The Center for Healthy Alaskan Native Families;

A Virtual Potlatch

By Frank Odasz,
Lone Eagle Consulting

Email: frank@lone-eagles.com

URL: http://lone-eagles.com/healthy-families.htm

WORD doc: http://lone-eagles.com/healthy-families.doc

Note: A letter of inquiry written for a major national foundation,

shared by the Metlakatla Indian Community and the Annette Island School District

to identify potential partners for the full proposal.

Summarize in one sentence the specific purpose for which you are requesting funding:

As a unique model for all 250+ remote villages, following the potlatch tradition of honoring others; Metlakatla families will co-create the Center for Healthy Alaskan Native Families as a local, and regional, trusted family support network, leveraging existing mobile devices and Internet access.

Provide an Overview of Your Project:

Following the Alaskan Native Tradition of Creative Adaptation;
The Tsimshian village of Metlakatla was founded over one-hundred-twenty-five years ago, when 900 Tribal members left British Columbia to follow Father William Duncan, a minister of the Anglican Church, in search of religious freedom. Paddling their canoes across 1,000 miles of ocean, the group settled on Annette Island in southeast Alaska. At that time, native culture was suppressed…but now, native culture and language are enjoying a resurgence of attention and celebration. The Tsimshian tradition has always been about creative adaptation as well as entrepreneurship.

This tradition continues today as the use of smartphones, digital tablets, apps, and the WWW show us how much technology is already a part of Native culture. Tsimshian authentication of how existing mobile devices, and Internet access, support Alaskan Native values and sustainable families, villages, and cultures will serve as an ongoing showcase, and as an online training center, for all Alaskan Native villages. This is a topic of discussion among both local and state leaders.

In the spring of 2013, The Association of Alaska School Boards, with the help of Connect Alaska and Frank Odasz, president of Lone Eagle Consulting, launched the Digitizing Alaska: Broadband Strategies pilot project to research the level of digital innovation, and related future opportunities, in remote villages. During a one-hour web-raising community event, free web sites were created for a local non-profit “Alaskan Native Girls,” for a cultural eco-tourism venture (Tsimshian Fish Camp), local weavers, and others. E-publishing was of keen interest as they learned new tools and methods for digital self-publishing and creating multimedia e-books, and more. Within minutes, a “live” demonstration turned an elder’s half-dozen photographs into a narrated e-book. A mother who attended this event created a 20 page narrated storybook with her 5 year old daughter in just two hours. Young and old can learn together how to tell their stories and inspire others, in a format that will endure for generations to come.

The free web tools available make it easy for everyone to near instantly create and share meaningful content in under an hour. For example: The Jing tool allows anyone to become a “citizen video professor” and to contribute to the community narrated online videos of their newest online discoveries, via mobile learning on a regular basis, to create a vibrant local learning society.

Combining caring and connectivity with common sense, this proposed Healthy Families Network, will demonstrate innovations for scalable Alaskan Native appropriate social incentives, providing individual and community ongoing self-assessments, and social recognition, for local mentors who choose to share their talents. Our strategy is to document their new media community contributions, and mentoring successes, in online portfolios to generate new income opportunities.

How will your project help vulnerable children succeed?

To create the home-based lifelong learning environment vulnerable children need to grow up in, all family members will participate in learning the best educational and entrepreneurial opportunities accessible by modern smartphones, digital tablets, and Internet access, by which they can all make the choice to improve their socioeconomic conditions. There are many dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors that proper incentives and creating new social norms can reverse. Showing adults the value of education, and how to improve family incomes via online entrepreneurship best practices, and rewarding positive contributions to the community, can be accelerated by the new self-efficacy and confidence possible via the new “training best practices” recently piloted by the NTIA/State Broadband Initiative’s “Digitizing Alaska Pilot Project.”

