Marshall Cultural Atlas

This collection of student work is from Frank Keim's classes. He has wanted to share these works for others to use as an example of Culturally-based curriculum and documentation. These documents have been OCR-scanned. These are available for educational use only.

 

 

 

Higuma
Japanese Brown Bear

Japan is a crowded country with a population of 122 million people. With Japan's population there is enough wilderness to support nearly 3,000 Brown bears and an unknown number of Asian black bears. Brown bears are found only in Japan's northernmost island, Hokkaido. This island has a little more than 30,000 square miles and has nearly four times the Brown bear population of the entire continental United States!

The land began being cleared about 150 years ago when agriculture and industry were introduced. Aboriginal Ainu had lived there by hunting bears and deer, catching salmon, and gathering plants for more than 1,000 years. The Ainu did not have any guns to kili these big animals. They used only bamboo arrows poisoned with a preparation made from the roots of a small purple-flowered plant called Aconitum yesoense. Hunters tested the poison for these bamboo arrows by putting it on the web between their fingers. If the poison was strong enough they would feel a burning sensation. After the bear was hit it would only run about 50 to 100 yards before falling. Each Ainu village would give thanks by bringing the bear to the mountain god after they had a four day -long ceremony or winter festival. Before the festival though they'd capture a Brown bear cub and raise it for two years. As it grew the women would take turns nursing the cub from their breast. About 20 years ago the Japanese government no longer let the ceremonies go on. Only a mock festival is held for tourists to prevent the old ways from being lost.

Japanese consider the Brown bears to be dangerous pests for eating their livestock and sometimes killing mushroom pickers in the mountains. In 1915, after the killing of eight people and a baby, Yen awards were given out for killing the bears. Awards up to 20,000 Yen are still given out for nuisance bears in some communities.

Their future does not look good because of the loss of their natural forest habitat. It is being cut down for both farm land and for forest products. Bears can't even go fishing now because the rivers the salmon live near are under human control and they are closed to the bears.

Noako Maeda, the curator of the Noboribetsu Bear Park, in the city of Noboribetsu, is deeply interested in the bears of Hokkaido. She said," the bear's young cubs suckle very gently, more so than her own children." She hopes that the bears raised in the park will soon be released to the wild.

By: Barbara Andrew

Higuma

The Brown Bear	- Gabriel Duny
Higuma	- Barbara Andrew
Polar Bear	- Tina Papp
Black Bears	- Henry S. Hunter
Asiatic Black Bear (Selenarctos thibetanus)	- Leslie Hunter Jr.
Sloth Bear	- LaVerne J. Manumik
Spectacled Bears Tremarctos ornatus	- Flora M. Evan
Panda Bear	- Palassa Sergie
Sun Bear	- Marlene Papp
Grizzly Bear	- Billy Waska
The Body of a Grizzly Bear	- Tina Papp
Hibernation and Denning of Grizzly Bears	- Flora Evan

 

Bear Fire Stories and Poems about Bears

by Marshall High School
Language Arts Classes
Spring, 1992

 

Produced by 

Information about Bears

Creative Stories from the Imagination

True Stories from Experience

Poems

 

Christmastime Tales Stories real and imaginary about Christmas, Slavik, and the New Year Winter, 1996	Christmastime Tales II Stories about Christmas, Slavik, and the New Year Winter, 1998	Christmastime Tales III Stories about Christmas, Slavik, and the New Year Winter, 2000
Summer Time Tails 1992	Summertime Tails II 1993	Summertime Tails III
Summertime Tails IV Fall, 1995	Summertime Tails V Fall, 1996	Summertime Tails VI Fall, 1997
Summertime Tails VII Fall, 1999	Signs of the Times November 1996	Creative Stories From Creative Imaginations
Mustang Mind Manglers - Stories of the Far Out, the Frightening and the Fantastic 1993	Yupik Gourmet - A Book of Recipes
M&M Monthly
Happy Moose Hunting! September Edition 1997	Happy Easter! March/April 1998	Merry Christmas December Edition 1997
Happy Valentine’s Day! February Edition 1998	Happy Easter! March/April Edition 2000	Happy Thanksgiving Nov. Edition, 1997
Happy Halloween October 1997 Edition	Edible and Useful Plants of Scammon Bay	Edible Plants of Hooper Bay 1981
The Flowers of Scammon Bay Alaska	Poems of Hooper Bay	Scammon Bay (Upward Bound Students)
Family Trees and the Buzzy Lord	It takes a Village - A guide for parents May 1997	People in Our Community
Buildings and Personalities of Marshall	Marshall Village PROFILE	Qigeckalleq Pellullermeng ‘A Glimpse of the Past’
Raven’s Stories Spring 1995	Bird Stories from Scammon Bay	The Sea Around Us
Ellamyua - The Great Weather - Stories about the Weather Spring 1996	Moose Fire - Stories and Poems about Moose November, 1998	Bears Bees and Bald Eagles Winter 1992-1993
Fish Fire and Water - Stories about fish, global warming and the future November, 1997	Wolf Fire - Stories and Poems about Wolves	Bear Fire - Stories and Poems about Bears Spring, 1992

 

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