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Transcript: Reverend Dr. Michael James Oleksa, Ph.D.

The institution for assimilation is the public school

[Oleksa:]
So the institution for assimilation is the public school. Yup’ik Eskimos, Iñupiaqs, Athabascan, had never seen a book let alone a school. I can imagine what it was like in western Alaska when the ton of lumber arrived. No one had ordered it. The tundra has no trees. People weren’t even quite sure what this was. They walked out on the beach and ran their hands across the lumber, knocked their knuckles against it and concluded “mur’ak” [phonetic], it’s wood, [in Native language] big steam bath tonight. This literally happened in some villages I am told.