My group's general research topic is the Aleut people. Some of the questions we came upon were, "how do they build their houses?", "what do they eat?", and "where do they live?". These questions are important to me because as a little girl I lived on the Aleutian Islands and met many Aleut natives and had Aleut friends. I would like to know more about their people because I was too young to understand when I lived there. I imagine my audience could be an array of people like those who are considering moving to the Aleutians, or other students who are doing research on the same group.
Within our team, we have split up different topics to each person, such as art, culture/technology, clothing, and traditions. My topic is traditions. I would like to find information on Aleut dancing the most because I participated in these dances when I was small. I remember we wore leather dresses and had head dresses too. My dad is a leather man and he made my dress and he made me an amazing head dress. The girls spent a great deal of time making their outfits look nice, using small beads and different types of animal fur. I recall standing in the bathroom putting on make up before we went out to the audience. I was too young to understand what the stories were that we were telling, I could barely pronounce the words we chanted. There was a boy drummer and the rest of us were girls. We stood in a circle facing each other and we had arm movements and we all chanted at the same time. It was fun for me as a little kid, but now that I'm older I'm much more interested in the stories that were being told and what the words meant.
I plan on finding information from books at the library to look up Aleut traditions first. I would like to have a good grasp on a few ideas before I try to dive into just one and later find out that there's not much information on it. If I can find information on dancing I will roll along with that topic. So far, I have found my old friends from King Cove (located on the Aleutians) and I plan on asking them questions (one of them has experience dancing too), like possible natives that I could interview.
The hardest challenge is going to be keeping myself on track with the due dates. I haven't figured out a schedule yet! I would like to sit down with my group and discuss with them what we should have done by what dates.
