2:30 PM - 2:45 PM
[MZZ42-04] A Practical Example of Disaster Education Using Indigenous Knowledge: The Case of Ainu Oral Traditions Concerning Tsunami in Shiraoi, Hokkaido
Keywords:Indigenous knowledge, Ainu, tsunami, disaster tradition, disaster prevention, museum
1. Introduction
In disaster prevention, a combination of the hard measures involving physical facilities and the soft measures such as training and education is required. Recent practice and research on disaster education focuses on oral tradition concerning disasters as a soft measure. Research on disaster traditions has been carried out as part of disaster prevention measures against predominantly climate problems, and these studies have noted the concept of “Indigenous knowledge.” This concept may be interpreted as “knowledge that a certain area or group has fostered since ancient times” (Sasaki et al., 2021). It may include tsunami traditions and disaster memorials such as “Tsunami Tendenko.” In this study, we will use this concept as “the knowledge of indigenous people” in order to cover the disaster traditions of the Ainu, an indigenous people of Hokkaido.
An=ukokor aynu ikor oma kenru, the National Ainu Museum is the northernmost national museum and the first museum in Japan dedicated to the history and culture of the indigenous Ainu people. The museum offers education programs that use the interdisciplinary approaches of geology, culture and disaster prevention on Ainu traditions concerning tsunamis that have caused enormous damage in human history. This study summarizes the outline of the education program and examines the effects of disaster education, combining science and indigenous knowledge based on evaluations from the participants.
2. Overview of the education program
Title: Remembering Natural Disasters from Traditional Teaching: Tsunami
Time required: 40 minutes
Program type: a two-person talk format consisting of a person who talks about science and disaster prevention and a person who talks about tradition
Goal: (1) by listening to the Ainu traditions of tsunami, (2) participants realize that tsunami disasters can occur in our life and (3) prepare for disasters.
Contents: The three parts were composed from the example of a tsunami disaster mainly around Shiraoi Town, Hokkaido, where the museum is located. In the first part, “How to Study Past Tsunamis,” through historical documents and sediment deposits, we learned about the large tsunami that hit the Pacific coast of Hokkaido in the 17th century, including around Shiraoi. In the second part, “Tsunami Traditions,” we learned about the Ainu’s way of thinking about tsunamis through the introduction of oral traditions and evacuation sites. The third part was about the danger of current tsunami disasters, and conducted activities to combine the tsunami evacuation map of Shiraoi Town with the evacuation sites in the Ainu tradition. The education program was conducted twice as a holiday event for general visitors and twice as a group training program, with a total of 89 people participating.
3. Results and considerations
A total of 61 questionnaires were returned. In terms of satisfaction, 96.6% of the respondents said they were satisfied (Fig. 1). The goal of the education program was divided into three stages: (1) acquisition of information, (2) personalization, and (3) action, and the free description of the reasons for satisfaction was classified to evaluate the achievement of the goal (Fig.2). Furthermore, the content that left the greatest impression among participants was categorized into the contents of Part I Geology, Part II Culture, and Part III Disaster Prevention (Fig. 3). About 40% of the participants were allowed to personalize the disaster. However, efforts are needed to connect more participants to the stage 3, action. For example, Rika (science) in Japanese school education is considered to be a model that combines not only “Western science” but also Japanese “Shizen (nature; Ogawa, 2009),” and it has been suggested that the “Indigenous knowledge” of the Ainu culture can be included in it (Okuyama, 2022). Because the participants were interested in the content of Ainu culture, it is thought that using Indigenous knowledge in disaster education is effective. However, because we do not have a valid number of responses to discuss this specifically, we would like to repeat the implementation of the education program in the future.
Acknowledgements: We have received the cooperation of Shiraoi Town in implementing this education program. This article is based on some of the contents of Shin et al. (2022). This work was supported by National Ainu Museum Research Project 2022C09.