Preschool youth as young as one year old are motivated by the Ipad’s ease-of-use to engage in self-directed learning. All family members can learn together with their youngest members to use Ipads, educational apps, online resources, and to quickly create and share their own meaningful multimedia content to share with others locally, and regionally. The opportunity for utilizing home-based learning for primary and elementary students, promises to create a local learning society based on multigenerational fun, social, learning.
Preschoolers, family members of all ages, and pointedly “elders” can all learn together the newest, easiest forms of digital literacy and basic literacy, as well as Native language (using existing Ebooks and new apps.) 21st Century success requires embracing innovation and ongoing access to new knowledge in order to be competitive and sustainable. The continuing Native tradition of creative adaptation applied to today’s changing global economy requires Alaska’s Native villages to self-assess how effectively they encourage innovators, and engage all citizens, as an active local learning society. Our opportunity to encourage one another in gaining self-confidence for digital creativity is the fact that 'If we all share what we know, we'll all have access to all our knowledge.’

Alaskan Native youth represent the first digital generation, and the opportunity exists to grow an entrepreneurial culture in 3-5 years, starting in primary grades, based on rapidly growing their awareness, and “Opportunity Literacy,” by sharing peer success story videos regarding cultural digital storytelling, free self-directed educational resources, online entrepreneurship, and online video examples of family empowerment. Youth, as the first generation of “digital natives” can learn to serve as hunters and gatherers of that specific new knowledge which can fuel the home fires of local innovation. Intergenerational learning, such as engaging elementary students with elders to create digital storybooks to preserve elders’ wisdom and stories for all future generations, is one of a growing number of timely opportunities.

Describe the target demographics of the population your project will serve directly:

This project will directly impact the Metlakatla Indian Community, population 1,452, which is primarily Tsimshian; Alaskan Native, but will be visible online to all 250+ Alaskan Native villages; consisting of 11 tribes and languages; with a combined population of 250,000, half remote, half urban, and to all Native American and Hawaiian Native communities, est. 2 million. The goal is to inspire through example all indigenous communities worldwide; 150+ million. The recent examples of viral social media rapid growth, not the least of which is one billion people joining Facebook within 5 years, presents very real opportunities for very large numbers of people to benefit directly, in the short term, from this project.

Empowering celebration of specific cultural identities, while embracing the worldview as global citizens, makes this project relevant to all ethnic groups, and cultures, worldwide. Both Facebook, and Google, are planning global innovations to connect the remaining 3-5 billion who are not yet online. Recently, the Google Kansas City Gigacity project cited that this is 90 percent sociology, and 10 percent infrastructure. "The world's diverse cultures jointly represent the full cultural genome of humankind's search for individual and group identity and meaning." Emerging globally is recognition that we are all the same in that we derive our unique individual, and group, self-identities from our respective cultures, and that together, we are jointly one human family.

What is your definition of family engagement and what does it look like in your community? In what ways does your project authentically incorporate community/family voice and data into the design, development, and implementation of projects? How will this work mobilize and/or network families of color living in poverty in a partnership to support the learning of their children

Alaskan Native family engagement traditionally is all generations living and working together. For the last couple generations this has been disrupted by family members having to leave the village to find work. The recent availability of broadband in over 200 villages opens the door to returning to traditional family life. Certainly retaining youth is essential to the future of all villages. The exciting new online work opportunities, and new unlimited affordable educational opportunities, need to be showcased and distributed as they continue to evolve. Financial literacy, and understanding how the new online business models reflect Alaskan Native values, such as social enterprises, must be presented in an Alaskan Native values culturally appropriate context.

Entrepreneurship needs to be taught starting in primary grades, so youth grow up with entrepreneurship as a lifelong option; as the best way this fundamental cultural shift can be accelerated; creating an entrepreneurial culture in 3-5 years. Mobile devices, and the unprecedented proliferation of useful, free “apps” for mobile self-directed learning, shopping discounts, health monitoring and more, need to be assessed for relevant best practices by family members and others and shared via local trusted mutual support networks using social media and related easy-to-use communications tools.

Currently, mobile devices and social media have become very popular in most villages, but also have created real problems with cyberbullying, rumor mongering, and other abuses. The voice of all generations needs a new peer mentoring dynamic that rewards positive community capacity building behaviors with social recognition, and provides disincentives for toxic negative behavior. Recent advanced work on these scalable local sustainable incentives models will be applied to allow individuals, families, and communities to celebrate their own ownership and discoveries of what’s possible, with the goal of sharing their creative reinvention of living by Alaskan Native values, with all other tribes, in Alaska, nationally, and globally.

