Day 1: We arrived Alaska at 11:30 pm (2:30 am MN time!) on Thursday night beginning the festivities on Friday morning. We had four glorious hours of sleep and visited the Alaska Native Heritage Center for a cultural workshop. It was absolutely amazing to get to learn about the different cultures in an intimate setting. We are staying in Anchorage, which is Athabascan territory. We toured the different type of living dwellings at the heritage center and learned about the spiritual culture through a healer named Yaari. I thought it was incredibly interesting to hear first-hand from her about cultural norms. We all have read the texts about what to expect from different cultures and how to act, but to hear it from her made it so much more real. She said she was of the St. Lawrence Island Yupik and they valued not making eye contact and talking in slow and soft tones. The reasons for this were to show signs of respect and to value your words, meaning think before you speak. We went over cultural values using the analogy of an iceberg, the only part at the top we see is superficial: physical features, language, clothing, etc. But what’s underneath is the true colors of a culture that could include their values, traditions, morals, and spirituality. She performed two healing measures on people from our group who said it was a great experience and felt relieved afterwards.
The weekend was dedicated to sightseeing. We visited Aleyska ski resort and Val and I cross country skied with Elisa and it was a lot more similar to downhill skiing than cc skiing in our opinion. It was breathtaking as we rode the tram up the mountain (4000 ft up) and saw the views from up top. The whole experience was too beautiful for words. Traveling listening to Ed Sheerhan’s new album through the mountain was like something out of movie or a dream. So far this experience has been so eye opening. The native culture is so prolific and involved with each other that it makes you really think about community and the meaning of family. I’m excited to become more immersed in their culture once we start clinicals.
The weekend was dedicated to sightseeing. We visited Aleyska ski resort and Val and I cross country skied with Elisa and it was a lot more similar to downhill skiing than cc skiing in our opinion. It was breathtaking as we rode the tram up the mountain (4000 ft up) and saw the views from up top. The whole experience was too beautiful for words. Traveling listening to Ed Sheerhan’s new album through the mountain was like something out of movie or a dream. So far this experience has been so eye opening. The native culture is so prolific and involved with each other that it makes you really think about community and the meaning of family. I’m excited to become more immersed in their culture once we start clinicals.