Forum - Winter 2016

THE MAGA ZINE OF THE AL ASK A HUMANITIES FORUM

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Shoki Kayamori: Yakutat’s Picture Man Danger Close: war writing workshop Sidney Huntington (1915-2015)

LETTER FROM THE CEO

Humanities in an Uncertain Future

ALASKA HUMANITIES FORUM 161 East First Avenue, Door 15 Anchorage, Alaska 99501 (907) 272-5341 | www.akhf.org

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omeone told me when I first arrived in Alaska over 40 years ago, “If you are good to Alaska, Alaska will be good to you.” I have never forgotten that advice and, in my personal and professional life, I have tried to remember that this state is like nowhere else in the world.

We each have a responsibility to it. That’s where the work of the Alaska Humanities Forum is critical.

I am fortunate to have the opportunity to lead the Alaska Humanities Forum, even for a brief while. This organization is the cultural partner of the Alaska State Council on the Arts, where I worked for many years.

Whereas the arts council provides programs to create art and support artists, the Humanities Forum supports the stories, the history, and the context in which art thrives.

I have come to deeply appreciate the staff here at the Forum, many of whom are Alaska born and raised. They are energetic and committed to their programs and the values of the humanities. This gives me hope. Hope that the tenets of the humanities — honoring cultures, both indigenous and immigrant; valuing civic dialogue, critical thinking, and commitment to excellence — will expand and infuse our state, providing us with better tools for an uncertain future.

Founded in 1972, the Forum is supported in large part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, enlightened corporations, and Alaska foundations. But most of the support comes from you — individual donors. I have been astonished at the donations that arrive, many unsolicited, from citizens across this vast state who believe in the work of the Forum and understand that individual support is necessary for it to continue. To each of you, I say thank you. Your support is more critical now than ever, as I see the Alaska Humanities Forum playing an increasing role as a convener of conversations regarding the difficult issues facing Alaska, and bringing the Forum’s sensibilities to those conversations.

We must, each one of us, continue to be good to Alaska, and to each other. If you have not donated, I urge you to do so, either through the Forum’s website (akhf.org), Pick.Click.Give, or an old-fashioned check. Thank you.

— Charlotte Fox, Interim CEO

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS Catkin Kilcher Burton, Chair, Anchorage Elizabeth Qaulluq Cravalho, Vice Chair, Kotzebue Christa Bruce, Secretary, Ketchikan Clayton W. Bourne, Treasurer, Anchorage Michael Chmielewski, Member-At-Large, Palmer Joan Braddock, Ph.D., Past Chair, Fairbanks Bruce Botelho, Douglas Jeane Breinig, Ph.D., Anchorage Lenora Lolly Carpluk, Fairbanks John Cloe, Anchorage Renée Duncan, Soldotna Anne Hanley, Fairbanks Ernestine Hayes, Juneau Joshua Herren, Anchorage Dave Kiffer, Ketchikan Pauline Morris, Kwethluk Chellie Skoog, Chugiak Kurt Wong, Anchorage

STAFF Charlotte Fox, Interim CEO Ted Leonard, CFO Christina Barber, Curator of Special Exhibits & Programs Myles Creed, ECCI Project Manager Carmen Davis, Director of Education Programs Kitty Farnham, Leadership Anchorage Program Manager Veldee Hall, RCCE Program Manager Nancy Hemsath, Office and Projects Manager Nate O’Connor, Take Wing Alaska Program Manager Naaqtuuq Robertson, Take Wing Alaska Project Coordinator January Scott, Take Wing Alaska Program Director Megan Zlatos, Grants Program Manager

FORUM MAGAZINE STAFF Editor David Holthouse Art Director Dean Potter Copy Editor Nancy Hemsath Contributors Debra McKinney, Nathan Shafer, Thomas Pease, Christine Terry, Wyatt Moun, Anne Hanley, Mary R. Katzke, Matthew Komatsu, Myles Creed, • • Loren Holmes, Ademola Bello, Priscilla Naungagiaq Hensley, Ash Adams, Dr. Sven Haakanson, Jr.

THE MAGA ZINE OF THE AL ASK A HUMANITIES FORUM

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Grant Report

Picture Man The fascinating and tragic legacy of Southeast Alaska photographer Shoki Kayamori

12 Danger Close: Alaska Alaskan combat veteran organizes a war writing workshop

16 Grant Report Gifts of the Ancestors

Kal’unek—from Karluk documents the stories and artifacts of the remarkable archaeological site Karluk One

21 program notes : ECCI The Third Weaver An Anchorage teacher reflects on her Educator Cross-Cultural Immersion experience at Atka Culture Camp

24 Program Notes : C3 Bush Teacher An educator in the Northwest Arctic Borough School District reflects on his C3 experiences

26 Governor’s Awards for the Arts and Humanities Meet the 2016 honorees, plus the Tlingit story “The Salmon Box”

29 Resolve to Support the Humanities Ten ways to get engaged

32 Obama Day in Qikiqtag• ruk A Forum staffer from Kotzebue covers a Presidential visit to his hometown

William Kincaid, Kodiak fisherman. His tattoo: “It calls to me yet the sea has no mercy for the faults of men. Be wise, grow old.” Photo by Ash Adams. See page 56.

36 in memoriam A Shadow Passes Recollections of Sidney Huntington (1915-2015)

38 Anchorage Remembers A Final Run Encounter with the dead

42 Anchorage RemEMbers Drunk on Daylight Scenes from the alley between 12th and 13th, 1979

44 Grant Report In Attla’s Tracks New documentary captures a dog racing legend’s final gift

Forum is a publication of the Alaska Humanities Forum, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, with the purpose of increasing public understanding of and participation in the humanities. The views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the editorial staff, the Alaska Humanities Forum, or the National Endowment for the Humanities. Subscriptions may be obtained by contributing to the Alaska Humanities Forum or by contacting the Forum.

No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission. ©2016. Printed in Alaska.

47 Anchorage Narratives : 4 Augmenting Diversity Introduction to the final installment in the augmented reality series

48 Anchorage Narratives : 4 The Enchanted Drum Fiction by Ademola Bello

56 Salmon Social Kodiak residents celebrate their shared connections to Alaska’s iconic fish

59 After Image Swim Out and Get It At the Akhiok Kids Camp: a seal, a shot, a swim, a lesson

COVER: Filipino cannery workers in Yakutat, photographed by Shoki Kayamori.

Alaska State Library Historical Collections, (K) ASL-P55-298

GRANT REPORT

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nly those who grew up in Yakutat in the ‘30s and early ‘40s remembered him. They remembered the quiet Japanese man as kind and generous, one who always had treats for kids. He didn’t drink, and never married. He loved to hunt, fish, and explore the backcountry.

But mostly they remembered Shoki (Seiki) Kayamori as a man with a camera.

He made people’s portraits and photographed weddings, funerals, and community celebrations, capturing the special and ordinary moments of everyday life.

They remembered him standing behind a tripod with a box camera mounted on top while everyone tried hard to hold still.

Picture Man, they called him.

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Courtesy of the Alaska State Library Historical Collections.

Shoki (Seiki) Kayamori.

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ayamori came to Yakutat as a cannery worker in 1912 but, unlike most migrant workers, he didn’t leave at the end of the season. At 35, he found a new home in the Tlingit village in Southeast Alaska, working cannery jobs, from manning a giant pressure cooker, to working at the company store, to night watchman. He also bred hunting dogs and tried his hand at fox farming, all the while documenting the life and times of Yakutat during a time of rapid change.

In 1941, nearly three decades after he moved to Yakutat, Kayamori was swept up in the fear and suspicion leading up to this country’s involvement in World War II. Among all he’d photographed through the years were panoramic landscapes of mountains and glaciers and ice-choked bays — and of the Alaska coastline, from Yakutat to Cape Spencer, thought by the U.S. military to be vulnerable to attack. Kayamori was a Japanese man with a habit of taking photographs. That was enough for him to make the FBI’s suspect list.

As tensions escalated, a military build-up began in Yakutat, and when some soldiers came upon this 5-foot-3, 64-year-old Japanese man, they beat him up. Government agents planned to pick up Kayamori, but he saved them the trouble. Soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he put on a suit, wrote a will leaving everything to the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, settled into his armchair in his tiny cottage on a bluff overlooking Monti Bay, and never got up again. The military doctor who signed his death certificate suspected his apparent suicide was caused by some kind of drug.

Few of these details would be known without the research of Margaret Thomas, who tells this fascinating and painful piece of Alaska history in her book, Picture Man: The legacy of Southeast Alaska photographer Shoki Kayamori, published by the University of Alaska Press. The project was supported by a $6,000 Alaska Humanities Forum general grant.

Placed in historical, economic, politi-

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cal, and cultural context, what emerges is the story of a man whose life was ordinary yet mysterious, a man everyone knew but nobody knew well, a man who clearly loved his adopted home and shouldn’t have died the way he did.

Soldiers took his body across the bay, dug a hole, and buried Kayamori in an unmarked grave. No one from town came to bid him farewell. Because his will was unwitnessed, his meager possessions were auctioned off. Thirty years of negatives documenting Yakutat ended up who-knows-where.

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‘The only picture of my family is a picture that he took.’

dinner invitation to the right people helped bring Kayamori’s images and story back into the light.

In the early 1970s, Carol and Ed Dierick lost their home in Yakutat to fire and were staying at the old Presbyterian mission house. They invited their friends, Caroline and Larry Powell, over for dinner, but they had more than the meal on their minds. “(Carol) told me there was something in the attic she wanted us to see,” Caroline Powell recalled by phone from her home in Yakutat.

So they clomped up the wooden stairs to the attic and there, scattered across the floor, were glass plates, much thinner but roughly the size of sliced bread. Some were broken and others had images in various stages of peeling away from the glass. Kids, it seemed, had broken into the place and used the plates like ice skates to skitter across the floor.

As Caroline tells it, her husband Larry, mayor at the time, picked one up and held it to the light.

“Then we realized what they were.

I can’t remember when we next went there and gathered them up, but we knew they needed to be protected, preserved. We just wanted to get them someplace where they would be safe.”

In addition to the negatives on the floor, they found hundreds more — glass-plate and film — packed in wooden crates, nearly 700 in all.

Portraits of Caroline Powell’s own

family were among them, her grandmother in a lovely print dress sitting in a rocking chair; her mother as a child with her sister and brothers, all lined up in a row, the girls with enormous bows atop their heads.

As a member of the community, Kayamori had the kind of access and trust that exploitive, outside, commercial photographers of the era did not. Among the hundreds of images in his collection — 58 of them now in Thomas’s book — were portraits of individuals and families, of cannery workers, loggers, shopkeepers, hunters, and fox farmers. Of patients at a clinic, of men in regalia, and of people participating in all kinds of Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood events.

One revealing moment Kayamori captured shows a nurse in a long, white coat and pointy white cap standing before a group of Native children outside the mission school. Her back to the camera, arms raised, she’s directing them like a conductor in the proper use of a toothbrush, as some kids stare at her with suspicion and others grimace in disgust.

For the most part, there’s nothing particularly artistic about Kayamori’s photographs; he was an amateur. And that’s what makes the images so authentic.

“To me these photos are amazing because they’re a documentation of Yakutat for Yakutat residents; they were not for an outside audience. So the everyday-ness of the photos, that’s what I love,” says Juliana Hu Pegues, author, activist, and assistant professor of English and women and gender studies at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Hu Pegues, who grew up in Juneau, the daughter of a Chinese mother and fourth-generation Alaska father, spent a lot of time with Kayamori’s photos and with Thomas’s research, while working on her doctorate thesis on the history of Asians in Alaska, which included their relationship with Alaska Native people.

“The other thing I love is how he captured moments,” she said. “They are, I think, more complicated than other photographs of the time period because you see these wonderful day-to-day images that are a visual archive of the community.”

left :

Elsie Shaeffer and unidentified children on Kayamori’s porch, a frequent portrait setting.

Courtesy of the Alaska State Library Historical Collections, (K) ASL-P55-577.

right : Unidentified children sitting on porch. Courtesy of Seiki Kayamori Photograph Collection, Sealaska Heritage Institute Archives, (K) SHI -72-9.

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More Kayamori photographs can be viewed online through the Alaska Digital Archives and the Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Archivist’s Gallery.

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Interior of Lon Wun Gee’s café. Left to right: George Bremner, Sam Henniger, Richard Reese, Jennie Johnson, Lon Wun Gee, Dick Albert.

Courtesy of the Alaska State Library Historical Collections, (K) ASL-P55-9.

ayamori’s negatives could easily have been lost forever. After that discovery in the mission house attic, it took years and the navigating of a dead-end or two, but eventually Caroline Powell’s brother, now Lieutenant Governor Byron Mallott, got the negatives into a safe and permanent home with the Alaska State Library’s Historical Collection in Juneau. At that time, in the late ‘70s, the library received a grant to help with restoration and the production of two sets of prints, one for the library, one for the City of Yakutat.

