some of the education reforms underway in northern nations ground formal schooling in the inuit or inupiaq ways of living and being and thus make fluid the relationship between formal education and traditional learning so that in barrow alaska whaling can be both the backbone of the community and a foundation on which learning is built in school this rethinking of the definition also allows for inclusion of differing educational goals for parents and students whether it is enabling young people to continue on in formal schooling and pursue a professional career in a location away from their home community or developing the skills that enable them to stay in their home and be a successful subsistence hunter or herder these processes ground students in their own culture values and beliefs and enable them to successfully negotiate the sociopolitical and economic world beyond their own communities we also acknowledge the importance in indigenous communities of instruction in heritage languages as well as in western languages