy morning and I’ve got stuff to do I got to get done that I’ve got to get done and off in the distance I hear this little voice singing and singing in Sugt’stun and I look over and it’s one of the students and they saw me and so excited to let me know that they still got this. They would be so excited to see me and share that they still got this.

AF: Oh my goodness!

DS: And that went on for years. One time I was standing there doing dishes it was another busy day and I had the window open cuz it was a hot sunny day and under my window I hear this little voice singing a song that I had taught and I climb up and looked out the window and it was one of my students. Just serenading you under the window with one of the songs I had taught.

AF: [Laughs] As one does!

DS: But education for them was fun and then they brought it back to me when I least expected it. Education is loved and appreciated by everybody. Even when you’re on vacation if you are going to another country you want to learn their culture, their customs, their traditions, why they do what they do or why something is done a certain way. And once you learn that it’s gratifying. You’re not going to have a little awards ceremony afterwards, it’s self-satisfaction whether it’s going to the country or going to the beach or taking a hike in the woods, anything, it’s satisfying to learn and it’s always good to keep the ability to question up, and so why it that like that? What is that? What is this? So long as you as an adult are continuing to ask those questions too that’s good, you’re still learning. We don’t just end after 12th grade or after our master’s degree, or associates degree,or bachelor's degree, as a person as an adult you continue to learn. I continue to learn every day, these damn smart phones are sometimes a challenge but they shouldn’t be, [laughs] but it’s a learning process you know, about the more things it can do. But anyway, education continues, it’s enjoyable, everybody enjoys it, and that’s it.

AF: Absolutely, and thank you so much for your time.

DS: You’re welcome.