Cross-Cultural Communication
What's a culture? What's your culture? Do you have a culture?
Everyone does. The best definition of culture is "the way you see the world." But you can't SEE the way you see the world. Your own culture is always invisible to you. We can look at other people's cultures and not how they differ from our own, but we can't articulate our own very well.
Cultures are "ways of seeing." Rev. Dr. Michael Oleksa's presentations are devoted to a discussion of cultures and how they effect us all, how our own culture focuses on certain aspects of reality and neglects others. He speaks internationally on how cultures influence the way we understand each other and how to deal with this in a reasonable and appropriate way.
Father Michael Oleksa, Ph.D., was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He came to Alaska in 1970 from St. Vladimir's Seminary in New York at the invitation of the Alutiiq village of Old Harbor on Kodiak Island. Over the next three decades he served as a Russian Orthodox priest in over a dozen Alaska Native villages. In 1988 he completed his doctoral degree at the Orthodox Theological Faculty in Presov, Slovakia, with an emphasis in Native Alaskan History during the Alaska Russian period (1741-1867).
Recognized as an "Elder" by the Alaska Federation of Natives, a Distinguished Public Servant by the Board of Regents of the University of Alaska, and honored by the Alaska State Legislature and the National Governors Association, Dr. Oleksa is a storyteller who seeks to foster greater understanding across boundaries of race and culture. Father Oleksa is a leader in the development of cross-cultural education in Alaska, an educator of Alaskan teachers, and a student of Alaska Native languages and cultures. He recently has published a book in collaboration with the Association of Alaska School Boards entitled Another Culture/Another World that explores the great diversity and common humanity of Alaska's cultural mosaic.
If you would like Father Oleksa to speak, or have any questions, please contact him via e-mail at: frmjoleksa@yahoo.com