Thomas didn’t learn about Kayamori until years later when, as a Juneau Empire reporter, she was assigned to cover an exhibit of Kayamori’s photographs in 1991. Long after her story ran, she couldn’t stop thinking about the Picture Man: his life, his death, the intimate portrait of a community he’d left behind. She needed to know more.

“I don’t know, it’s easy for me to imagine he was just kind of heartbroken,” Thomas said of his final days. “He was the only Japanese person living in town. And then Pearl Harbor happened. You can imagine.”

In 1995, she wrote about him again, this time for Alaska magazine, a story that ran with the headline: “Was Kayamori a Spy?” To the people of Yakutat, their Japanese neighbor was a kind, private man with an interesting hobby.

To the FBI, his race and his camera made him a suspect in wartime Alaska.

Even then, she couldn’t let the story go.

“I’d be just messing around on the Internet, and then all of a sudden I’d come across a census document for 1910,” said Thomas, who now lives in Olympia, Washington, where she’s a librarian and teaches journalism at South Puget Sound Community College. “That filled in a couple of details, so then I’d get excited again and do a little more digging.”

She’s pored through ship manifests, dug up Kayamori’s alien registration forms, and —through the Freedom of Information Act — got her hands on his FBI file, all of which she’s since donated to the Alaska State Library.

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Living close to Seattle, she had easy access to the National Archives. Twice her research took her to Yakutat, where she visited the area above Monti Bay where Kayamori’s cottage once stood, and interviewed a handful of elders who remembered him.

“Lots of people had stories, like, ‘The only picture of my family is a picture that he took.’”

In Olympia, she became friends with a woman from Japan, Mayumi Yamamoto, and enlisted her help tracking down Kayamori’s family.

“She used to work for Stars and Stripes as a researcher so that was the kind of question she loved,” Thomas said. “I think it took her about an hour to find them. It was pretty amazing.”

When Yamamoto visited Japan in 2006, Thomas sent along train fare and a list of questions to ask his descendants. Those who’d actually known him were long since dead; he’d left in 1903, at 26, and never came back. But one descendant, a great niece in her 90s, was moved when she heard about the Picture Man project.

“She actually cried and said, ‘Thank you for bringing him back to us.’”

Thomas learned that Kayamori had sent letters, pictures, money, and gifts to his family through the years.

She also learned that just six months before, his descendants had cleaned out a family storage space and gotten rid of all his letters.

Thomas had spent a year in Japan as a high school exchange student, and got the chance to go back in 2009 to visit her host family and do some research for the book. Picture Man begins with her sitting in the back of a taxi driving through what had been Kayamori’s home village of Denbo in central Japan, long since swallowed

by Fuji City, as she imagines herself “some reincarnation of the man, returning more than a century later for a look around.”

She wanted to get a sense of what it would have been like for Kayamori, born in 1877, to grow up there. She scored big at the local museum, finding a portrait of Kayamori’s father and learning that his family had been

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instrumental in establishing the area’s papermaking industry. But with no letters or diaries, and with anyone who’d known him long since dead, she had a lot of blanks to fill.

Knowing he’d arrived in the States by steamer in 1903, she tells the bigger picture of what life was like for Asian immigrants working in San Francisco and Seattle, as Kayamori did before heading north in 1912. Not only was this in the days of blatant discrimination, Thomas points out, but also lynchings.

“They really were like indentured servants. I mean, you could just barely survive.

“In Alaska you could hunt and fish and feed yourself. I think he was able to kind of cobble together a more comfortable existence there than he might have had on the West Coast where there was such rampant racism.”

Yet, in the end, he couldn’t escape it.

“I think Kayamori’s story is a very telling story,” said Zach Jones, an adjunct instructor at the University of Alaska Southeast working on his doctorate in ethnohistory. “It’s an Alaska story but it’s also a national story. Kayamori was one among the thousands of innocent Japanese people unjustly treated during the World War II period due to white, racial, wartime paranoia. It could be argued that his blood is on the hands of those soldiers and the U.S. government.”

Jones’ involvement with Kayamori’s photographs began a few years ago when more than two dozen additional negatives surfaced and were donated to the Sealaska Heritage Institute, where he worked at the time as an archivist.

“The Kayamori Collection is a very significant collection in Alaska’s history,” he said. “Not only have they documented people and life in Yakutat, at times the photographs documented the cultural life of the Tlingit community there. Even taking pictures of different pieces of regalia has really assisted in empowering communities.” ■

1 Unidentified cannery workers.

Debra McKinney is a longtime Alaska journalist and frequent contributor to Forum.

6 Man in Chilkat blanket with Shark and Moon house posts.

Courtesy of the Alaska State Library Historical Collections, (K) ASL-P55-Y95.

2 Hand logging. Situk Harry, Samson Harry, Dick Harry, Tom Cox, Olaf Abrams, Peter L. [sic], Jimmie Jackson, Alex [sic], Dick Nelson, Charlie Gudson, Bill Milton.

Courtesy of the Alaska State Library Historical Collections, (K) ASL-P55-125.

3 The first plane landing in Yakutat, April 16, 1931. Pilot Bob Ellis took townspeople for rides, according to the collection guide.

Courtesy of the Alaska State Library Historical Collections, (K) ASL-P55-679.

4 A nurse teaches children to brush their teeth outside the mission school, which would later become the Covenant Church.

Courtesy of the Alaska State Library Historical Collections, (K) ASL-P55-395.

5 The Yakutat orchestra, 1915–1916.

Courtesy of the Alaska State Library Historical Collections, (K) ASL-P55-523.

Courtesy of the Alaska State Library Historical Collections, (K) ASL-P55-155

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Danger Close: ALASKA Alaskan combat veteran organizes a war writing workshop

By Matthew Komatsu

Three years ago, I was in my first firefight and didn’t fire a single shot.

This seems an odd thing to say about living through a six-hour gun battle. Odder still: one of my few regrets from the experience was not squeezing the trigger when I had the chance.

Matthew Komatsu in Afghanistan, in 2012, with a military working dog.

Back then, I believed that war stories required first-hand, in-the-shit, experience. When I read Tim O’Brien, I didn’t see a writer who transcended war; I saw a grunt that had real combat experience. Despite four trips into Iraq and Afghanistan, that was something I didn’t have. And without it, I figured nobody would be interested in what I had to say about war.

Until the firefight. In the days that followed, I thought, maybe now I have a story to tell. It took me a year, but I wrote that story, and even managed to get it published. More importantly, in that time, I read. A lot. As much war writing as I could find. I learned that some of the best contemporary war literature has little to do with the action itself. David Abrams’ Fobbit occurs almost entirely on bases in Iraq and focuses on a public relations soldier. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain, places Iraq as a backdrop to the real drama of the disconnect at home. Yellow Birds (Kevin Powers) and Redeployment (Phil Klay) both center on the return from combat.

And that’s just the fiction. On the nonfiction side, Dexter Filkins writes about jogging through Baghdad in Endless War. Anthony Swofford does, well, not much at all in Jarhead. And this is just what’s available in book format. Essays – Brandon Lingle’s Best American Essays notables “Queen’s Creek” (2010, Guernica) and “Keeping Pace” (2013, Guernica) are both stunning examples of war as a looming force rather than an immediate crisis. I discovered that maybe there was room for stories like mine after all.

I also found that in the Lower 48, there are scads of opportunities for veterans to participate in creative writing workshops focused on honing their storytelling abilities. Led by grassroots non-profit organizations like Words After War and The Veterans Writing Project, dozens of such workshops have taken place across the country in the past several years. Alaska, however, never appeared on calendars advertising upcoming workshops.

In the summer of 2014, I entered University of Alaska Anchorage’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Creative Nonfiction) program. At my first summer residency that July, I learned about the “practicum” requirement. A commitment to apply what we’ve learned in the MFA program to our

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communities. I knew immediately my practicum would be to put on Alaska’s first veteran’s writing workshop.

49 Writers was receptive to the idea, so I reached out to NYC-based Words After War to cull lessons and advice.

Instead, what I got was a commitment to partner. Formed in 2013 by Michael McGrath and Navy veteran Brandon Willitts as “a support network for veterans and their families to share their stories with civilians through high-quality literary programming and intensive writing instruction,” Words After War was born after five years of informal efforts to build community through storytelling. And when I look back now, the workshop having just concluded, I know that was the day that “Danger Close: Alaska” moved from dream to reality.

It takes time to put things in context, to determine what a sequence of events means and translate that into story.

Over the past year, through funding from Words After War, as well as their access to established writers, and a partnership with Alaska Humanities Forum, the details fell into place. We recruited four wonderful authors: Benjamin Busch, Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and author of the superb memoir Dust to Dust; Elliot Ackerman, Marine veteran of Afghanistan and novelist (Green on Blue); Burroughs Medal recipient Sherry Simpson (The Dominion of Bears); and Lea Carpenter (Eleven Days), former editor for The Paris Review and W. The overall idea was to follow Words After War’s atypical writing workshop model. While most veteran writing workshops are exclusively for veterans, the Words After War model is open to civilians. It’s a simple, yet elegant premise – bring two types of people both interested in writing, ask them to work together, and what emerges is both better writing and a stronger bond between the two groups.

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So, on February 6 and 7 at The Boardroom in downtown Anchorage, that’s what we did – we erased the labels and brought everyone together as storytellers first. War might have been the beginning of the discussion, but it certainly wasn’t the end; that honor belonged to the craft of writing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We listened to talks on the necessity of story to the human condition, viewed multimedia presentations of war narrative, and talked about the nitty gritty details of the writing life. But, most importantly, we spent hours in workshop generating new material as well as refining our poetry, memoir, essay, article, novel excerpt, and short story submissions.

We read, listened, and offered advice on how to make our writing better.

Together, we wrote, edited, and rewrote. And, after all that, 24 writers experienced that butterfly moment that comes with offering your words to others as an example of your best work.

It takes time to put things in context, to determine what a sequence of events means and translate that into story. Reading countless examples of fine memoir taught me that. In light of that knowledge, the story of my Afghanistan firefight now appears to have less to do with war than it does with my development as a human being. It drove me to the page, to access a creativity I suppressed for decades.

It’s the real story of that night and Danger Close: Alaska was nothing if not its most recent chapter. My hope is that like my firefight, the workshop is only the beginning of a paradigm shift for the participants. For some, a new belief that their stories are worth telling. For others, a hunger to lay claim to war as story material. But for all, the reality that storytelling is connection, and through connection we build community.

Matthew Komatsu is a currently-serving veteran and MFA candidate (Creative Nonfiction) at UAA. You can view more of his published work through his website, www.matthewkomatsu.com.

The essay above is the opinion of the author and does not represent official policy or position.

When We Played

By Matthew Komatsu

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When we played war as boys, we never died. Dead was a reset button, a do-over, a quarrel over who killed who.

Maybe we played fair. Maybe we dropped our toy guns and crumpled on the grass, clutching with grunts like gut-shot movie soldiers. Grimaced and closed our eyes, but only just.

Through the curves of a squint, a summer sky blue and infinite, heavy with the raucous shouts of the other boys.

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All those close calls. That time in Afghanistan the SUV drove past the white rocks and into the red ones—white all right, red is dead—a local in the backseat jabbering jib. What did he say? Translator: “He say, WE ARE DRIVING INTO MINEFIELD. 3.

When we played war as men, the wounded on their backs—they called our names, their mothers’ names, the names of all gods past and present. We crammed wads of cloth into gaping cavities. Wet organs slipped past blind fingers. Flesh grew purple, distal to the tourniquet. We clenched fists, held hands as warmth fled. Pounded on sullen chests.

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Baghdad to Balad on Route Tampa. My little white truck passing another Army supply convoy, a semi rig swerved out and sideswiped the truck. Pushed until he pinned me to the median. My driver frozen to the wheel by the sound of metal crumpling. Soldier atop the rig swiveled the .50 cal at my head. I waved a bright orange flag over the dashboard, a last ditch olly-olly in come free. The semi backed off, a breathless release. It’s all fun and games until some soldier mistakes you for a suicide bomber.

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The dead did not rise of their own accord. We lifted them on stretchers, and they ascended in body bags. Silent flags over sightless eyes. And in the end, it was we, the living, who took a knee in front of the soldier’s cross made of boots, rifle and helmet; it was we, the living, who stood.

Matthew Komatsu has published in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and War, Literature and the Arts. The essay above was originally published in Brevity (brevitymag.com). You can follow Matthew on twitter: @matthew_komatsu

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MEDEVAC alert next to the piss tubes at Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan. The radio erupted. I ran underneath the whumping rotors into the helicopter cabin. The black night exhaled, then inhaled. The helicopter lifted off, flew through hazy darkness, arrived overhead the LZ. Down there: two patients.

The pilot rolled the dice, pressed a yoke, and 176 pounds of flesh and blood plunged eight tons of metal and fuel toward the ground. The LZ responded and unleashed a mushroom envelope of dust. Nothing to see but faint stars through the spinning rotor. The ground rushed up all wrong. It moved not front-back but left-right. I thought, five knot left drift. The wheels hit the ground.

Helo rollover. Alarms and men screamed. Aussie medic tumbled across the cabin. Pinned my face to the door. Rotors struck and struck and struck the ground. Night vision goggles—I could see it all, explosions of light arcing across the ground.

