With the consent of Alisha Drabek, I am hoping to pick up some of the threads of her beautiful dissertation work, specifically the concept of exploring Unguwacirpet - Our Subsistence Lifeways as a way of cultural wellbeing. In her dissertation, she explored a spherical-concept model of wellbeing to organize and frame concepts of Alutiiq holistic wellbeing and Alutiiq values based on analysis of stories and interactions with elders and other community members (Drabek, 2012, p. 143). (Refer to the figure below) 

Reading and learning from Alisha’s work has given me so many ideas and inspirations for how I want to approach my own return home to Kodiak and immersion into our subsistence ways and culture. I recognize that I know little, and I am excited to learn. I want to use this as an opportunity to learn from you all and explore the idea that “this [subsistence] way of life is integrated into a person’s overall way of being and touches all aspects of life: spiritual, mental, ethical, physical and emotional and social” (Drabek, 2012, p. 153).  

My background in psychology and now in the Indigenous and rural public health PhD program at Montana State University has given me a firm understanding that our Indigenous culture and traditional lifeways hold so much of our health. Looking at health from a systems level has led me to understand that a thriving food system holds our culture, language, and wellbeing as Indigenous peoples. This system is where our knowledges, practices, and lifeways are sustained. It fosters an understanding of our kinship within a web of relations that has allowed Indigenous peoples to live with respect and reciprocity and a collective attempt at sustainability and right relationship with each other and the lands, waters, and non-human relatives that they belong to.  

My philosophy and positionality as someone who is Sugpiaq and ancestrally Unangax̂, but was raised away from Alaska and my culture, is that a return to our ‘traditional harvest lifeways’ will not only create an opportunity for me to learn subsistence practices but also to engage in our culture and language and to continue to develop a sense of wellbeing. My general life hypothesis is that our culture holds the right way to live, and a thriving food system holds the tools to live that way- culture is wellness, food is medicine. I want to work with you all to explore how food is medicine across all aspects of our wellbeing- physical, social, mental, spiritual, and ethical.  

My hope that this experience will inform the work I do for my dissertation and beyond and it will create an opportunity for other community members to engage and learn about all the reasons that a thriving food system is a system worth fighting for. Because of this, I want to be intentional with this journey and structure it around our values and concepts of wellbeing. I am hoping to do this by weaving my experiences with Alisha’s model of wellbeing into an organizing category for each blog post (see the table below on the five aspects of Alutiiq Wellbeing (p. 146). 

Resources

http://ankn.uaf.edu/curriculum/PhD_Projects/AlishaDrabek/Drabek_Dissertation_Final.pdf