14 core group members were there with 10 guests were there for the meeting.  Using the “Ways of knowing” notes we split the groups into three.  Topics for the groups were land marks, Men and Women’s roles, Planning on Eskimo dances.  It was decided that 2nd grade class would have Eskimo dance practices every day of the week and a Christmas performance would be an outcome of the practices. At the end of the meeting, the next meeting was set for December 13th, which was a Monday, but we postponed the meeting to another date because of the Holidays coming up.

Core group got some beaver pelts for our future activities

In the second meeting there were 17 people.  Youngest of the group was in his mid -twenties and a few elders in there sixties. We started the meeting and talked about what has changed through out the years (language and culture).  Mr. M showed them a stool, which he used as an example of how to raise a child and how the community is involved in raising a child. We gave some examples of what changed.  One of the examples was the name of the places we use today such as Chadwick Lake and the proper name for that lake is Qerrullicuarvik.  Some of the people started smiling and seeing what was being changed through of the years.  We then wrote “Ways of knowing” on the board and said what an Ideal Yup’ik person would know when he or she became a young adult.  Language was first on the list and then we went on from there.  They came to a conclusion that Language and Culture were not to be separated. One would not survive with out the other.  During the meeting, there would be silence and you could feel the strong connections of what was missed and what is being lost and they did not want lose anything more.  Not if they could help it.  The meeting ended in a high note of wanting more people in the meeting. The next meeting was set for December. Meeting was set to be no more then an hour, but lasted more then two hours.

First Core Group Meeting

At the first core group meeting we had 11 people.  Kevin told them what we wanted and what they were going to do.  The meeting lasted about 15 minutes.

Initial Meeting

Barbara, Hilda, Magdalena, Mary put together a list of people who would be good candidates for our core group.  Names that we got were from each family to represent the village.  The names we got were people that are aware of their language and knew the importance of our culture.  After the list was done, I got a hold of them.  I told them about our language program and that they were hand selected. They agreed to come to the meeting.