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Paths of intersection—how close was close? Close enough to call; not close enough to conclude. Our hands still cool from the touch of the lifeless, life inexplicably dragged us forward. And when it placed us on the brink, it offered what we thought were our epitaphs: This is it.

Shit.

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The helo tipped upright, bounced, and settled. Pilot pulled a lever and the amputated rotors screeched to a stop. Lips drawn, eyes narrowed into a grimace, I tasted chalk. Breathed dust in, then out. A brief pause, a small quiet. A call from the grass of youth: do-over.

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Gifts of the Ancestors Kal’unek—from Karluk documents the stories and artifacts of the remarkable archaeological site Karluk One

By Debra McKinney 16

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Opposite: Koniag, Inc. Collection, Courtesy the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository. This page: Bryn Mawr Archeological Project, Courtesy the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository

GRANT REPORT

opposite :

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olonial oppressors wanted to smother Alutiiq traditional ways. But the earth outsmarted them, stowing away the truth for safekeeping. At one Kodiak Island village, evidence of this rich and savvy culture was released over time; slowly at first, then with urgency.

For centuries, sod houses were built upon sod houses at the mouth of the salmon-rich Karluk River; generation upon generation, household effects buried among the layers. By the early 1980s, the Alutiiq people’s determination to reclaim their identity trumped taboos against disturbing the ancient site. Archaeologists, students, elders, and other island community members joined forces to begin unearthing the trove. By then it was almost too late.

Between 1983 and the mid-90s, they retrieved thousands of exceptionally well-preserved artifacts from the site known as Karluk One — tools, baskets, boxes, toys, masks, war

Giinaruangcuk—maskette. above: Looking East towards Karluk One, 1983.

shields, household items, ceremonial objects, and bits and pieces of the unknown — the vast majority made of wood, but also of bone, ivory, antler, baleen, spruce root, and leather.

Although more than 26,000 artifacts were recovered, they represent a tiny fraction of what archaeologists believe were buried there.

Karluk had long been pounded by the Shelikof Strait storm surf and hammered by winter winds. But a major storm in 1978 did so much damage it was no longer feasible to live at the river’s mouth. The village relocated a mile upriver, where about 40 people live today. Then, in the ‘90s, the river started meandering toward the old village site, taking it out bite by bite. Due to erosion, there were times when beachcombers were picking up artifacts by the bucketful. Excavators shifted into scramble mode, the dig becoming more of a treasure hunt than a fastidious sifting through layers of soil.

“It was almost like a bathtub ring of artifacts around the lagoon,” said Amy Steffian, who worked the dig in the mid 1980s. “We’d walk along that ring and pick up everything from whittled sticks and shaft fragments, which are the most basic artifacts, to pieces of art.”

The Karluk River eventually chewed its way through the site, washing all remaining treasures out to sea.

The artifacts that were saved, ranging from recent to 600 years old, help tell the story of the pre-contact Alutiiq way of life. They became the cornerstone of Kodiak’s Alutiiq Museum & Archaeological Repository and played a key role in igniting a cultural renaissance among Alutiiq people.

Karluk One’s complicated and captivating story is now told in the recently released book, Kal’unek—from Karluk: Kodiak Alutiiq History and the Archaeology of Karluk One Village Site, printed by the University of Alaska

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Elder Larry Matfay remembered playing the centuries-old game of kakangaq as a child. Kakangaqutaq— kakangaq disc, kakangam napataa— kakangaq target.

Koniag, Inc. Collection, Courtesy Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository

Press with the support of a $4,000 Alaska Humanities Forum 2015 general grant.

At nearly 400 pages, this beautifully illustrated book pulls together all facets of this extraordinary place, from its archaeology to the influence the ancestors’ gifts have upon their descendants today. The book also includes a 170-word glossary of Alutiiq terms developed for the objects by Alutiiq speakers and the museum’s executive director, April Laktonen Counceller, terms like mamaayum nuusaa — clam knife, and kitsuuteq — net sinker.

Woven throughout the writings of local and national academics, scientists, and scholars are the voices of Alutiiq elders, teachers, artists, and others personally affected, if not transformed, by the Karluk One collection. In one of several personal stories that appear throughout the book, elder Allen Panamaroff speaks highly of the collaboration between the excavation

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teams and Alutiiq leaders, but also of how when he was growing up in Karluk, the elders didn’t like people digging, considering it evil, and how a Bureau of Indian Affairs teacher dug anyway in the 1950s. When the teacher died, villagers returned the items he’d collected to the earth.

“People knew [the archaeological site] was there but for the most part, there was a sense that it shouldn’t be disturbed, that it should be allowed to just be,” said Steffian, the Alutiiq Museum’s director of research and publication and one of four authors of the book. “There is always that pull between respect for the ancestral traditions, leaving it at peace, and the need to know.”

Steffian first arrived at the Karluk dig as a graduate student heading into a master’s program in archaeology at the University of Michigan. It was 1984, and by then, the mood had changed.

“When we began the research, there was a sense from the Kodiak Area

Native Association and their board of directors that it was essential for people to understand Alutiiq heritage to promote wellness, to help people feel pride in their Native ancestry, to tear down stereotypes that were plaguing Alutiiq communities, and to teach the public about who the Alutiiq people were. There was no dialogue in Kodiak about Alutiiq people when I first went there. None. People talked about their Russian heritage.”

Sven Haakanson, Jr., another of the book’s authors, was a 17-year-old from Old Harbor when he first went to Karluk with a planeload of Alutiiq leaders to see what the excavators were finding.

“I remember seeing this history and realizing, ‘Why don’t we know about this, why is it I never heard about this growing up?’ We were told everything about our past was no good.”

That day, the teenager who would later earn a doctorate in anthropology

Crew members excavating, 1987.

Courtesy the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository.

Yaasiiguaq— vessel.

Koniag, Inc. Collection, Courtesy the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository

from Harvard watched elders examine objects their ancestors had made by hand, admiring the sophistication, as well as the artistry. But the moment that’s stuck with him most was when elder Larry Matfay recognized the roundish wooden objects that had archaeologists scratching their heads.

“They didn’t know what they were for,” said Haakanson, former executive director of the Alutiiq Museum, now an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Washington and a curator at the Burke Museum in Seattle. “It was funny because the archaeologist was jokingly saying they were clam decoys. And then here’s an elder saying, ‘Hey, these are kakangat disks.’ It’s a disk game he used to play as a kid. So Larry taught us that game because of what he saw there.

“This site completely changed how we, a lot of us, looked at the world, how we understood our history. And it was the catalyst to get the elders to start speaking up and not being ashamed of all this knowledge that they had.”

Cheryl Heitman, a retired Kodiak school teacher and Alutiiq descendant who contributed an essay to the book, also worked at the site, as a summer job at the beginning of her teaching career. Until she got involved with archaeology, she said, she didn’t identify with being Native.

“I remember being kind of a frightened volunteer, of being fearful of being found out that I had no stories and very little knowledge of what was coming out of the ground or what it meant to be an Alutiiq Native. I had no stories to share about how my grandma used an ulu or how my father taught me to skin a bear, no skills to identify the weaves of grass baskets that were emerging from the dark, wet soil.

“At the same time it felt like trying to gain a picture from a puzzle with only a few pieces left in the box.”

Heitman doesn’t recall being taught Alutiiq history when she was growing up. As a third-grade teacher she made up for that, working with the museum to bring artifacts and living

history into her classroom, inviting archaeologists and others involved with Karluk to speak to her students, and challenging her kids to think about what life was like hundreds, even thousands, of years ago.

“Alutiiq culture has a lot to teach, and we have much to learn,” she said.

“I think it’s deserving of its own place in history, separate from the tragic events and the changes that took place during the contact period.”

Archaeologists feel it’s best not to dwell on all the artifacts that got away and what they may have added to the story.

“It was a huge pile and we probably excavated less than five percent, if that,” Steffian said. “We were lucky, though, because there were members of the community who would collect things after storms, after high tides.

When the site was actively falling apart, they were down there daily picking things up and sending boxes into the museum to help preserve it.”

Besides its impressive number of artifacts, what made Karluk One such a remarkable archaeological site was how well preserved they were. Seepage from a nearby freshwater pond saturated the site, sealing out a major ingredient needed for decomposition — oxygen.

“The site was pretty wet so people would put a new layer of sod down and build on top of it to create a sort of dry, cleaner living surface,” Steffian explained. “We were actually peeling back the layers — we had sort of a plate of pancakes of houses, if you will — one after the other after the other.”

The remnants of houses fascinated Patrick Saltonstall, the museum’s curator of archaeology and another of the book’s authors. Like Steffian, he also first worked on Karluk One as a college student.

“We were finding wood floors with floor mats, and the posts for the houses were still there. You’d lift up the dirt and the grass was still green. It would turn brown within an hour once the oxygen hit it, but the floorboards, you’d be uncovering the

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There is always that pull between respect for the ancestral traditions, leaving it at peace, and the need to know.

New Words Council Members, from left to right: Sophie Shepherd, Kathryn Chichenoff, Teresa Carlson, Helen Malutin, Barbara Hochmuth, and Clyda Christensen, 2012. Courtesy the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository

actual planks that people walked on and had grass matting on top of them.”

Saltonstall is often asked if he has a favorite among all the artifacts he found at Karluk. It’s a panel painted silver, black, and red, one of four sides a small box. In the center of a series of circles is a face with rays shooting out of its eyes, rays extending through the circles. When he first saw it, he figured it represented the sun. But then he learned it was an image of Llam Sua, the spirit of all things, that lived in the center of the fifth universe, and that each circle represented a different universe.

“So when you look at the box panel, it all suddenly clicks into Alutiiq spirituality,” he said. “Everyone you show it to, they’re blown away.”

A picture of this panel is just one of 390 photographs in Kal’unek—from Karluk, which is part picture book, part site report, part ethnography, part history, and part personal story. That

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didn’t happen by accident. The Alutiiq Museum worked with 30 manuscript contributors, from researchers to elders; 26 Alutiiq language advisors, three interviewers, three illustrators, two photographers, and four peer reviewers to create a book that was accessible to everyone.

“A lot of people would like to see (the collection) but they can’t come to Kodiak,” said Marnie Leist, the museum’s registrar, the fourth author of the book and, as Steffian says, the one who knows the collection better than anyone on the planet.

With the help of collections assistant Carrie Barker, Leist spent several years inventorying the more than 26,000 Karluk artifacts and creating a 646page catalog of the collection. Funded by a federal Institute for Museum and Library Services grant, that project became the foundation of this book.

The Alutiiq Museum has helped publish books about Alutiiq collections

in museums around the world, but until Kal’unek—from Karluk, had not published one on its own keystone collection.

“It has such a complicated history, we wanted to tie all of it together,” Leist said. “We have also learned a lot about Alutiiq history in the past several decades and we wanted to update the literature about Alutiiq history in general.”

Karluk One may no longer exist, but what the site gave back to its people before the river pulled the plug will continue to teach, inspire, and empower.

“It gives a more complete, more accurate view of the past in a way that’s undeniable,” Steffian said. “It’s firm evidence of the rich, artistic, sophisticated, savvy culture that was there.” ■ Debra McKinney is a longtime Alaska journalist and frequent contributor to Forum.

program notes: ECCI

An Anchorage teacher reflects on her Educator Cross-Cultural Immersion experience at Atka Culture Camp

By Christine Terry

Before I applied

for the Alaska Humanities Forum’s Educator Cross-Cultural Immersion program this past summer, I thought the fact that I was a 60-year-old grandma who had only been in Alaska for one year made me a long shot. Also, I wasn’t 100 percent sure I wanted to go. I don’t like to camp. I don’t like to be cold. I am shy in new social situations. I haven’t gone without a daily shower in decades. But I recognized what a unique opportunity ECCI was, and I was willing to venture outside my comfort zone.

After finding out I would be going to Atka for my ECCI experience, the first thing I did was figure out exactly where Atka is geographically. It’s 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage, on Atka Island, in the middle of the Aleutian chain. Next I researched some of the history of the island. In brief, Russian fur traders made first contact in 1741. Then, in 1787, they forced the men of Atka to hunt and held the women and children hostage to make the men comply. Later, during World War II,

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Watching and listening were the biggest part of the experience. We learned basket weaving by a few words repeated many times, and a lot of observing the teacher. the Japanese attacked the westernmost Aleutian island, Attu, taking the Alaska Native population as prisoners.

The American government evacuated the population of Atka to the mainland and burned their town to foil the Japanese.

Knowing that there was plenty of reason for the locals to resent the U.S. government, both generically and specifically, I was a bit anxious to be one of the first team of teachers to attend the Atka Culture Camp. I was going to be there for a week starting July 8. I packed what I thought were a lot of warm clothes for summer — long johns, leggings, a raincoat, and a hooded sweatshirt — but later found I needed to borrow snow pants to be able to sleep comfortably at night.

