Alaska’s West Coast

Multicultural Alaska Series winner of Best Textbook Award-2016. This book was written in 2016 by students in a University of Alaska Southeast Masters of Arts in Teaching program. Student authors include Jimmy Andrew, Heidi Brook, Tim Higginbotham, Ed Hunter, Andrew Israelsen and Tyler Thomas. It features a basic introduction to the region of Western Alaska - its geography, peoples, culture, and history - and contains six detailed lesson plans intended to serve as models of culturally responsive teaching.


Through this text we will explore the West Coast of Alaska. We will learn about its Native people - the Yup’ik, Iñupiat and St. Lawrence Island Yupik. When translated to English, these names have a meaning similar to ‘the Real People.’ The concept of being human while respecting the world is central to these groups.


This book was developed using a project-based learning approach under the direction of nationally-recognized educator - Peter Pappas. It's a great resource for use in the classroom, and it serves as a model for teacher or student curation of historic content into interactive digital books. More at UASMAT.org