Alaska Ocean Science Fair Projects combine Scientific and Cultural Knowledge - 09.18.2009

The winners of the first COSEE “ocean science fair” awards at the 2009 statewide science and engineering fair were high schoolers Taylor Everett and Grant Magdanz of Kotzebue for their project on sheefish feeding habits; middle schooler Kenesia Price from Unalaska for a project on water filtration and Hannah Joe from Mountain Village for a project on DNA of local berries; and elementary school student Sebastion Szweda-Mittlestadt of Girdwood for his project on the rates and effects of tides and the potential for tidal power. The awards came after the projects were judged on both their scientific content and their community and cultural relevance. The presence of these and 16 other ocean science projects at the statewide competition was the result of the efforts of the Alaska COSEE program led by COSEE P.I. Ray Barnhart, Director of the UAF Center for Cross-cultural and Rural Development (CCRD). During the 2009/2010 school year, both retired Bush teacher Alan Dick and a student in the new UAF Indigenous Studies program will travel to villages and provide advice and support to teachers who want to organize fairs in their community. New materials on planning science fairs and science/culture camps and hundreds of ocean science fair project ideas will be available on the Alaska Native Knowledge Network website.
Alaska’s rural and Native youth learn survival techniques from stories, from observation of the practices of the elders and long-time residents of a particular place. Science fair projects tied in with Alaska’s traditional Native cultures or a sense of place bring a special awareness to the practice of the scientific method – the awareness that an ingenious trial-and-error “technology of the local” has been the means to survival – or not – over vast expanses of Alaska for the centuries it has been occupied by people. Now these cultures and local technologies of survival are being put to a severe test in the face of rapid climate change. The ocean science fairs are a means to engage the youth in understanding the changes that are occurring and to use both western science and traditional knowledge to fashion a future.

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