Not having technology (cell phone, computer, etc.) didn’t bother me at all; my watch came in handy for my younger partner who usually relied on her phone. The focus on Alaska Native foods worried me a little, but I figured I could afford to lose a few pounds, and I could easily make it for a week eating only some of what was offered.

So, what did I spend the week doing? Mostly sitting in a tent (that had a heater run off of a generator to accommodate the teacher…hurrah!) and learning to weave. This was Attu style weaving, so the combined cultures on Atka came to the forefront right away. The teacher had prepared a number of starters of basket bottoms out of raffia, each about the size of a quarter. Collecting and drying beach

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grass was not in our crash course on weaving. In our six days working long hours in the weaving tent, we managed to produce an amateurish ring boxsized basket and lid. I was so proud!

Additionally, we got to watch what the little children were making in the craft tent, see what the boys were carving in their tent (throwing boards, spears, and retrieving hooks), help with making drums, celebrate successful hunts (of seals, reindeer, salmon, halibut, ptarmigan, and octopus), and eat the fruits of the hunting and gathering of others. We heard the enthusiasm of the teens about learning survival skills in a kayak and watched the little girls sing traditional songs.

Watching and listening were the biggest part of the experience. We learned basket weaving by a few words repeated many times, and a lot of observing the teacher.

She would ask us to bring our work and show her our progress, and then she would demonstrate again how it was supposed to be done. There was a lot of reversing the process, taking out the weaving, and redoing it correctly. From the starter she gave us, we learned how to add spokes as the basket grew, so the distance between each spoke stayed relatively uniform.

We learned how to hold the proper tension in the two weavers, and how to add a weaver when one got too short to continue. When the circular base had reached the diameter for the finished box, we needed to turn each spoke at a 90-degree angle to form the sides. The way this was accomplished was to add

a third weaver, and weave one time all the way around the circle with all three weavers, before dropping the third and continuing with just two as we wove up the sides.

It was midway through the week that I realized what a perfect metaphor “adding a third weaver” was for the ECCI experience. Each of the spokes radiating out from the center was lying flat, and new spokes were added over time. These represented all of the ways we operate in and view the world. They represented childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age, education, religion, nationality, diet, creativity, music, dance, vocation, avocation, communication, speaking style, the natural environment, finances, travel, family, material possessions, housing, child rearing, history, politics, and so on. The list grows as we grow, making an ever-widening circle.

But the experience of being at the camp served as the third weaver. Being with complete strangers who let me have a window on their world and their experiences forced me again and again to turn from what I had always “known” as my reality and to take a new perspective, a new way of seeing.

During the week at culture camp, some of the people from town would stop by to visit and to participate if they chose. One person who came by was a young woman with a baby who was not yet a year old. When we were in the tent weaving, we often went for an hour or more with no one speaking. We were asked almost no questions about ourselves the whole week we were there. It was companionable silence.

When the mother and baby arrived, we two visiting teachers were inclined to engage with him in baby talk, making faces, getting him to laugh and respond. It was clear to me that this was not what anyone else was doing.

The child responded to this by babbling back and smiling, but it was not what was done by any of the other adults.

The children were all able to be quiet and respectful to their elders in every setting we observed, including mealtime and church, in a way that

Agnes Thompson worked on this piece while introducing the visiting ECCI teachers to the practice of basket weaving at the Atka Culture Camp. “Her quiet inspiration grew more elaborate and beautiful by the hour.”

Photo by Chris Terry

my own grandchild is not able to do.

If you want children to be respectful and quiet, you do not engage them in constant conversation and make them the centerpiece of the world as many in my culture do. These children are learning and observing and smart, although they are not vocal. That will make them appear different when they arrive at public schools in larger cities with a different cultural expectation for what is typical and “developmentally appropriate” behavior. In such a setting, they may be judged as lacking expected verbal skills.

I know this from a personal story about my daughter-in-law, who was raised in a village because her parents were teachers there. When they moved to a city, she was tested to see if she needed special education services due to her low expressive vocabulary. The testing found her to be gifted. That was more than 30 years ago, but I fear we continue to see deficit rather than difference.

The whole point of culture camps is to make sure that young people know what is valuable and precious and

important in their own history, in their own extended family life, in their own culture. The reason these camps have to exist is because so much else presses in to overwhelm this from naturally happening. Schools teach with texts that are not culturally attuned and their schedule is not one that accommodates subsistence practice calendars. Each new religious leader, school teacher, computer game, television program, movie, or other modern distraction will overtake the culture at every turn unless there is a vigilant effort to make room for cultural continuity.

My one week of being with this small group of intentional, quiet, determined people taught me that I must be equally vigilant not to be a force that squashes anyone’s cultural background. I must be careful about how I communicate and be ready to leave room for thinking and responding. I need to know that questions may not be a natural way of reacting to the information I present in a meeting. I need to remember that children who are quiet may be so because that is the expectation at home.

I shifted my perspective, turned that

90-degree angle, and now I am growing in a new direction.

Because of the week I spent among kind, giving, inclusive strangers, I took a leap in my own development. I have taken bigger risks since returning, knowing that I am able to be successful even outside of my comfort zone. I can honestly say that this experience was life changing and life enhancing for me. I am not different because I have tried seal meat or octopus or because I made a crooked little basket. I am different because I was given a rare and wonderful opportunity to stretch myself, see the world from a different vantage point, and then come back to my world and see how to apply what I learned to what I do everyday. I am inexpressibly grateful to have been selected, and determined to teach and live in a way that respects and honors what I have been privileged to learn. ■ Christine Terry is a special educator at Nunaka Valley Elementary School in Anchorage. She was raised in New England and moved to Alaska in the summer of 2014 with her husband.

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program notes: C3

Bush Teacher A fourth-year educator in the Northwest Arctic Borough School District reflects on his C3 experiences

By Wyatt Moun

Wyatt Moun and students in the classroom in Noorvik.

Photo courtesy Wyatt Moun

A

s the final year of my time at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon, began to come to a close in spring 2012, I finally started to think about what my life would look like as someone other than a student. I had helped pay for college by cooking in restaurants in the touristy, college town of Ashland. I was about to receive my Oregon teaching license. Part of me was finally starting to feel like an adult. But was I really ready to take on the responsibilities, pressures, and commitment of starting my career as a teacher? Truthfully, I didn’t think that there would be a full-time teaching position available for someone right out of college without a master’s degree. I had settled on the notion that I would continue my cooking career and work part time as an educational assistant.

A bunch of my classmates were attending the Oregon Educator Job Fair in Portland and convinced me to tag

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along. I figured maybe I could get lucky and get an interview, which would be good practice for job-seeking down the road. No part of me walked into the Portland Convention Center expecting to get a job.

Two days later I received a fax from someplace called Kotzebue and the Northwest Arctic Borough School District. The day after that, I was sitting in my advisor’s office signing a teaching contract to teach kindergarten in the village of Noorvik, Alaska. In five days I had gone from trying to figure out how to convince the head chef at my restaurant to allow me to shift my schedule so that I could work another job, to figuring out what exactly a “Bush village” was and how to get there.

My emotions were a mix of pure excitement and fear. I had done my research. I had learned as much as I possibly could about Noorvik online

(believe me, it isn’t much). But it still seemed so foreign. You can’t drive there? It’s dark all winter? There are no bars!? Every little town at least has a bar.

Around the time that I was graduating from college in June 2012, the head of human resources for the Northwest Arctic Borough School District let me know of a new opportunity that the district was providing for first-year teachers, called C3 camp. He explained to me that before my first school year began, the Alaska Humanities Forum would fly me up to Alaska; send me to a village in the district where I’d be teaching; and then get me to a native fish camp so I could learn about the region, the history, its people and their traditions.

He said that the C3 camp would help to prepare me for living in this foreign and mysterious place.

During our C3 experience in June

2012, the other new teachers and I spent time in Anchorage talking about subjects that seem comical now after four years in the Bush. As a group we learned about what to wear in the Arctic. We were taught how to ship things in a tote (I have about 30 totes now). Even more beneficial than such nuts-and-bolts knowledge were the relationships we formed with each other during the two weeks of participating in the C3 program.

Part of our experience was spent in the hub village of Kotzebue and then at a fish camp about 20 miles upriver from the village of Kiana. There we not only connected with our future colleagues, but we also talked and learned from the people we would be serving. I was taught to read non-verbal communication, learned basic “village English,” and received a verbal history of the region’s traditions and customs. In those two weeks I gained crucial skills and insights that I am still using almost four years later.

During my first year teaching in Noorvik, I was able to do more things than many teachers are able to do in an entire career. From coaching two high school sports, to ice fishing with my class on the second-to-last day of school, to driving by snow machine 100 miles to the village of Ambler. The opportunities to experience life as a “Bush teacher” were plentiful, and I tried to take advantage of them all.

Life as a “Bush teacher” has not been without its challenges. From my original C3 group of 12 new teachers, only four of us remain in the district, including myself. Distance and the cost of traveling anywhere leads to missing out on many important events in the lives of friends and family members. The simple fact of trying to explain life up here to them can be difficult and tiresome in itself. I actually started to tell people that I was working as a chef in Portland one summer, simply to avoid the onslaught of questions that comes along with teaching in rural Alaska.

Every summer people ask me, “How long are you going to stay up there?” I give the same response every time. I don’t know. I originally told myself I would give it two years, then move back to Oregon. But here I am in my fourth year, with every intention of coming back for a fifth. The adventure doesn’t seem complete yet for me.

There may be a chance to chaperone students on a fish and wildlife trip, collaring caribou on the Kobuk. Or aid mushers during the Kobuk 440 dog-sledding race again.

Who knows, maybe Obama will come to Noorvik on his next trip to the Arctic? I simply don’t feel quite ready to get off the ride yet. I know that when I do eventually leave this wild, mysterious, and beautiful place, I will bring with me a warehouse of unique memories from this teaching experience of a lifetime. ■

Renaissance Man A conversation with Northwest Arctic culture camp administrator Dale Stotts Katyaaq Tribe Director Dale Stotts has administered culture camps for the Alaska Humanities Forum and Northwest Arctic Borough School District’s cultural immersion projects since 2012. The camps are part of the Alaska Humanities Forum’s Creating Cultural Competence of Rural Early Career Teachers (C3) Project, which introduces K-12 educators to the heritage, traditions, and values of the people of the Northwest Arctic region.

How do you recruit students to participate in culture camps?

Camp staff and youth graduates of previous sessions are the best promoters of the camp. After a C3 Camp adventure, the kids proudly tell their stories to their friends and family. We get requests from neighboring villages asking if their children can attend the Kiana Youth and Elders’ Camp. As soon as the first springtime snowmelt is on, kids start asking questions: “When is Elders Camp?” “Can I go to Elders Camp again?” “How old do you have to be to go to camp?” Can we make an ulu like my older brother and sister did?”

What do the teacher participants come away with from their culture camp experience?

They become friends. They bond with each other. These new teachers, this is all new to them, and to the kids, it’s new to them as well. Elders are sharing their knowledge, kids and new teachers are sharing their time and willingness for doing something new, like seining for the first time.

What impact have you witnessed with regard to C3 teachers attending culture camps prior to the start of their working and living in the region?

What I have observed firsthand is limited to my teacher contact in Kiana. I guess I am most impressed by how comfortable they seem for a first-time assignment out in a village. I mean, when it’s minus-30 and dark all the time, these folks are holding up pretty well. They must have a common memory of 75-degree sunny weather, and catching their first sheefish on the Kobuk River at culture camp! Another thing is that some teachers choose to repeat a C3 camp session rather than “go outside” for summer vacations. With a year of village teaching behind them, the seasoned teachers are more alert and seem to know what they are looking for to take away from a second helping of culture camp. These folks are on the way to gaining a lot of new Iñupiat friendships.

— interview by Carmen Davis Director of Education Programs, Alaska Humanities Forum

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Governor’s Awards for the Arts and Humanities: 2016

Photos by Klas Stolpe

Tlingit storyteller Lily Hope performed the following story, “The Salmon Box,” at this year’s awards ceremony. This version of the story was originally told by Robert Zuboff, in Tlingit. It was translated into Enlgish by the Tlingit scholar—and former Alaska State Writer Laureate—Nora Dauenhauer. The story is used with blessings from Mrs. Dauenhauer, and with permission from Zuboff’s descendents, the George family, Beaver Clan leaders from Angoon. Many clans claim this story; it has been freely told

by Tlingit elders across the ages, along with many other raven stories.

left:

Wearable-art models at the 2016 Governor’s Awards for the Arts and Humanities. right: Lucy “Ahvaiyak” Richards receives her award.

“I

t’s important that we tell these stories, and it’s important that kids listen to these stories,” said Marc Swanson. “Because these stories, of the people that have gone on before us, they’re the ones that made us what we are: Alaskans. They’re our inspiration, and our aspirations.”

Swanson addressed a packed house inside the Juneau Arts & Culture Center on the evening of January 28. The occasion was the 2016 Governor’s Awards for the Arts & Humanities, a partnership event of the Alaska State Council on the Arts, the Alaska Humanities Forum, and the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation, with generous support from the Office of the Governor of Alaska, and ConocoPhillips.