New Mirror Metrics will allow everyone in a community to visually see, updated frequently, the positive contributions of citizens, such as the number of new participants, types of new media contributions shared, the number of new skills transferred, and the number of new mentoring relationships. An Alaskan Native appropriate model of learning new skills by creating new content of value to share with others, speaks to the tradition of Alaskan Native communal generosity. As online portfolios document these volunteered media creation gifts, a portfolio to support future for-profit social enterprises emerges, both locally and beyond. All generations (including elders) will engage in multigenerational digital learning, including basic literacy, to realize the full potential for “Everyone becoming both learner and teacher, consumer and producer, all the time.”

What is the vision for change in your community and how can you effectively and authentically partner with other stakeholders in the community to achieve it?

Metlakatla has a long history of seeking freedom, both religious and cultural, and now sustainable economic freedom, with the current challenge as to how best to keep youth employed locally to assure the sustainability of both the community and the culture. This particularly exciting challenge and vision is already a subject of local conversation; how to become the first Alaskan Native digital village in Alaska?! As recent video interviews with elders attest; “Digital is already a part of native culture.” “Technology has created new interest among the young in their culture.” “Now it is possible for tribal members to live and work anywhere.” Metlakatla can become the model for all Alaskan Native villages, across Alaska and potentially globally, as to how to sustain families, communities, and cultures by learning to leverage the collective individual talents empowered by new digital tools for education and how to “Make the living you want, living wherever you want.” Particularly exciting for the fifty percent of Tsimshians who are urban, previously forced to relocate to find work, will be the opportunity to return home and reunite with family and the community!

Local social media “trusted” mutual support networks with new mirror metrics will be validated by the actions, and voices, of locals of all generations. All community stakeholders will learn how to identify best practices specific to their specific functions within the community. A specific planned “Next Step” innovation for the Center for Healthy Alaska Native Families is to connect parents and youth with the local anchor institutions to create a local Egov portal of the best online resources, and applications (apps) best practices to support local families. The state agencies, and separately, the associated local institutions, will post online their pick of the best appropriate resources by sector for meeting local needs. Parents and youth will then be tasked to have a voice authenticating their selections of what the best applications might be.

Leveraging social media, the best educational, health, family income, and related apps will be shared among families on an ongoing basis, with parents and young students learning specific apps that allow creating online videos to share with others how to use these resources, on an ongoing basis, as newer and better apps continue to be identified with increasing frequency and utility. How digital access to new knowledge can preserve the cherished rural lifestyle of Alaskan Native communities, and create new connections with tribal members living outside the community, creates a social environment that gives a joint global voice to all to share those Alaskan Native values of generosity, sustainable living, and preserving our precious environment, as stewards of the Earth, and of each other.

What does the organization understand about the barriers families of color living in poverty face when attempting to engage with the early learning environments and schools in your community? What are the changes in policies, practices, behaviors you are proposing to address the structural barriers? How is this project going to develop family leaders to address these barriers?

The Annette Island School District (AISD) has many educators who grew up in Metlakatla, and regularly celebrates those educators who have dedicated decades to teaching locally. Albert Booth, for example, a revered elder, taught for 40 years, is a WWII veteran, and a cultural leader. AISD has been aggressively successful with winning grants for teaching Alaskan Native language (Tsimsala) to primary and elementary level students, and for encouraging cultural learning as a fundamental part of all K12 instruction. AISD is actively involved with all community stakeholders as a leader, and convener.

AISD has been providing robust digital professional development for all educators and community leaders for many years. Many very positive advances have been recently achieved; all schools (elementary, middle, High School) now enjoy 6 megabyte broadband. Ipads, and laptops are now available to all students in the schools. Ipads and tens of thousands of new innovative apps, have created viable effective new learning opportunities for one-year olds and up.

