Catching up on life

The last couple weeks of Saturday Market Dave (sporting his new Alaska beard)  made 50 pounds of fudge each week, quite the side business. We're both pleased that it's over, though he had a lot of fun. He's already had multiple people ask why he won't be at the market each month, getting him excited about next year already.

The view from the window of our new apartment, not nearly as scenic as the tundra but much warmer and cleaner with unlimited water and heat.

We were able to get cheap tickets to visit my family in Oregon for the holidays during the PFD (Permanent Fund Dividend) season (when checks are distributed to all Alaska residents). While we sadly aren't residents yet and didn't receive checks ourselves, Alaska Airlines had some great deals and we were happy to make it home for Christmas. All of my siblings and their families were there, which hasn't happened for a number of years and made for a very special holiday. My Mom, my sister Holly and her family went out of their way to put together a girls' outing to the Nutrcracker, family photos, and many meals and activities that got us all together every day that we were there.

As I'm trying to play catch up on the past month or so this is probably far more detail than most people will want to read, there have just been a number of things that I want to capture for myself. Read on if you're interested, just be forewarned that this entry is wordy.

Prior to that I spent a week in December attending a training by AVCP. As I went to describe who they are I thought it better to include their explanation, which reads "The Association of Village Council Presidents is a tribal 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization based in Bethel, Alaska. Bethel is the largest town in Southwest Alaska and is the regional hub for its surrounding fifty-six (56) federally recognized tribes, all of whom are members of AVCP. AVCP's member tribes reside in small isolated villages scattered throughout the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in an area that is approximately 59,000 square miles and roughly the size of the State of Oregon. The villages are not connected by road to one another, nor to the rest of Alaska. English is a second language for many tribal members who continue to practice a centuries old hunting, fishing and gathering way of life, congregating at home village sites in the winter and moving to fish camps in the summer." 

The training I attended was called "Healthy Families" and focused on traditional Yu'pik beliefs and practices regarding parenting. I am working with a Child Protection Team made up of representatives from many village organizations and programs in one of my villages, and one of the projects we are undertaking is trying to apply for funding and permission from the Tribal Council for the Healthy Families program to come to the village to train families there. As with other trainings that I've attended I found it very interesting that each session began and ended with prayer and traditional singing and music. While at the training I realized that I want to remember many of the typical activities that families engage in here that I've become very familiar with but don't want to forget, so I'm going to outline some of them.

• Akutaq (or agutak), also known as Eskimo ice cream, is a common food here made of whipped Crisco mixed with berries (with optional additions of fish and sugar). The Yu'pik word means "something mixed". There are many variations of Akutaq, but most are based around mixing berries with oil or fat (usually now replaced by Crisco) and some sugar. In some areas of Western Alaska people also add salmon or caribou, which I'm quite happy aren't featured in those that I've tried here. I love the flavor of the berries, but the aftertaste of the Crisco is hard to handle as it is used liberally and coats your mouth for a while after you eat it.
• First catch: Subsistence activities still form the basic structure of life here and all other activities are organized around berry picking, fishing and hunting. A child's first catch is a huge rite of passage, and one of my favorite cultural practices is the importance placed on having the child distribute their first catch to their elders and neighbors. Children take great pride in providing for their elders, which is very touching. 
• Steam baths (maqiq): I'm about as prude as possible and am easily nauseated when I get overheated, so the idea of sitting in a tiny room with co-workers, students and their parents talking, sweating, and scrubbing each other doesn't appeal to me. Since this is one traditional practice that I have no intention of experiencing I won't pretend to explain what it is from personal experience. I read one description that sums up everything I've heard about it located on another blog (http://golddust-awayoflife2.blogspot.com/2010/03/steam-baths.html) if you're interested in learning more about it. Most of my villages still don't have running water and this is the primary method used by villagers to get clean.
• As the description of AVCP mentions, communities in this region still leave their villages and go to fish and berry camps each summer to engage in around-the-clock subsistence activities. Men and women both attend fish camp with men and boys doing the fishing and women and girls cleaning the fish. Elders work side by side with children teaching them traditional skills, which most children that I work with identify as the happiest time of the year for them. Families pick 50-100 gallons of berries which they freeze and eat throughout the summer while at berry camp. 
• Children perform many chores at home and in the homes of their elders, including cooking and cleaning for the girls and emptying honey buckets, fetching water, and chipping ice to be brought home by the boys. Children also help take bags of garbage to the dump, which often involves driving four wheelers or snow machines by themselves.
• Parents believe that when a woman is pregnant she should talk to her baby throughout the day by pulling the neckline of her shirt out and poking her mouth into her shirt to talk to her belly. Greater discussion on the reasons that they've done this for generations is interestingly similar to attachment theory. 
• The trainers at Health Families explained that the structure of igloos was modeled around the shape of a pregnant woman's body with the main part of the structure being the uterus, the umbilical cord being the smoke hole cut out at the top of the igloo, and the birth canal being the entrance/exit from the structure.
• All of the villages that I work in are "dry" and have legally banned the production, sale and distribution of alcohol. Bootlegging is alive and well, however, and it's interesting to hear villagers refer to individuals as bootleggers and to see that it's such an openly acceptable occupation.

Dave and I are reading a book called Last Letters from Attu the story of a woman named Etta Jones who was a teacher here beginning in the 1920s. She and her husband are currently teaching in Kipnuk  at the first school there (one of the villages that I work in) in the early 1930s and she describes the villagers as living in crude igloos dug into the dirt. They didn't have regular mail delivery, electricity or running water. Communication with the outside world consisted of morse code. It's given me insight into just how quickly things have modernized and changed in the villages, and a little more empathy for how overwhelming it must be for village elders who were teenagers at that time being asked to participate and contribute to the schools that are now overrun with media and technology as well as seemingly huge groups of outsiders. 

The Alaska Daily News ran an interesting article this year titled "Federal panel condemns Alaska's village justice system" based on an extensive Federal Panel report. One excerpt that stood out to me reads:

"Alaska Natives experience the highest rates of family violence, the highest rates

of suicide, and the highest rates of alcohol abuse anywhere in the nation and,

unfortunately, at the top of the list in Indian country in the United States. And those

challenges…are exacerbated, in part, because of the enormous geographical size of

Alaska, the remoteness of these communities, the skyrocketing costs of transportation, the lack of any economic opportunity, and the enormous gaps in the delivery of any form of government service, particularly from the State of Alaska."

Mayor Bruce Botelho, Commissioner, Alaska Rural Justice and Law Enforcement CommissionTestimony before the Indian Law and Order Commission, Hearing at Tulalip Indian Reservation

September 7, 2011

Life continues to be challenging but it's impossible to not finish a day without feeling enormously grateful for everything that I've been blessed with.