The annual awards honor individual Alaskans and organizations for their significant contributions to the arts and humanities.

Swanson accepted the Alaska Studies Educator of the Year award for his work developing curriculum highlighting the human and geologic history of the Eastern Kenai Peninsula, on behalf of the Kenai Mountain Turnagain Arm National Heritage Area.

At the awards ceremony, he credited the students with whom he collaborated on the curricula for its success, singling out Brooke Estes, a descendant of Moose Pass homesteader Ed Estes, who had traveled to Juneau at her own expense from Fairbanks, where she is studying at the University of Alaska.

Lucy Ahvaiyak Richards, one of this year’s three Distinguished Service to the Humanities awardees, traveled to the awards from Barrow, where she’s an Iñupiaq Language Teacher for the North Slope Borough School District. Richards teaches Iñupiaq language and culture to about 250 preschool, kindergarten, and 1st Grade students each week at Fred Ipalook Elementary School. She credited

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THE SALMON BOX

I

t used to be tough In this world.

In the first beginning of the world Everything was very, very hard.

It was tough.

It was very tough.

There was the migration.

Salmon Migrate In the summer now.

But at that time It was like this: The salmon migrated Way out under the clouds on the horizon.

There was no way A poor person could get to eat any of those fish.

The herring And the hooligan And the different kinds of salmon: Humpies Dog salmon King salmon.

Things from out to sea.

They spawned there.

They spawned out there In the Pacific Ocean.

Only the people who were well-to-do Went out there.

The well-to-do.

Someone with property.

But the poor person would only Stare while the well-to-do people ate.

This is what Raven Tried to figure out.

He walked arooound.

There was one man Who had An octopus tentacle cane.

The man’s name was X’anaxgatwayáa But Raven Owned a bow.

He owned a bow.

Then he went to X’anaxgatwayáa “This bow of mine Is very good.

I never miss My target with it.

It’s so very, very nice.

Do you see that mountain goat there?”

“Yes,” Said X’anaxgatwayáa.

“I’ll hit it from right here.

Just watch.”

But his arrow Was a magpie.

Raven’s magpie Was his arrow.

And when it was flying, When it was flying, It flew behind the mountain goat.

It flew behind it.

And then It ducked.

Then it flew over the mountain goat.

“Did you see how nice My arrow is?

I hit it.

Why not trade for your octopus tentacle cane?

This arrow of mine, huh?

Can I trade with you?”

“Yes.” Said X’anaxgatwayáa.

“Aaaa.”

“It’s the salmon run out there Isn’t it?

The only way out on the ocean?

The salmon run.

Isn’t that it?

Is this for that?”

“Yes, For that.”

“But you can’t get them,” Said X’anaxgatwayáa.

You can’t get them Unless you use my name.

Only if you use my name Will you get them.”

Raven said, “Fine, I’ll use your name.”

He went with the octopus tentacle cane when he got it.

It’s on this side of Yakutat.

He reached the mouth of the Alsek.

Raven From the mouth of the Alsek From the river mouth he hooked this Octopus tentacle cane To the Salmon Box. He hooked it to the Salmon Box. But when he wanted it ashore It became a heavy task for him.

It kept dragging him.

It kept dragging him.

His nephew, his sister’s son was with him With Raven.

He was the crow called Gidzanoox’, When it was dragging him.

His maternal uncle, His nephew Said to him “Hurry, hurry, gook, gook, Sing the words now,” He said.

“Sing the words.”

O hee yèi o hee yèi O hee yèi aa haa yaa haa Yèi hei o hee yèi aa yaa haa X’anaxgatwayáa O yaa o hee yèi Every time he sang the name He dragged it a long way.

Every time he sang the name He dragged it in a looong way.

At one point He got it ahore.

He dragged it ashore at Alsek.

Even today There is fine white sand At the mouth of the Alsek And his footprints are there Where the tide receded.

Raven’s.

Lily Hope performing “The Salmon Box.” There where the waves rolls in from under the clouds.

These huge ocean swells.

These huge waves, They don’t even Fill in Where his footprints are.

Even still today they’re still there.

Raven’s footprints.

He pulled it In right there.

This Salmon Box. When he pulled it in.

He invited all the people With their canoes.

“Come on your boats,” He said.

“Come on your boats,” When they filled their boats, he said “Now you take it wherever you want, Wherever you take it Is where you take it to.”

And now today They are salt water fish now.

They go up to fresh water.

They go up to fresh water to spawn there.

Some of them go to the poor people From the river.

This great salmon run.

This is how we get some. ■

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Photos by Klas Stolpe

top left: Myles Creed (center) , Educator Cross-Cultural Immersion Program Manager at the Alaska Humanities Forum, and Crystal Kaakeeyáa Worl (right) were joined by a wearable-art model at the reception. top right: Alaska Studies Educator of the Year Marc Swanson bottom right: Cyrano’s Theatre Producting Artist Director Sandy Harper (left) and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallet

her success to her late husband, Timothy Richards, Sr. “When they asked me 18 years ago if I wanted to become an Iñupiaq language teacher, I said, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be a teacher, they do too much paperwork,’” Richards said. “But my husband told me, ‘If you don’t see the open door for teaching the Iñupiaq language, I see it for you. Do it!’ And so I did.”

A third awardee, Alaska State Museum Curator of Collections Steve Henrikson, recalled exploring his grandparents’ attic as a child. “It wasn’t like a horror movie attic. It was wondrous place with all kinds of trunks and books and old photos all having to do with my family’s history, and I spent many hours up there as a kid, going through everything.” Henrikson described organizing boyhood exhibits of hubcaps and baseball cards. He said that his current role of caring for and telling the stories of more than 30,000 artifacts, “has been in many ways an extension of my childhood that has lasted 28 years.”

The final Governor’s Award for the Humanities was given to Cyrano’s Theatre Company, of Anchorage. Accepting on behalf of the company was Producing Artistic Director Sandy Harper, who credited her late husband Jerry Harper, a legendary actor and director, for “having the audacity” to found a theater company 23 years ago. Citing her company’s legacy of commissioning and producing cutting-edge, classic, contemporary, and original plays, Sandy Harper reminded the Juneau audience, which included more than a few legislators, that, “We are all part of a renewable, infinite resource of imagination, creativity, and innovative thinking.”

Featured entertainers at this year’s awards ceremony were Pulse Dance Company, spoken word artist Maeva Ordaz, singersongwriter Sophia Street, and Tlingit storyteller Lily Hope (preceding pages). ■

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Governor’s Awards for the Humanities

Distinguished Service to the Humanities Cyrano’s Theatre Company, Anchorage Steve Henrikson, Alaska State Museum Curator of Collections, Juneau Lucy “Ahvaiyak” Richards , Inupiaq Language Instructor, Barrow

Alaska Studies Educator of the Year Marc Swanson, Kenai MountainsTurnagain Arm National Heritage Area Curriculum Developer, Seward Governor’s Awards for the Arts

Lifetime Achievement Award June Rogers , Fairbanks Individual Artist Award Pat Garley, Palmer Arts Advocacy Award Nancy DeCherney, Juneau Margaret Nick Cooke Award for Alaska Native Arts and Languages Vicki Soboleff, Juneau

Resolve to Support the Humanities Ten ways to engage with the humanities in Alaska in 2016

1

Learn how to say “Hello,” “Please,” and “Thank You” in three Alaska Native languages.

2

Study a budget or policy proposal of an elected official you usually would not vote for.

6

3 4

Bring a first-timer to a museum or theater event and discuss what you see.

5

Watch a new Alaska documentary film, such as Hunting in Wartime or Tracing Roots.

Ask an Alaskan over 80 to tell you about his or her childhood.

Find a way to collaborate with someone from a different cultural background.

8 9 Thanks to Humanities Nebraska for inspiring these Humanities Resolutions.

Read to a child.

Attend a history lecture.

10

7

Discuss Alaska’s economic challenges with a fellow Alaskan who holds opinions on the subject that differ from yours.

Turn the page and give to the Alaska Humanities Forum.

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Anchorage Museum at Rasumson Center, Anchorage, Alaska. AMR-b82-46-14.

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Running the Kobuk River on a day trip out of the C3 camp near Kiana. The Forum’s C3 program — Creating Cultural Competence of Rural Early Career Teachers — has a record of improving teacher retention in remote districts.

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A local and a president meet in Kotzebue. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

A Forum staffer from Kotzebue covers a Presidential visit to his hometown

By Myles Creed

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The President is coming to Kotzebue.

The rumor circulated for weeks before it was confirmed that President Barack Obama would visit my hometown of Qikiqtaġruk (Kotzebue) last September. I was eager to get home, but specific information about his itinerary was nearly impossible to discern, like a road sign obscured in a dense arctic fog. I resigned myself to missing the President’s visit and experiencing the event from the isolation of Kisaġvik (Anchorage).

What seemed like a hopeless endeavor suddenly became a possibility after an email and call from Washington Post White House Bureau Chief Juliet Eilperin. A colleague of hers had interviewed me about my campaign work in Kotzebue during the 2014 midterm elections. Knowing I was from Kotzebue, Eilperin reached out to me to better understand the character and politics of the Northwest Arctic before coming up to cover the President’s visit. I thought, serendipitously, to inquire at the tail end of our conversation if she knew which day specifically the President would be arriving in OTZ. She did! Within the hour, I bought a ticket home to see the President of the United States make a visit to our small town jutting out into the Chukchi Sea. The plane ride was like none I had experienced before in my hundreds of trips to and from Kotzebue. The plane was filled with people I knew, alongside some new faces: members of the state and national media, and several individuals that I assumed were headed

up North to protect the President and secure the area. This assumption was made based on their massive size and stoic demeanors.

For many rural Alaskans, returning to your hometown after being away for some time is like slipping back into your comfort zone, and I expected that feeling initially. When the peninsula comes into view from my airplane window, I always get the ineffable feeling of being back home, and when I step into the singleroom terminal packed with familiar faces, the feeling hits even more.

But the President’s visit also made Kotzebue seem completely different than before. There were humongous jets parked all over our tiny tarmac and a black ops helicopter parked in the Bering Air hangar that’s usually reserved for eight- or nine-seater bush planes. A massive clean-up effort had removed dozens of broken-down cars and a few dilapidated buildings around town.

(Jokes about how it took a visit from the President of the United States to get those broken-down cars hauled out of town would be repeated for months afterwards). The streets were cleaner than I had ever seen and American flags lined the flagpoles on Third Street that were usually adorned with Christmas lights.

The excitement in Kotzebue was building to a point of intense palpability.

That excitement built to “Obama Day.” In a line looping around Kotzebue Middle/High School, hundreds of Qikiqtaġruŋmiut (people of Kotzebue) queued eagerly, dressed in their finest suits, atikłuks, and atigis (parkas).

I slipped into the media entrance around the corner (on assignment for this magazine). After an atikłuk patdown and a chat with a member of the presidential security team, I entered the high school gym, where Obama delivered his speech. Broad floodlights lit up the gym like I had never seen before. The royal blue and gold banners from regional and state sports titles were illuminated alongside colorful pendants acknowledging the schools of villages in the region. With an unprecedented brightness in the room, it was easy to see the anticipation and elation on people’s faces. In the back, reporters were

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Left and far left photos by Denali Whiting for Maniilaq Association

left:

The high school choir performed “Aarigaa.” center : Preschoolers from the Nikaitchuat Ilisag• viat Iñupiaq language immersion school introduced themselves in Iñupiatun. right: Mayor Maija Katak Lukin had a moment for a selfie with POTUS.

typing away while cameramen made adjustments to their lenses.

Obama had not yet approached the stage when the high school choir performed “Aarigaa,” a well-known hymn in the Northwest. The gym echoed with voices of the whole community joining in on the chorus.

Aarigaa in the Iñupiaq language expresses satisfaction or gratitude and is difficult to translate to English, but is sometimes translated as “that’s good” or “it’s wonderful.” I’d heard the song many times before, but the impact was exceptional when all 700 people in the gym sang in unison.

Following the choir, preschoolers from the Nikaitchuat Ilisaġviat Iñupiaq language immersion school recited the Pledge of Allegiance in the Iñupiaq language and sang “Uvaŋa Nunaga,” an Iñupiaq language version of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee”. Then, they each stepped up to the microphone to introduce themselves in Iñupiatun (the Iñupiaq name for the language, meaning literally “like an Iñupiaq”).

As the only Iñupiaq immersion school of its kind in Alaska, the teachers at Nikaitchuat are fighting to keep the language alive by passing it on to Kotzebue’s youngest generation while also nurturing the students’ academic and social-emotional development.

When I was a toddler in Kotzebue in the early nineties, the immersion

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school had not yet begun their program, and Iñupiaq language in the mainstream school system was not given enough prominence in the curriculum to lead to a widespread use of the language. Witnessing the support and excitement of the entire community as each of the preschoolers spoke their language gave me hope that Alaska can bring Iñupiatun back to the home and classrooms in the coming decades.

Finally, it was Obama’s turn.

Though he mostly focused on climate change, the Commander-in-Chief still made sure to highlight the importance of passing on community values. “We all stand united around some similar values,” he said. “We all want a chance at opportunity. We all want to be able to pass down our traditions and our culture and our language to our kids.”

