In the Days of our People: Shageluk, Alaska

Our students' lives are rich in the Athabaskan history of their culture. Preserving that heritage in the most respectable and honorable ways is important to our school and community. We focus daily on traditional food use, relationships, generational learning, local history and historical lifestyles while at the same time recognizing and balancing the contemporary lives of the Athabaskan Youth of our villages today.

One way we have been able to successfully record our students' lives, both from an ancestral and contemporary point of view, is to maintain a village archive of pictures and films, old and new with historical stories and anecdotes about the photos.

With this award we would like to purchase a high end FireWire external storage drive to back up our already bursting archive of pictures and enhance our ability to store, not only photos, but films.

We would allow the use of the pictures, scanner/printer and storage drive to any member of our tribal community who wishes to add to or gather for personal use any picture or film.

As we are seeking funds for our projects, this grant would pay for a LaCie Big Disk Extreme with Triple Interface 600GB.