There is a wealth of information on both Alaska and the topic of cross-cultural communication. The resource list below is not meant to be comprehensive, but is only meant to give you a starting point of where to find more information about Alaska, health care in Alaska, and cross-cultural communication information. We welcome feedback on the resources listed below. Were they helpful in preparing you for your clinical rotation in Alaska? Have you found other resources that you think we should list here? We would like to know!
For comments or suggestions, please notify Janice Troyer.
The following resources are divided into four categories:
- Alaska Background Resources
- Health and Health Care in Alaska
- Cross Cultural Communication in Alaska
- Cross Cultural Communication-general information
ALASKA BACKGROUND RESOURCES
Explore the following websites for information on the history and cultures of Alaska. The Alaska Community Database will also give you detailed information about each community within Alaska.
WEBSITES:
Select the community you are interested in and choose General Overview for detailed information on the location, history, culture, economy, facilities, transportation, and climate.
This website has a wealth of information about Alaska and its history. It includes six units: Geography, Alaska’s Cultures, Russia’s Colony, America’s Territory, Governing Alaska, Modern Alaska. Regional histories are given for the Northwest, Interior, Southwest, Southcentral and Southeast sections of the state. Timelines are also included on each page that note important historic events. (Note: this is one of the few sites that gives a good overview of some of the non-Alaska Native cultures found in Alaska including African American, Asian American, Polynesian and Latin American.)
The Alaska Native Heritage Center is located in Anchorage and well worth a visit if you have the opportunity. It is a gathering place that celebrates, perpetuates and preserves the unique Alaska Native Cultures, languages, traditions and values through celebration and education. Besides finding out about all the events and classes held at the Center, the website also includes information about Alaska Native Cultures. (Click on the Learn link.)
The Alaska Native Knowledge Network was designed to serve as a resource for compiling and exchanging information related to Alaska Native knowledge systems and ways of knowing. It was established to assist Native people, government agencies, educators and the general public in gaining access to the knowledge base that Alaska Natives have acquired through cumulative experience over millennia. (Note: be sure to check out the Alaska Native values section and the map of Alaska Native languages with information on each region.)
This website is geared towards educators, but has a wealth of information on the history of Alaska, regional profiles, and suggested readings. It also includes a detailed map of Alaska that lists all of Alaska’s communities.
BOOKS:
There are many good books about Alaska and by Alaskans. Rather than list them all, we invite you to visit the websites below which sell some of these excellent publications.
The Alaska Natural History Association develops publications that provide visitors with information to enhance their understanding of Alaska and its public lands. Be sure to check out the list of books under the topics of Native Alaskans and History.
The Alaska Native Knowledge Network compiles and exchanges information related to Alaska native knowledge systems and ways of knowing.
University of Alaska Press publishes and distributes books about Alaska, the Pacific Rim, Arctic Canada, Siberia and Scandinavia. Topics include: history and politics; anthropology, Native studies, and folklore; Native languages and literatures; geology, climate, and the aurora; exploration; and northern health.
HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE IN ALASKA
WEBSITES:
Alaska Health Profiles Online provide summary information for census areas and boroughs, grouped into "areas" that allow some regional comparison. Population, births, deaths and selected "risk factors" and health behaviors are included.
This is a 3 volume set-all available on-line:
Volume I outlines the health-related goals and objectives for Alaska. It discusses the leading indicators and provides statistics in four main focus areas: health promotion, health protection, preventive services and access to care, and public health infrastructure.
Volume II offers an alternative to the standard strategic health plan. This plan addresses the targets and indicators in Volume I through fourteen stories of community-based efforts for public health improvement.
Volume III features summaries of the state health planning documents, cross-referencing materials, and an extensive list of acronyms and abbreviations common to public health.
ARTICLES:
This paper gives a broad overview of Alaska’s Health Care System and the historical context in which it was formed. Click here for the full text.
