Module 4: Cataclysmic Events and Their Effects

Explain:

Like a number of my classmates blogs I read, a lot in this module was information I have a general understanding of.  The most interesting things I took away dealt with things specific to Alaska.  I feel that this is one area that I have so much to learn about.  It's interesting looking back at my education from the lower 48 - our studies of Alaska were sporadic and spotty at best.  I am enjoying learning about the diversity of landscape, geologic features, and cultures, and at getting a better understanding of how they are interrelated.  It is important for me to be able to reference things that my students are familiar with, rather than taking the easy route and referencing things only I have the background knowledge of.

My excitement lies in finding connections between things my students have backgrounds in and things that I have backgrounds in, and then having that bridge appear that can link the two.  Which brings me to... 

Extend:

Maui and the "Big Catch"

I am going to move out of Alaska for the remainder of this blog to make some connections between past and present learning - and in the process begin constructing that bridge that can connect my knowledge with my students'.  While watching the video of the creation myth of Hawaii I was brought back to my time student teaching in New Zealand.  The Maori, the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand, share an almost identical creation myth with the Hawaiians (down to the name of the fisherman, Maui, and his fishing up the islands).  While the myths themselves have an interesting role to play in education, I find the spread of them more interesting.

In my history classes I am teaching (both US History and Alaska Studies) I like to look at connections of cultures across geographies.  It is a powerful way to see connections between groups of people.  It provides an opportunity to evaluate migrations and this in turn can be brought up to the present to immigration and looking at how these events shape the world we live in today. 

My bridge is beginning to look fairly strong.  I may be able to walk across it soon.  I am seeing connections between the Polynesian migrations (motivated by a desire to find more food for growing populations) to early Alaska Native groups (who were not Native to Alaska at that time) traveling across the Bering Land Bridge, also in search of food.  Both migrations had certain things in common - of interest from above - oral stories. 

Evaluate: 

Looking back on what I have written, I surprise myself.  I like science and numbers and facts.  I make my neighbors laugh at my obsession with finding out why things work.  I grow increasingly frustrated with local responses to my questions about the reason for the number of fossils of trees and leaves on out beach.  "That's the way it's always been," I have been told by multiple people.  Argghhh.  I will find out the answer to that question.  But I am digressing.

My surprise is that my above discussion focuses on creation myths.  "How on earth is this related?" I was just thinking.  But I then I began to pull together some connections.  

Early cultures, from Polynesian, to Eskimo, to Western European, viewed the world through a series of lenses.  I am positive that in another 2000 years, future Earthlings will be looking back at our understandings (and more likely misunderstandings) of science with similar thoughts about us - "Boy were they off".  But I don't think our previous conceptions were that far off.  

I mean obviously the New Zealand islands, as well as the islands of Hawaii and Tahiti, were not pulled up from underwater by some superstrong fisherman named of Maui.  But they were, and "pulled" may be the wrong verb, brought up through an equally violent and sudden (although sudden on a geologic time scale) series of events.  The creation stories do help explain why things happened - and this desire for explanation is the beginning of our scientific nature.  

I am going to leave this post with a thought about an event that happened in New Zealand in 1931. 

 

I lived on the North Island in a small community called Havelock North near Hawke Bay which opened to the Pacific Ocean.  In 1931, a massive earthquake devastated the Hawke's Bay region.  The large city of Napier was ruined.  What buildings were left standing after the two and a half minutes of shaking subsided were consumed by fire.  Over 250 people lost their lives.  Thousands more were injured.

Post Office Post Earthquake

But what makes this earthquake interesting occurred on a combination of a geographic and a cultural level.  Geographic first.  The earthquake lifted some 40 square kilometers of sea bed up more than 2.7 meters - high enough to bring the sea bed above sea level.  I remember reading first hand accounts of this stunning event.  People recalled seeing boats suddenly stranded hundreds of feet from water, fish flopping around in the mud, surely baffled (if they were capable of such thoughts) as to their current situation.  Today, this land, should you ever fly to Napier, is where your plane will land.  In addition to an airport, are residential homes, farmland, and industrial buildings.

Now 1931 was less than 20 years after Alfred Wegener proposed his theory of continental drift (the precursor to our current theory of tectonic plates).  At the time, much of his theory was still up in the air.  Wegener lacked a mechanism to drive the plates, and much of the evidence to support that the continents were moving had yet to be discovered.  In fact, it wasn't until the 1950s that his theory became widely accepted.  Now imagine you were alive in 1931.  You've never heard of continental drift.  I'm not going to say you will believe a fisherman snagged his hook on the bottom of the sea floor, but...at this particular moment in time you just witnessed the ocean floor jump upwards nearly nine feet!  What will your explanation be?

A post script to this event...   

The rebuilding of Napier and the surrounding towns tell a story as well.  The earthquake took place in 1931 at the height of the Art Deco craze in architectural design.  Many of the buildings are beautiful examples of the fad and Napier's architecture is highly regarded one of the best collections of Art Deco in the world.  I took my students on a field trip in Napier examining the best examples of Art Deco.  What surprised me wasn't how fantastic the buildings were.  It was the integration of the Art Deco I was prepared for and the traditional Maori motifs.  The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, and like indigenous peoples in all the areas of the world that the British colonize, they suffered greatly under British rule.  This was an interesting connection to see, especially in a time period where the mistreatment of Maori people was still widespread.        

Three Colleagues
I visited three new blogs this week.  I am enjoying this.  So many different perspectives and tidbits of information.

First stop: Alaska Knowledge where I picked up an interesting tidbit about the origin of the Tlingit name for Mt. Edgecumbe translated to "blinking mountain" in reference to the last time the volcano erupted - 4000 years ago!  The power of oral histories.

Next stop:  Explore Alaska.  I laughed when I read Tracy's statements about her being fine in the Bush, should the world "go to hell", but her students would go insane due to the loss of their cell phone service. 


Last stop:  Dan's Explore Alaska!  I enjoyed reading about the connections he was making in his class between the tsunami and Indonesia and past and future tsunamis here in Alaska.