Recent community learning events based on one–hour “Create and Share” hands-on train-the-trainer activities, have already resulted in elders narrating historical photos preserved for all future generations as Ebooks. A mother and 5 year old daughter, in two hours, created a 20 page multimedia Ebook for Ipads as a model for others. Local crafts Ecommerce websites have been generated via train-the-trainer events using free web tools. Thanks to a new generation of local mentors, free websites for all community organizations and purposes are not only possible, but are now proliferating. The new non-profit “Alaska Native Girls” is in the lead for demonstrating website innovations; inspiring others. Such innovations shared on Facebook will reach everyone in the community within a day, as the new reality, and represents an immediate opportunity for ongoing viral seeding of new family-oriented innovations across the community. As other villages become aware of Metlakatla’s own reinvention of digital (Native) applications, they will be invited to learn directly from Metlakatla’s innovations – from all generations.

September, 2011, the first traditional potlatch in decades was held, with over 500 attendees, and was broadcast statewide by KACN TV. As a direct result, a Virtual Potlatch concept paper resulted in the funding and implementation of the NTIA/State Broadband Initiative demonstration project "Digitizing Alaska." Multiple successful “proof of concept” models have laid the groundwork for broader next steps. Numerous videos, an Ibook multimedia manual, Native language Ebooks, community websites, and more, have already been created; showcased online for all to see - what’s possible when good people take action to raise the GPA (Good People Acting) of the entire community. Elders quote: "Potlatch is coming back!" AISD is uniquely capable to champion this timely, inclusive, new community learning adventure. Short videos and more: http://lone-eagles.com/digitizing-metlakatla.htm

What Specific Outcomes do you hope to achieve?

Broad participation of the AISD schools, families, and community anchor institutions, will create the Center for Healthy Alaskan Native Families as a sustainable Alaskan Native Learning Society; a virtual village of villages.

We’ll model a community self-assessment initiative whereby the community, lead by parents and youth, documents their local talents, both digital and cultural, their current websites, both cultural and entrepreneurial, and will identify who is interested in sharing what they know with others, and/or learning specific new skills. Short “hands-on” Create and Share workshops focusing on easy-to-learn free web tools, and mobile device apps, create near instant satisfaction and the motivation to learn more, as locals quickly become mentors - eager to share their new skills with others.

We’ll reunite the generations by having youth identify how elders can benefit from health apps, online telecare, online shopping, and how to overcome elders isolation, loneliness, and depression by reconnecting with distant family members via Skype and social media. An “Alaskan Native Mentors” program will engage families directly, using social media to connect those who know how - with those eager to learn.

We’ll show tribal members how to create original online videos, accessible via mobile learning, showing the best online resources and broadband applications (and apps), from their Alaskan Native perspective, for public safety, health, education, entrepreneurship, energy, and more.

We’ll seed local digital entrepreneurial businesses to deliver digital skills training and expertise locally, offering advanced training in return for volunteers to create free websites and online videos to serve local needs, to be used as product examples for online services offered to native villages both within, and beyond, Alaska. The media creations that volunteers post online will be dedicated, in potlatch fashion, to honor individuals who have lived by Alaskan Native values.

We’ll post public progress regularly celebrating the number of active participants, the number of mentors and new skills shared, the number of new websites, the locally generated innovations, and more. “New Mirror Metrics” will showcase the expression of Alaskan Native Values by providing public online social recognition for those contributing to the community.

We’ll create the means for ongoing online sharing of local innovations between communities as a vibrant “community of communities” sharing innovations, resources, and mentors.

The viral nature of our proposed scalable “Virtual Potlatch” will create - literally - a new “communities of practice” movement leveraging the yet unacknowledged bottom-up boom in innovation. Mass inclusion and motivation is our goal; giving voice to all those good people currently frustrated by the negativity they see around them, and on the world news. Global change on a mass scale is now possible, and necessary, as we all come to understand we are one human family, now reunited in purpose, and increasingly empowered, online. Data on improvements in family incomes, student achievement, and much more will be documented. We are limited only by our imaginations.

Your feedback and recommendations are invited.