BOOKS:
- Yuuyaraq: The Way of the Human Being by Harold Napoleon, edited by Eric Madsen (1996)
Description from the Alaska Native Knowledge Network site:
Occasionally an author takes bits and pieces of information that many people are more or less familiar with and puts them together in a way that offers new possibilities for understanding events around us. The focal point in Harold Napoleon's Yuuyaraq is such a discussion. It is about the initial effects and continuing impact of the epidemics that afflicted Alaska Natives from the 1770s through the 1940s.
Note: this book can be purchased from the Alaska Native Knowledge Network.
- Chills and Fever: Health and Disease in the Early History of Alaska by Robert Fortuine (1989)
Review from University of Alaska Press:
The history of medicine encompasses the whole range of human life, society, and endeavor. In this ambitious book, Robert Fortuine leads readers through the early history of Alaska by tracing the health of its people. He presents a concise summary of the health aspects of traditional Alaskan cultures and reconstructs the best available picture of the various diseases from which people suffered up to the time of first European contact.
His narrative follows the often uneven growth of health services in Alaska, including the ships' surgeons on the earliest voyages of exploration, the unique health care system of the Russian-American Company, and the American medical missions in the hectic times of the Gold Rush. He offers sketches of the health problems that have the most profound impacts on Alaska history, including smallpox, influenza, syphilis, tuberculosis, and alcohol abuse.
Chills and Fever belongs in the libraries of health workers, historians, anthropologists, and anyone with an interest in this unique and informative perspective on Alaska's past.
Note: this book can be purchased from the University of Alaska Press.
- The Alaska Health Aide Program by Philip Nice with Walter Johnson (1998)
The Community Health Aide Program (CHAP) in Alaska evolved slowly in response to the need to deliver modern health care to small groups of people living in widely scattered villages. To meet this challenge it was necessary to break away from the traditional methods of delivering health care. The result was the development of the Community Health Aide Program with educational centers training individuals from villages, who would return home to offer care for their own people. This book documents the efforts to develop a statewide curriculum.
Note: this book can be purchased from the Alaska Center of Rural Health- Alaska’s AHEC. Contact Janice Troyer for more information.
CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN ALASKA
ARTICLES:
- Communication Across Cultures by Casie Williams (revised March, 2002)
Casie Williams describes cultural values, time orientation, communication patterns and language (including body language), the role of Elders in a village, and contemporary health problems as it relates to Alaska Native cultures. For a PDF version of this article, go to the introductory page for clinical rotations on this website.
BOOKS:
- Another Culture Another World by Father Michael Oleksa (2005)
Book Review: by Frank Pratt Jr., Director of Bilingual Studies for the Bering Strait School District:
Another Culture/Another World by Father Michael Oleksa should be required reading...The book is not an educational or scholarly tome one has to wade through, rather it is a relatively easy read filled with keen insight into different Alaskan cultures. It is a book that would have benefited people thirty years ago and will benefit people thirty years from now.
Note: this book can be purchased from the Alaska Initiative for Community Engagement.
VIDEOS:
- Communicating Across Cultures with Father Michael Oleksa (four-part video series)
Russian Orthodox priest, scholar, peace-maker and raconteur Father Michael Oleksa combines energy with twenty-five years personal experience listening to the traditional voices of Alaskan Natives to host this dynamic and sensitive series.
This series explores how to communicate across the frontiers of race, religion, culture, sex, age and background. Each tape is 56 minutes long. A description of each video follows:
- Our World - The Global-Literate Culture
The first program focuses on the basic experiences of and assumptions about reality that dominate modern western society. Characterizing the dominant culture of the world as Global-Literate, Father Michael describes the evolution of this view of the World, with its exclusively chronological sense of time, from its origins in the ancient Middle East.
- The Old Wisdom - Traditional Cultures
The second program describes an alternative view of life, of reality derived from the more ancient sense of time and of humanity inspired by traditional, non-literate cultures of the World. How did these cultures answer the questions: Who are we? Where do we fit in the cosmic scheme of things? How do we appropriately relate to each other and the world around us?
- The Clash of Worlds
The third program describes the tragic clash between the Global-Literate and the Traditional cultures of the world. Documenting the effects of massive enculturation, Father Michael asserts that tribal people must be allowed to become their own experts, to assume responsible positions within their villages and regions, and to adapt whatever is useful from the modern world to their own needs and situation, without losing their positive sense of identity.
