Shame is a learned attribute

When I moved to Northern California for college I brought no mementos of my culture: no pictures, no handmade clothing. I took care to avoid mentioning where I was from. When people assumed I was Asian I was happy to let them think it, because Asians were smart and clean. My dorm room was bare of my cultural past; the village was scrubbed from my skin. For months I got away with it.

Eventually I did have a lichen-flavored epiphany, and through a different kind of birth I emerged to love 90 percent of my being. There were a lot of tears and a lot of pain and for a while I was ashamed not of my heritage but of my denial of my heritage. I will live the rest of my life in finding the fragile forgiveness of my ancestors.

But after a while I began examining where this burning self-hate came from. I looked into my past and the influences that made me who I was. I looked at each and every thought and prayer and hope I held next to my heart. The examination took years.

Be careful of the ears that hear your judgments. Be careful that your words or actions do not plant poison in younger minds.

I grew up hearing from people that I spent time with everyday tell me that my beloved home and my brown skin were less. That the things I could not change about myself were things to be ashamed of. I don't think they did it on purpose. Instead, I think they thought they were imparting us with great guidance and wisdom, hoping that these revelations would dispel laziness and uncaring: a twisted motivator.

I write this not to be vindictive. I write to make someone, at least one person I hope, aware. I am angry about my experiences; that anger is surrounded by tears and pain. I still work to untangle the tangled, unmapped threads.

And yes, I am talking about teachers. The teachers that work in the villages. I do want to point out that not all teachers are bad or are doing badly. But there were a few in my life that did damage to others and myself. They wove cruel words into our daily diet. With statements like, "If you do well in this class you can get a good grade, go to college and get out of this place." Or comments about animal smells, dirty environments, or how they REALLY can't wait to leave this dreadful/lonely/isolated/cold/desolate place and go to a REAL place with theaters and bowling alleys and things to do. I grew up hearing these offhand comments.

I grew up watching teachers snort at and judge kids that had bad attendance, even though everyone else knew it was because the kid was hunting/camping/fishing/being Inupiaq. They deemed them "behind" and "slow." We learned early that being Inupiaq meant that the smartest people in the world thought you were dumb and they would separate you from the rest of the kids and spend more time with you and speak slowly like you lost some brain cells.

Of course we all thought these teachers all knew. We learned that most teachers did not enjoy your home. That they thought it was dirty or boring and they all left when they could, running from the village like it was on fire.

It was like someone walked into your house -- a house your family has owned for generations -- with a degree in Awesome Homes Authority and a clipboard full of official papers. Then, they proceeded to write everything they thought was wrong with your house. Not just the broken things or the missing things but the fact they hated your choice in furniture and the curtains were not the right color, and there were not enough rooms or things that they deemed necessary for you to be happy. They wrote it all down and even thought you did not see the list, you could still hear them and see them.

I think the easiest way to earn the respect of a village -- as an out of town teacher -- is to voluntarily stay for a little bit for the summer, or the winter Christmas celebrations. Though we can't always hope that everyone will absolutely adore our culture and villages, we can at least hope that they don't openly hate them. I still think that they need to offer an "Inupiaq Manners" course for new teachers. With any cultural interactions, there are differences in mannerisms that cause many an issue.