Sunday, November 1, 2009

Finally - Inspiration!

I stayed up rather late last night reading the book "The Unmistakable Touch of Grace". I'm still not doing a great job with meditation, but as I went to sleep, I did try to take some deep breaths. I've been needing to write up a summary of some interviews I've conducted over the past year and I just couldn't get to it. I think I said yesterday somewhere that I needed "inspiration". I went to sleep thinking that thought (along with a couple of other thoughts) and this morning, as I woke up, I thought some more about this summary. I started thinking about the title and once I got the title in my head, I figured out how to write it. You wanna hear the title?

State of Ambivalence: The Inupiaq View of Alaska Statehood

The bottom line is that most people living in rural Alaska were not informed of the whole statehood process and so were not told what the implications would be for Alaska Natives. The only people who knew about the lead-up to statehood were those who were in BIA or missionary high schools or whose parents talked about it beforehand (only two or three cases of that). Afterwards, most said, when asked, whether statehood was good for Alaska Natives, the answer was "yes and no" - yes because of increased access to education in rural Alaska and no because the state imposed regulations on subsistence rights and took away some of Native-held lands.

Hmm. I really like that title.

2 comments:

Rena said...

Wow-great title!

Dee said...

Thanks, Reen! I thought it was kinda catchy myself! Now I just need to write the damn thing! LOL