References: Ogawa (2009) BERE, 15: 32-36. Okuyama (2022) Proc. Annu. Meet. JSSE, 46: 342-343. Sasaki et al. (2021) J. JASC, 11(2): 10-13. Shin et al. (2022) NAM J., 1: 66-79.
In disaster prevention, a combination of the hard measures involving physical facilities and the soft measures such as training and education is required. Recent practice and research on disaster education focuses on oral tradition concerning disasters as a soft measure. Research on disaster traditions has been carried out as part of disaster prevention measures against predominantly climate problems, and these studies have noted the concept of “Indigenous knowledge.” This concept may be interpreted as “knowledge that a certain area or group has fostered since ancient times” (Sasaki et al., 2021). It may include tsunami traditions and disaster memorials such as “Tsunami Tendenko.” In this study, we will use this concept as “the knowledge of indigenous people” in order to cover the disaster traditions of the Ainu, an indigenous people of Hokkaido.
An=ukokor aynu ikor oma kenru, the National Ainu Museum is the northernmost national museum and the first museum in Japan dedicated to the history and culture of the indigenous Ainu people. The museum offers education programs that use the interdisciplinary approaches of geology, culture and disaster prevention on Ainu traditions concerning tsunamis that have caused enormous damage in human history. This study summarizes the outline of the education program and examines the effects of disaster education, combining science and indigenous knowledge based on evaluations from the participants.
2. Overview of the education program
Title: Remembering Natural Disasters from Traditional Teaching: Tsunami
Time required: 40 minutes
Program type: a two-person talk format consisting of a person who talks about science and disaster prevention and a person who talks about tradition
Goal: (1) by listening to the Ainu traditions of tsunami, (2) participants realize that tsunami disasters can occur in our life and (3) prepare for disasters.
Contents: The three parts were composed from the example of a tsunami disaster mainly around Shiraoi Town, Hokkaido, where the museum is located. In the first part, “How to Study Past Tsunamis,” through historical documents and sediment deposits, we learned about the large tsunami that hit the Pacific coast of Hokkaido in the 17th century, including around Shiraoi. In the second part, “Tsunami Traditions,” we learned about the Ainu’s way of thinking about tsunamis through the introduction of oral traditions and evacuation sites. The third part was about the danger of current tsunami disasters, and conducted activities to combine the tsunami evacuation map of Shiraoi Town with the evacuation sites in the Ainu tradition. The education program was conducted twice as a holiday event for general visitors and twice as a group training program, with a total of 89 people participating.
3. Results and considerations
A total of 61 questionnaires were returned. In terms of satisfaction, 96.6% of the respondents said they were satisfied (Fig. 1). The goal of the education program was divided into three stages: (1) acquisition of information, (2) personalization, and (3) action, and the free description of the reasons for satisfaction was classified to evaluate the achievement of the goal (Fig.2). Furthermore, the content that left the greatest impression among participants was categorized into the contents of Part I Geology, Part II Culture, and Part III Disaster Prevention (Fig. 3). About 40% of the participants were allowed to personalize the disaster. However, efforts are needed to connect more participants to the stage 3, action. For example, Rika (science) in Japanese school education is considered to be a model that combines not only “Western science” but also Japanese “Shizen (nature; Ogawa, 2009),” and it has been suggested that the “Indigenous knowledge” of the Ainu culture can be included in it (Okuyama, 2022). Because the participants were interested in the content of Ainu culture, it is thought that using Indigenous knowledge in disaster education is effective. However, because we do not have a valid number of responses to discuss this specifically, we would like to repeat the implementation of the education program in the future.
Acknowledgements: We have received the cooperation of Shiraoi Town in implementing this education program. This article is based on some of the contents of Shin et al. (2022). This work was supported by National Ainu Museum Research Project 2022C09.
References: Ogawa (2009) BERE, 15: 32-36. Okuyama (2022) Proc. Annu. Meet. JSSE, 46: 342-343. Sasaki et al. (2021) J. JASC, 11(2): 10-13. Shin et al. (2022) NAM J., 1: 66-79.