To me, this seemed to mark a new age in presidential politics. By acknowledging the languages and cultures of the country’s Native communities, President Obama departed, at least in attitude, from a long history of ignorance and destruction to these communities at the hands of the government. It was a first step, at least.

Obama thanked the residents of Kotzebue for the spirited hospitality shown to his team in preparation for the events, as well as their generosity

in sharing the community’s history and culture. For weeks, members of Obama’s advance team had been interwoven into the daily fabric of Kotzebue life. To much laughter and cheering from the crowd, Obama regaled, “I heard that you stuffed them full of all kinds of meat at Cariboufest.

I heard about offers to go berry-picking on the tundra, last night’s cultural night. And I heard that you’re even teaching them some Iñupiaq. I don’t know how good they are. They’re probably a little better than me.”

There were more than a few moments during the president’s visit where I had to remind myself: the President of the United States of America is here, in this room. He is speaking to your hometown inside the same gym where you were picked last for kickball. He is speaking in the same town where you made rafts out of giant Styrofoam slabs to paddle across the large puddles behind your parents’ work. Of all places in the world, he is in Kotzebue.

“This must be torture for Nome,” I surmised.

In all, the President was only in our community for four short hours, but the impact lasted far beyond his visit.

Before, during, and after, the events seemed to have an equalizing effect.

Local journalists (i.e., my parents) were able to bump shoulders with some of

the most prominent reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post, including one reporter who, looking for a place to overnight, was sleeping in my old bunkbed. Members of the President’s Secret Service were having coffee in the homes of Kotzebue’s families. The city mayor, Maija Katak Lukin, snuck in a selfie with the most powerful person in the world while rolling through town in his motorcade. The seamlessness with which these prominent figures were integrated into the community was evidence of the generous spirit of the people who live in it.

After the presidential address, I joined the countless adults and children who chased the motorcade down Sikkiaġruk Shore Avenue, also known as Front Street, hoping to get a glimpse of the President at his press stop at the seawall or through the tinted windows of his limousine. This sense of communal delight that was incited months earlier by mere rumors of a presidential visit lasted long after Air Force One became a small dot in the sky as it departed our airspace. Of course, I was elated to see the world’s most powerful individual in the Arctic community where I have spent the majority of my life, but seeing the community come together for it was maybe an even bigger reward.

A friend of mine, Jacqui Lambert, who has been Iñupiaq dancing since the age of seven, was able to perform for the President along with the Qikiqtaġruk Northern Lights Dancers. She told me that his visit encouraged higher numbers of participation in the dance group.

“We had the media visit for a practice one night and there were at least ten male drummers and fifteen ladies singing and dancing,” she said. “I kept getting the chills, because I can’t remember the last time we were singing and drumming that loud with that much spirit.”

Aarigaa. ■ Myles Creed is Educator Cross-Cultural Immersion Program Manager at the Alaska Humanities Forum.

Kotzebue residents turned out to see the President’s motorcade pass. From inside the vehicle, official White House photographer Pete Souza took pictures of the spectators.

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in memoriam

A Shadow Passes Recollections of Sidney Huntington (1915-2015)

By Anne Hanley

O

n Dec. 11, 2015, Koyukon Athabascan leader Sidney Charles Huntington was laid to rest on a bluff overlooking the Yukon River. The spot was near where he used to run a trap line and not far from the site of his fish wheel. He was 100 years old.

When an elder dies, a bridge between the past and the future is washed away. Sidney’s death leaves a huge, gaping chasm. He knew the chiefs and the medicine men. He knew the animals and the rules for how to show them respect. He knew old ones who hunted bears with nothing but spears and who spoke the old Koyukon high language. He knew missionaries and traders and miners. They’re all gone and now he’s gone too, but, lucky for us, he left a book.

If you haven’t read his biography, Shadows on the Koyukuk, written with Jim Rearden in 1993 and still in print, treat yourself to a good yarn about a good man whose life encompasses a huge swath of Alaska history.

Sidney was born in 1915 around the time when the first non-Native settlers were moving into the Country. His mother was a traditional Athabascan woman; his father was a trader and a gold-seeker. “Half Indian,” as he called himself, and half white, he faced discrimination from both sides.

I once spent a morning at the Sidney C. Huntington School in Galena interviewing students about Sidney. They were shy and not as vocal as I’d hoped. As I was leaving, a resource teacher chased after me. “I have something to say about Sidney,” she said. “I moved to Galena two years ago and Sidney was one of the first people I met. He told me, ‘Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t belong here. If you live here, you’re one of us.’” That was Sidney. He would not tolerate discrimination, perhaps because he endured so much of it growing up.

He had a passion for education. In the early ‘70s, he was part of a committed group that formed the Galena City School District. He then served on the School Board for the next 21 years. He often reached in his own pocket and made loans to young people for education, and, in his later years, he was a familiar face around the school in Galena that bears his name, just being there for the kids. I believe his interest in education grew out of his belief that education is the most powerful tool to overcome discrimination.

Sidney had to learn to survive early. When he was five

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Sidney Huntington reads Iditarod race statistics at the Galena checkpoint in 2012, when he was 96. Photo by Loren Holmes / Alaska Dispatch News

years old his mother died, and he had to keep himself and his two younger siblings alive for more than two weeks until they were rescued. That early experience gave him the confidence to face the many ordeals and tragedies that came later.

Mid-way through his life, he was attacked by the demon that delights in bringing down strong men: alcohol. Once he made up his mind to put that behind him, he never looked back and he never looked down on others going through similar problems. Instead, he dug in and helped.

His gruff but fathomless generosity is legendary. Everyone in Galena has stories. They say he even gave away his first casket to someone who had a more immediate need for it.

When I first met Sidney, this tough-as-nails old man cried when he talked to me about two of his sons who committed suicide. I asked if I could include those personal stories in the play I was writing about him. “If you think it might help even one kid, then go for it,” he said and he never wavered in his support.

I’ll always be grateful to Sidney and to his family for allowing me to share their private memories on a public stage. Their deep generosity has inspired others to open up and share their stories, and that’s what will ultimately change the climate of fear and hopelessness that breeds suicide.

Sidney Huntington wore many hats over the course of his long life. He was a hunter, a trapper, and a fisherman.

That he was always able to provide for his family was a source of great pride to him. He was a miner, a carpenter,

They say he even gave away his first casket to someone who had a more immediate need for it. and for many years he operated a fish processing plant.

He was a member of the Board of Game for 17 years and received an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He was an educator, a mentor, a motivator, and honorary “coach” to the Galena Boys and Girls Basketball team. He was a writer.

Sidney Huntington was a lot of things to a lot of people, but one thing he was not: He was not a quitter. He never quit on people. He never quit on learning. He never quit on living. At an age when he had every excuse to rest on his laurels, he kept on writing, speaking, reaching out to challenge people, especially young Alaska Native people, to be better, to aim higher, to survive and prosper no matter what the obstacles.

Sidney Huntington belonged to a time when survival took every ounce of a man’s mettle. We’ll not see the likes of him again. But he also belonged to our time and now he’s gone and we will sorely miss his tough love. ■

Alaska, let’s talk.

How will Alaska answer the challenges of its future?

The tenets of the humanities provide us with tools: • honor cultures, both indigenous and immigrant • value civic dialogue • think critically • initiate community engagement Alaska Humanities Forum plays an increasing role as a convener of conversations regarding the difficult issues facing Alaska.

Keep the conversations going.

Make a contribution to the Alaska Humanities Forum when you apply for your Permanent Fund Dividend.

Anne Hanley is the former Alaska State Writer Laureate.

She wrote The Winter Bear, a play based on the life on Sidney Huntington that has become a statewide cultural phenomenon with a powerful message of healing. The Alaska Humanities Forum supports The Winter Bear Project, which combines community discussion, workshops, and potlucks with theater production to “change the climate of fear and hopelessness that breeds suicide, by broadening awareness, stimulating dialogue, and promoting healing through the performing arts.”

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ANCHORAGE REMEMBERS

opened my eyes to the Farrah Fawcett poster on the

ceiling and swung my legs over the side of my bunk.

It was 11:00 a.m. July 13th, 1979, the summer before my junior year in high school. I’d fallen into a routine tailored to my summer lifestyle. Each morning, I awoke at 9:00 a.m. and assessed the weather. If rainy, I reburied my head in the pillow. If sunny, I relocated to a lawn chair in the yard.

That morning, it was raining. I shuffled to the kitchen to chug from the orange juice container and eat cold pancakes, by now soggy on top and crusty underneath.

My sister sat at the kitchen table, shuffling through the day’s mail.

“Good afternoon, Morpheus.” My sister was just one year older but three years ahead of me in school. She was leaving for another year of college next month and growing all the wiser for it.

A sudden downpour pounded the roof of our Rabbit Creek home. “Looks like the sun fled when you woke up,” she said.

I spread butter on a pancake. “If you run low on butter, just pass those pancakes through your hair. There’s enough grease up there to cook French fries.” I ignored her. Like a puppy nipping at your ankle, she would tire of her own game when she couldn’t provoke a response. I loaded my pancakes with homemade raspberry jam, rolled them up, and caught the drips with my tongue. I always ate standing to avoid dishes. Sections of the Anchorage Daily News lay scattered about the

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kitchen. That was the consequence of rising last in an ambitious household.

The crossword had been completed, the classifieds highlighted, the comics clipped for coupons. The other consequence was no hot shower. Our hot water tank was as old as my grandfather and had the holding capacity of a man in his 85th year. Who cared about greasy hair? She was only my sister.

The headlines stared at me through coffee stains: “Plane Crash on McHugh Peak Claims Seven.” The previous morning, a twin-engine, Cessna 402 crashed into the peak that defines the southern end of the front range of the Chugach Mountains, just east of Anchorage. It was shuttling workers south to their jobs on oilrigs in Cook Inlet. They reported no survivors. I held my breath. The names of the victims had not been released. I exhaled.

Drizzle and fog persisted through that day, into the next, and the next, and the next. With each passing day, the newspaper reported more details. A helicopter located the crash site later the same day and landed, but only briefly.

Powerful winds and zero visibility forced rescuers to leave the bodies at the scene.

The next day, as the storm intensified, a recovery team hiked up the peak on foot and retrieved the bodies. After two days, the media identified the victims. I knew

This essay, and ‘Drunk

on Daylight’ (page 42), are excerpted from Anchorage Remembers: A Century of Tales, an anthology of essays published by 49 Writers.

The essays in the book emerged from a series of memoir writing workshops held by 49 Writers as part of the Anchorage Centennial Celebration.

The workshops were supported by the Alaska Humanities Forum and Rasmuson Foundation.

Last fall, the Alaska Historical Society honored 49 Writers with a Contributions to Alaska History Award for the memoir anthology project.

A Final Run

By Thomas Pease

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We met the other six, one by one.

Some, we met formally, by name; others we met in photos; and still others we caught a glimpse of through brands of soap or chewing tobacco. none of them. Now, four days after the crash, the front range remained hidden.

Five-thousand-foot peaks seemingly vanished along with seven lives.

McHugh Peak stood in view of our house on Rabbit Creek Road. As runners, my sister and I considered anything within six miles of the house our back yard. But our mountainous playground remained wrapped in a shroud, a featureless and unrecognizable landscape.

Day seven, and thick clouds hugged the ground. Flood warnings had been issued north of Anchorage, where swollen rivers endangered several bridges. I awoke early now, at the time the sun rose, even as rain hammered my bedroom window. I looked eastward before considering breakfast.

Restlessness consumed us as the Gulf of Alaska storm hovered over Anchorage.

In the early afternoon, my sister suggested we go for a run. Normally, the nasty weather would dissuade me. Instead, I accepted. Neither of us discussed possible running routes. We both knew where we were headed.

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We turned left onto a muddy Rabbit Creek Road. We ran at a brisk clip, bits of gravel clinging to our bare legs. Within half a mile, we began climbing. Water filled ditches and overflowed culverts.

We cut through the fog in silence, the muddy road beneath our feet the only visible landmark. A dog barked, but from what direction, I couldn’t tell.

Breaths smoked, eyelashes dripped beads of water, skin stretched tight in fall-like chill. Familiarity guided our ascent, but we were blind to what lay ahead.

After two miles, we turned right and continued our climb into Bear Valley.

Houses grew sparse, the smell of wood smoke revealing their presence. Another mile and a half of steep uphill brought us to the end of the road.

Above tree line, the air grew noticeably colder. McHugh Peak remained elusive, but we knew the direction to head. We set out on an uphill traverse to our right.

A thin layer of spongy tundra replaced the muddy roadway. My feet pressed the sides of soggy shoes as we side-hilled, but we couldn’t pause to make adjustments.

We had a destination.

A constant banging noise beat its way through the fog. We froze. Where had it come from? Was someone there?

We moved up. Then, instantaneously, it emerged. The tail of the plane jutted skyward. A sheet of aluminum, peeled back on impact, swung in the wind and drummed against the remains of the fuselage. The tail and a ten-foot section of fuselage were the only intact features. The airplane had broken open and scattered a thousand pieces in a thousand directions.

