Associate Professor Maria Williams’ research incorporates an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and learning about music cultures in Alaska Native indigenous populations. She said she hopes to call attention to a connection between oil profits and the failure of the Native education system.
Daily Lobo: What are you researching?
Maria Williams: I concentrate on Native American music and dance. I’m into how tribal people use computer technology. And I just finished writing an article about the political economy of oil and its effects on the Alaska Native K-12 education system. The Alaska Native population is about 20 percent of the overall population and only 37 percent of Native students graduate from high school. Most live in rural Alaska — there are 200 Alaska Native villages. Still, 80 percent of teachers come from the lower 48 (states) … The education curriculum for the Alaska Native population is developed in Minneapolis or D.C., and the No Child Left Behind Act has compounded the already dismal K-12 education system. Yet oil companies have made $70 to $80 billion in profit, and they want the Natives to leave their villages and move to the cities. What they want to do is eliminate the Alaska Native population.
So, I make a connection between the Alaska Native population and the oil and gas business, most of which comes from where the Alaska Native population lives. And I believe that the education system is a gate-keeping mechanism and they want people to fail. They don’t want the Native population to be empowered and educated.
DL: Do you think people would be harder to govern if they were empowered and educated?
MW: I think it would be harder for resource exploitation. They would have to work on environmental cleanup, for example. There’s an oil spill a day. Oil runs the show in Alaska, and it’s politically corrupt. Even the state will not release accurate numbers of the oil profits secured by the oil companies.
DL: You mentioned an effort to move the Native populations from rural areas to the cities. Has there been a clear government policy to do that?
MW: It’s more subtle. Anything that’s linked to tax issues around funding schools and school infrastructure is underfunded. There’s been consistent underfunding of rural Alaska. I don’t believe they want to see a good education system because then people would question the status quo and ‘Big Oil’ wouldn’t walk away with horrendous profits.
It’s very hard for people to make that connection between oil profits and the failure of the Native education system. I make that connection.