- The Universe of Communication
In the concluding program, the need to communicate assumes a new urgency. Father Michael describes why it is so difficult to communicate accurately and effectively and includes some guidelines for what to look for, as well as what to about the inevitable miscommunications that are part of our daily lives.
Note: To buy the series, click here.
- A Matter of Respect by Ellen Frankenstein
In this stereotype-breaking documentary about the meaning of tradition and change people speak frankly about the challenges they face balancing their lives in two cultures. A young drummer and dancer guides tourists through a museum, a silver carver/disc jockey talks about his love both of rock and roll and traditional carving, and a Tlingit elder teaches children at a summer fish camp. A Matter of Respect portrays a diverse group of people expressing their culture and identity and honoring their ancestors’s way of life through teaching language, harvesting and preparing traditional foods, restoring community cemeteries and dancing, carving and weaving.
Note: To buy the video or DVD, click here.
CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION– General Information
WEBSITES:
The mission of the National Center for Cultural Competence (NCCC) is to increase the capacity of health and mental health programs to design, implement, and evaluate culturally and linguistically competent service delivery systems. This site includes publications and information for providers and practitioners including assessment tools. Two examples are given below:
Promoting Cultural and Linguistic Competency: Self Assessment Tools
- Self Assessment Checklist for Behavioral Health Personnel Providing Services and Supports to Children, Youth and their Family
- Self Assessment Checklist for Personnel Providing Primary Health Care Services
ARTICLES:
- Working on Common Cross-cultural Communication Challenges by Marcelle E. DuPraw and Marya Axner (1997)
DuPraw and Axner describe the six fundamental patterns of cultural differences (communication styles, attitudes toward conflict, approaches to completing tasks, decision-making styles, attitudes toward disclosure, and approaches to knowing) and suggest ways for respecting our differences and working together. For the full text, click here.
- Cross-Cultural Communication by Michelle LeBaron (July 2003)
LeBaron outlines and demonstrates through examples the ideas, attitudes, and behaviors of four variables of cross-cultural communication: time and space; fate and personal responsibility; face and face-saving; and nonverbal communication. For the full text, click here.
BOOKS:
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (1998)
An Amazon review:
Lia Lee was born in 1981 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, overmedication, and culture clash: "What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance." The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty--and their nobility.
- The Dancing Healers: A Doctor’s Journey of Healing with Native Americans by Carl Hammershlag (1998)
A Library Journal review:
The author spent 20 years as a physician working among Native Americans in the Southwest. He began with a conventional medical outlook but grew to regard the traditional Indian ways of ritual, healing, and dying with awe and admiration. This is a glowing personal account of his experiences, which he claims have enabled him to meld Jewish and Native American spiritual concepts and become a "dancing healer," one who is able to help others pursue the meaning and wisdom of life and cure their diseases.
Note: You are likely to find the two books listed above in your local bookstore or visit http://www.amazon.com/.
VIDEOS :
- A World of Differences: Understanding Cross-Cultural Communication
Produced by University of California A WORLD OF DIFFERENCES explores 14 different ways--verbal and nonverbal--that two people from different cultures can fail to understand each other. Some of these differences reflect language and translation problems. But many others involve subtle differences in etiquette, gestures, values, norms, rituals, expectations, and other important cross-cultural variations. Cross-cultural communication can be difficult, inaccurate, and highly stressful. When we are immersed in an environment where the language, attitudes, values, and behaviors are alien to our own experience, we may suffer disorientation and frustration--an experience known as "culture shock."
This is because culture affects almost all behaviors. Culture governs how close we stand while talking with another person. Culture governs how we use (or avoid) eye contact. Culture governs how we express (or suppress) powerful emotions such as joy, disapproval, and anger. Culture even governs the expression (if not the actual experience) of love, because culture determines whether we feel free to express love in public settings by holding hands, hugging, or kissing the person we love.
Note: To buy or rent the video, click here.
Last Updated 11/12/2007 |