No one could have survived.

Among the Cessna 402 wreckage lay work gloves, rain gear, cold water exposure suits, none of which could provide any protection now. Duffel bags had been eviscerated, their contents spilled on the tundra. We walked the accident scene together, staying close, treading lightly through the graveyard.

The nose had struck first, and, in boarlike fashion, excavated a broad swath of tundra. A dark streak scarred the ground where fuel had ignited. Fifty yards from the tail section rested two airplane seats.

I imagined the victims hurled forward.

They had no chance, their seat belts tethered to air.

A company-issued work coat spread out on the ground. I wanted to pick it up, to see what lay beneath it. My sister hunched over a torn handbag nearby.

“Should we be here?” She stood as I posed my question.

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“The investigation’s complete. It’s been seven days.” The fog continued to conceal us.

“Snow will bury it soon enough.”

She shrugged. We’d reached the same conclusion.

Tangled wires stretched uphill to my left. A strobe lens, filled with rainwater, balanced in offering on a rock. Clothing lay everywhere, torn and wet. I placed a flotation coat in good shape to one side.

Nancy did the same with a Mercedes Benz T-shirt.

“It’ll fit David,” our older brother.

Underdressed for fog and drizzle at elevation, I began to shiver. A hooded jacket stuck out beneath a twisted piece of cowling. The jacket was damp, but

undamaged. I put it on and zipped it up. The sleeves felt cold against my bare arms, but they warmed rapidly, and my shivering stopped.

Off to the side lay a Cordura wallet, credit cards inside. Another pouch contained photos, including a groom and bride, radiant smiles illuminating their future. But the one on the left was dead.

We met the other six, one by one.

Some, we met formally, by name; others we met in photos; and still others we caught a glimpse of through brands of soap or chewing tobacco.

Regardless of the type of introduction, we met them all.

“Look.” My sister waved me over.

At her feet lay a bottle of mouthwash, unbroken. Why was it spared? Mystified, I tried to recreate the plane’s trajectory.

An object, stuck to a flat piece of metal, caught my eye. It resembled a chicken liver, washed a pale red, arranged as if on a platter.

It grew late. Visibility increased as the fog burned off from above. We gathered the items we’d set aside. After a short descent, I stopped and faced uphill.

McHugh Peak was now discernible through thinning wisps of fog. The tail of the plane stood like a headstone marking the final flight. The plane contacted the mountain at 3,000 feet, 800 feet shy of the upper ridge. But their heading was 90 degrees off course, and higher peaks lay beyond. Those peaks wore a coat of fresh snow, or termination dust, a precursor to winter.

We retraced our route across the slope and followed the jagged ridge down into Bear Valley. Despite the downhill, we jogged slowly, engrossed in thought.

Evening sunlight penetrated the fog, the first golden hue in almost ten days.

I removed the coat and tied it around my waist. Soon, my sister would board a plane for college while I would begin my junior year. ■

Thomas Pease was born in Anchorage in 1963 in the New Providence Hospital at Ninth and L (now the Municipal Health Clinic). He learned to ski at Alyeska when it consisted of a single wooden chairlift, and learned to swim in Hidden Lake at the top of O’Malley Road.

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The sun was low in the sky as we circled to land, but I could see Sleeping Lady Mountain in all her glory. The air was dusty and saturated the sky with a palette of oranges, pinks, fuchsia, and indigo. I had grown up in the rolling green farmlands of southern Minnesota, and I was arriving in Alaska with just four cardboard boxes and a collie in the cargo. I had plans to stay for the summer and regroup after a disheartening run at law school. I felt a welling of unprecedented excitement. And it wasn’t long before I was intoxicated with this eternal sunshine.

At first I shared a house with two male friends. One was building a new shopping center called Northway Mall.

The other was managing a small lighting company, Brown’s Electric. People I met along the way were starting social service agencies or becoming the first coffee roaster in Alaska or starting an athletic club that soon became the Alaska Club.

My degree in communications mattered

first arrived in Anchorage on a brilliantly sunny evening in April 1979.

ANCHORAGE REMEMBERS

Drunk on Daylight

By Mary R. Katzke

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here. I applied for a media job that offered twice any amount I’d ever made before—and got it. I also took a weekend course in grant-writing at Alaska Pacific University and raised $60,000 for my first documentary film.

My housemates and I hit the road nearly every weekend, embracing new experiences and challenges. Our parents were far enough away that we could take all kinds of chances without fear of consequences. Once, on the way to Valdez, I looked up from peeing in the brush to see a pair of golden blond grizzly heads watching me. Another time, a group of nine women rented a helicopter and flew across Cook Inlet to go salmon fishing. When we landed, the propellers made a crop circle in a stand of the biggest ferns I’d ever seen.

I brought back a garbage bag of those sword ferns that thrive to this day in friends’ yards around town. We would fly to Seattle for a weekend of shopping where there was no tax for Alaska

residents. I bought a red sports car so shiny I was scared to drive it home.

We all decided we were never getting married. Everyone was heady with opportunity and discovery.

Romantic tension in a household of one woman and two men eventually pushed me to find my own place.

That is when I found the “deal of the century.” Nestled between two gravel roads now known as A and C Streets, this little one-bedroom house was set on an alley between 12th and 13th Avenues. It was basically a shack with an even more rustic tin shed behind it. It cost $600 a month to run the oil heater in winter, and the plumbing froze repeatedly that first year. But the rent was only $90 a month. That’s right.

The rent had been the same since 1962, and the landlady, whom I never met in my 13 years of living there, never raised it. The unspoken deal was to send the check on time each month and never ask for anything.

As you can imagine, the low rent allowed me to improve the place. The first thing I did was purchase a wood stove, and my engineer father, who visited that summer, helped create a combustion air system that drew fresh air from outside rather than through leaks in the walls. This instantly brought my heating costs down to the price of a cord of wood for each winter month. The wood heat was the coziest warmth in Alaska—steady, silent, and permeating to every nook and corner of the little house.

I built a big deck and a greenhouse around my bedroom window. I created a fruitful garden and raised the occasional lamb or goat to keep the grass down. When I dug the ground to plant trees, I uncovered numerous army rations in tin cans, which I fed to my dog. I made a comfortable, unassuming studio out of the tin shed, and carpeted and re-roofed and painted the house. It was a perfect location from which to walk downtown or to hold Friday happy hours on the sun-drenched, sheltered deck.

As the years rolled on, I was able to continue being a documentary

When I dug the ground to plant trees, I uncovered numerous army rations in tin cans, which I fed to my dog.

filmmaker because my overhead was so manageable. Life was adventurous, fulfilling, and meaningful.

To the east of my house was a fourplex with a very special little girl. Her blond hair and innocent blue eyes belied the life she’d already endured by the age of three. She would hover silently at my fence while I gardened, until one day I chased off some rockthrowing, name-calling bullies and took her under my wing. Twenty-one years later, we made the film About Face together about her life.

Suitors brought wine and new socks, fixed my pipes, put up fencing, and built a carport while I made glorious salads from the garden. I cooked on an ancient gas stove next to a 30-yearold Frigidaire. Tomato-scented lovers crawled through that greenhouse into my bedroom window. Visiting villagers, drunk and lost, wandered the alleyway. They staggered from one edge to the other, but as long as they didn’t yell or pull knives on each other, I just read my New Yorker and went to sleep.

In 1988, I received a scholarship to New York University’s graduate film school and wanted to sublet my little house. Living with a woodstove in an arctic climate is no small feat. Each of my fires lasted 30 days; then I would let the fire go out, clear out the ashes for the garden, climb on the roof with a chimney brush to clean the chimney, and start a new fire. When severe cold hit, I opened the trapdoor to the crawlspace and left faucets dripping through the night. This system worked but needed careful tending.

Finding the right person to sublet to was challenging. Trust was a big factor in the equation. Would this person be able to manage the heating and keep the pipes from freezing? I had several applicants and chose a young woman who wanted to hibernate for the winter and write. I gave her instructions and walked through every step, with strong words of caution on how one should never burn cardboard in the wood stove. She was there less than a month before she put a pizza carton in the stove, which was quickly sucked up into the chimney and started a blaze. Prompt firemen saved the old tinderbox this time, but I had to cover the cost of the damage, and she moved out in the dead of winter.

Finding another renter then was almost impossible, especially long distance, and the next one I found was even worse than the first. She couldn’t come up with a deposit, but I was desperate. Against my intuition, I let her move in. She paid the first month’s rent and then quit paying.

Apparently my little castle became a cook shack for making illicit drugs and burned to the ground, tragically killing someone in the process. The property, now a bulldozer special, was offered to me for $50,000. It would have been a good investment because it was right downtown, but I could not afford it, even at that price.

Now when I drive the paved streets past the property, I steal glances at the big new house built on it and note that the trees have been cut down. The tin shed studio and greenhouse are gone, and there is no garden, not to mention a lamb or goat. A shelter for abused women now occupies the vacant lot my dog used to rule. Somewhere along the way, life turned ordinary.

But those were the days, days of tying cans on the tail of life. ■

After a disappointing run at law school in the Seattle area, Mary Katzke moved to Anchorage in 1979 “to be a waitress and figure out the next step.” One good thing led to another for the next thirtyfive years.

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GRANT REPORT

In Attla’s Tracks New documentary captures a dog racing legend’s final gift

By Debra McKinney

C

atharine Axley intended to make a documentary about dog-racing rock star George Attla. How, after all he’d accomplished, he still wasn’t done. How, at 81, he was channeling the fire that made him a world champion ten times into making a difference in the lives of young people.

Taking on a story about a living legend in remote, icebox Alaska was challenging enough for a 26-year-old Stanford graduate student who grew up in a colonial New England town, with a pound mutt named Willy in her front yard.

Logistics alone were daunting. But she had no idea the twist the story would take; that she would be documenting some of the last stories Attla would ever tell.

Axley’s film, In Attla’s Tracks, is a short documentary created as her master’s thesis, with a $2,000 Alaska Humanities Forum general grant helping with travel and post-production expenses. Its backbone is the growing bond between Attla and his 20-year-old grandnephew, Joe Bifelt, as Attla mentors the young man in the fine art of racing, and life; lessons deeply rooted in Athabascan values and traditions.

The 22-minute film starts with archival footage of a young George Attla in his signature aviator glasses winning the Open North American Championship in 1975. Then his 40-year-old face fades into his 80-year-old one. He’s at home in Huslia coaching from his couch, analyzing one of Bifelt’s training runs captured via GoPro as he prepares for the 2015 Fur Rendezvous World Championship Sled Dog Race, a race Attla won ten times.

Attla had been thinking of taking on an apprentice for a while, and had chosen his grandnephew to be the one. “It’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me,” Bifelt said. The University of Alaska Fairbanks student arranged to continue his studies through the distance education program while spending a year absorbing as much as he could from his “Grandpa George.”

Bifelt was one of the first graduates of the Frank Attla Youth & Sled Dog Care Mushing Program, named for Attla’s youngest son: a musher, seasonal firefighter, trapper,

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woodcutter, and Army Private First Class soldier who died unexpectedly of an asthma attack at 21.

“George was just paralyzed with grief,” said Kathy Turco, a natural sound recording artist and producer, and Attla’s partner of more than ten years. “When he buried his son and went back to Huslia, he said to me, ‘I don’t know how to handle this, I’m not sure I can do this.’ It was really heartwrenching. So we started talking about his son and how he’d loved kids and dogs. George was talking and talking and, all of a sudden, it came out of his heart. He said, ‘Let’s create a

‘He could see this was an opportunity to close the circle and pass it on. But, you know, we had no idea he was going to die.’ program for kids in Frank’s name.’ So the death of his son launched this absolute total commitment to give everything we had to this program. Because you just don’t do anything halfway with George.”

Attla had a long history of taking in troubled kids, reconnecting them with their rich sled-dog culture, and turning them around. He understood these kids; he’d been one of them.

Catharine Axley filming during New Years races in Huslia. Photo by Andrew Axley

Stricken with tuberculosis of the bone, he was eight and spoke only Denaakk’e the first time he was sent to a far-away hospital where all anyone spoke was English. He was shipped back a month later, as Turco tells it, because he wouldn’t stop crying. Warned he might never walk again, Attla went back for more treatment, returning home at 17 with a fused knee and a broken spirit, feeling disconnected to all that mattered until some caring elders and skilled dog men helped ground him and gave him purpose. The youth program named for his son was Attla’s way of giving back.

A Yale graduate working on her master’s in documentary filmmaking at Stanford, Axley was looking for a thesis project when she first heard of Attla’s program. She already had several short films to her credit, including one about an elderly librarian’s 50-year quest to account for every man, woman, and child killed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a regional finalist in the national Student Academy Awards. Axley pitched the story to her advisor, Kristine Samuelson, who, it turned out, had worked as a crew member on Spirit of the Wind, the 1979 fictionalized feature film based on Attla’s life.

“When Catharine proposed to me this idea — she had a couple of ideas for her thesis project — but as soon as she

said the words ‘George Attla,’ I said, ‘Oh my gosh, Catharine, what an opportunity. If you could manage to connect with him, he’s a legend and has not been properly documented in recent times,’” Samuelson recalled.

First Axley needed to get Attla on board. That, she figured, was a long shot. She was a student — living in California no less. She expected him to turn her down.

Her initial contact was an email to Turco, whom Attla had asked to serve as a kind of firewall between himself and those asking things of him. Axley didn’t hear back.

“Eventually I got his phone number and made the scary phone call.”

When the phone rang at their home in Huslia, Turco picked up.

“Here I am, someone not from Alaska, a young person calling and saying like, ‘Hey, I have this idea; I’d like to make a film…’

“I had heard that he can read dogs and kind of know what they are thinking, and that he could do almost the same with people. So I was really nervous. I also have a stuttering problem and that made matters worse.”

Turco remembers hearing her pitch, hesitating a moment since Attla hadn’t slept well that night, then handing him the phone.

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left:

Joe Bifelt at the Open North American sled dog race, 2015. right: George Attla, at his home, advising Joe. Photos by Catharine Axley

“So I give him the phone and I go get coffee, and bring it in, and as I’m walking around the corner I hear him say, ‘Interesting.’”

Living in the Bush, agreeing to such a project would mean taking the young filmmaker into their home, into their lives.

Bifelt was already planning to live with them that winter.

And, in addition to caring for 30 dogs, they had as many as 40 students a week coming to their kennel through the youth program. On top of that, Attla wasn’t feeling well.

He didn’t say yes that day, but he didn’t say no. He and Axley kept talking by phone. She was in Alaska that summer, in 2014, making a film on the Sitka Fine Arts Camp. In August, when Attla and Turco flew into Fairbanks to tend to some business, she flew up to meet them.

Attla could see she was passionate about the project. He finally agreed to give her a chance, not in spite of, but because she was a student.

“He told me he could see this was an opportunity to close the circle and pass it on,” Turco said. “But, you know, we had no idea he was going to die.”

Once Axley had the green light, she applied for grants and launched a Kickstarter campaign, which raised more than $13,000 in one month. In November, she and a fellow film student who’d be working sound, Melissa Langer, checked out 100 pounds of equipment from Stanford and flew more than 2,100 miles north, first to Fairbanks, where Turco’s network of friends outfitted them with cold-weather gear; then another 260 miles northwest to Huslia, where they were picked up at the airstrip by snow machines and initiated into village life.

After that first two-week trip, of meeting the community, eating moose for dinner and hours and hours of stories and filming, Axley returned to Huslia two more times before Attla’s failing health caught up with him. In late January, he was diagnosed with bone cancer.

“At that point, it wasn’t about, ‘Is George going to live or not?’ It was, ‘Is George going to make it to the Fur Rondy?’”

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Axley said. “He was at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, and there was a window down the hallway near his room, and that’s where he’d planned to see the race. ‘You can wheel me down in the wheelchair and I’ll be able to see Joe go by.’”

“If I don’t make it to the race, I’ll be there with you,” he had told Bifelt when first diagnosed.

Attla missed it by two weeks. He died February 15 at 81.

After all the time they’d spent together, losing the star of her documentary was more of a personal blow than a professional one. Axley came to Anchorage to say goodbye.

“You know I dream about it a lot,” she said of the last two hours she spent with him. “It’s one of the most emotional moments I’ve ever had.”

In yet one more twist, the Fur Rondy races ended up being cancelled due to lack of snow. Axley filmed Bifelt running the Open North American Championship in Fairbanks instead, which Attla had won eight times. Because her program required her film to be short, she wasn’t able to explain that.

But she has plans for a longer version, is applying for grants, and is determined to make it happen.

“For her thesis, she had to confine it to 20 minutes so she focused on the compelling relationship between George and Joe,” Turco said. “But what she has in her paws is unbelievable stuff.

“It was an extraordinary thing that happened. He was sharing levels and levels of himself. Also, by encouraging her to go out into the community, she learned about Huslia from its own. He gave her what every filmmaker and writer would fall over and die for. She has 100 hours of that all because he picked her.

“I’ve watched (the film) probably 70 times now and I can’t get through it without crying. She did an amazing job. It’s a beautiful, beautiful story about giving, young people, and dying.” ■ Debra McKinney is a longtime Alaska journalist and frequent contributor to Forum.

ANCHORAGE NARRATIVES: 4

Augmenting Diversity Fiction by Ademola Bello Project direction, illustrations and augments by Nathan Shafer

T

his is our final installment of Anchorage Narratives, an Anchorage Centennial Community Grants project supported by Rasmuson Foundation and the Alaska Humanities Forum. We began our narratives with a story set in 1915 Ship Creek at the birth of the city of Anchorage, then continued the series with stories about a 1919 Dena’ina summer fish camp and the earthquake of 1964. We end with a narrative in 2015 written by Ademola Bello, a Nigerian playwright and short story writer who fled persecution by Islamic fundamentalists in his home country and gained political asylum while living in Alaska.

Mr. Bello’s story is set in north Anchorage neighborhoods which the 2010 US Census calculated to be the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the United States: Mountain View, Fairview, Muldoon, Airport Heights, and Russian Jack, respectively. Ademola’s semi-autobiographical story is about a Yoruba man, fresh from Nigeria, trying to find his way in Anchorage as he connects with several different immigrant and artistic communities here, all while trying to gain political asylum. Much of the story reflects Mr. Bello’s personal experience in Anchorage, but it is still a work of contemporary historical fiction. If the reader is paying attention, there is a fantasy/science fiction sub-plot in his story about a Yoruba man and a Gwich’in man using previously extinct animal powers to fight crime in Anchorage, which is completely in line with Ademola’s practice of incorporating magic realism in his tales. We can only hope that this

story ends up as a small vignette in one of his fantasy novels in the future.

Our cultural collaborators in the Anchorage Narratives project played a major role in how we designed the illustrations and literary details of the four narratives. The cultural collaborator for Ademola’s story is Chad Farrell from the UAA Sociology Department.

Chad was pivotal in our collective understanding of the diversity of Anchorage.

The illustrations are in the form of data visualizations, a popular methodology and stylistic approach in common usage today. The bulk of the data we are using was collected by the U.S. Census Bureau for the 2010 census and reflects the ways people identify themselves. Chad’s work has pointed to some trends in Anchorage’s diversity that cannot be overlooked, namely that its diversity is increasing at a rate greater than almost everywhere else in the country. Three of the ten most diverse high schools are in Anchorage, as well as six of the ten most diverse middle schools and the 19 most diverse elementary schools.

At its Centennial, Anchorage has become a city of over 300,000 people, and is one of the cities at the forefront of the U.S. diversity trend in the 21st century. In many areas of Anchorage at this very moment, the diversity index of the youth is at almost 100. A ‘diversity index’ is a proportional measure of the ethnicities of people living in a particular area; more explanations of this are in the following illustrations.

TO VIEW THE AUGMENTS The augments in this narrative use AR as an element of data visualization, incorporating an extra dimension into the targeted print; some augments reflect a time dimension and others will reflect spatial frameworks.

We are using a new third party AR platform for this narrative, Aurasma. To view the augments: • download the free Aurasma app • ‘follow’ the channel labeled Nathan Shafer • go to the scan screen • hold your device over the images in this story • one set of augments will appear on your device over each subsequent target.

All three of the previous narratives can now also be viewed in Aurasma as well, with Aurasma being the final form of the collected narratives will take until a new technology is developed that will better archive this Centennial project.

Previous AR campaigns for this project, using the Junaio and Layar apps, became obsolete on December 15, 2015.

­— Nathan Shafer

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ANCHORAGE narratives: 4

The Enchanted Drum

by Ademola Bello

M

y name is Deji Abdullahi, I am from North Eastern Nigeria of mixed Yoruba[1] and Kanuri[2] heritage. I worked as a journalist for Nigeria’s Daily Sketch newspaper and wrote critical articles against Boko Haram[3] that put me in trouble. I have been living in Anchorage since early year of 2015 because I fled Boko Haram persecution and I have been waiting for my political asylum case to be resolved. Back home, in Nigeria, I am an expert in talking drum[4], I am a good talking drum player, and I told stories with my drum.

African talking drum and Athabascan drum[5] are related, both are enchanted. I am now going to play the talking drum for you my readers, and tell you a story of just one week in my life as an African immigrant.

SUNDAY: Making Sausage with Bob I have been living in Anchorage on a visa that has expired. I first lived on Muldoon Road, my roommate was called Bob, and he is an African-American man from Fayetteville, North Carolina. He is the owner of the two story four flats building, there are tenants in all the apartments, across the hall from our room is a tenant called Kamau from Kenya, he lived with his African-American girlfriend called Alexandra and their two young daughters.

Kamau is in his early thirties, I am five years older than him. Kamau and his girlfriend fight all the time as we always heard the crying of Alexandra.

I told Kamau one day in presence of Bob that as an African brother, I was disappointed in him beating his girlfriend. He promised me that he won’t hit her again. Bob shared my sentiments, but

89.0%

Tract 487, Queens,NY NY Queens,

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MONDAY: Asylum Hearing WHEN MY lawyer and I appeared in June before the immigration judge at the Anchorage Immigration Courthouse on 620 East 10th Avenue, we had one big witness, a former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria who testified through a phone. Perhaps,

the judge would have granted my asylum request that day because my lawyer and the Ambassador were simply brilliant.

The judge and the government attorney asked whether we wanted to rest my case for a judge decision but we have one more witness to go that we would like to testify. In my view his testimony would also strengthen my case, he is a Nigerian blogger, activist, publisher and an asylee based in New York who despite enduring torture in Nigeria like myself continues to expose corruption and the rotten system in the country. We are allies in speaking truth to power. He also happened to be my friend, but I haven’t seen him or spoken to him in a long time, until I gave my lawyer his contact for my case. Unfortunately, that complicated things; I honestly didn’t know that would be a conflict of interest. And my lawyer also said it never occurred to him to ask whether he was my friend either. As he began his testimony by identifying himself the judge asked him how we two know each other. We both said we are friends. The judge made a quick call that his testimony would not be accepted and that my lawyer should write a closing argument for my asylum case to be submitted by September.

My lawyer and I felt bad about the sudden turn of events but with slight optimism that at least we didn’t lose the case. I was emotionally weak; I thought everything should have been over by now.

I was thinking about so many things, including my dad who had suffered a stroke in Nigeria but whose condition continued to deteriorate according to my sisters who are caring for him in Maiduguri, northern Nigeria. My worst fear, I don’t want to lose my dad in this tumultuous period when my

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I was baffled when he later told me in private that some women prefer to live with a guy that always beat them.

I must confess, Bob has been giving me problems lately, he has this large, 3 inch meat grinder for pork in his living room that he used to grind, package and process the pork in his house. He knows that I don’t eat pork but he insisted that I must help him process and package the pork in the house. Even though, he admitted to me that it is against the law in Alaska to be doing a pork processing and packaging business in the house.

He is damn serious about it, and he even bought me a clothing and gloves that look like physical therapist assistants uniform that he insisted that I must wear during the hours that we are working on the pork processing. He bought the uniform for himself as well. Bob purchased a mobile food truck for a business that he called “Sausage Tasty Meat Business.” And this is a time consuming, all day job. For example, we sometimes do this processing four days a week, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I often pleaded with him to excuse me regarding following him around Anchorage to sell the sausage meat in his van because I have other important things to do regarding my asylum case hearings.

Anchorage, AK

#8.01

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#100

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Anchorage, AK

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Ethnoracial Diversity in US Census Tracts 100

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Tract 487, Queens,NY NY Queens,

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89.6

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88.1

#19

Reading this Graph: Every dot represents one of over 63,000 census designated areas in the United States. On average, every Census Tract represents a population between 4,000 to 6,000 people. The y-axis reflects the diversity index from the 2010 Census and the x-axis represents the diversity index of that same neighborhood in 1990. Augments show the diversity indexes from the 2010 Census.[6]

89.7

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#102

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Fairfield, CA

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own life is in cliffhanger. MyLegend worst fear is that ISusitna don’t know how I will react to the anguish Tracts of having to lose both parents to the cold hand of death.

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City Point MacKenzie TUESDAY: Cleaning Guns with Bob Borough/CA 1.01 3 I shared a two bedroom apartment together on 4 the ground floor with Bob. Bob is an avid gun col5 E 5th Ave lector, he is very obsessed with shopping for the 2.04 new guns, and he has like sixteen different guns in Anchorage his house. He is also fond of cleaning the guns, and he would plead with me to help him hold the gun. I 28.13 23.01 always get very frightened, and he would burst into big laughter.

28.23 27.02 “These guns are not loaded, why are you afraid?”

Mind you when I got back to the apartment that I shared with Bob, he noticed that I wasn’t cheerful 29 Point Possession wy ard H after my final immigration hearing. I briefed Bob Sew about all that happened and I explained to him the closing argument the judge asked my lawyer to Hope Prepared by: Sunrise write for my asylum case. Sadly, theDepartment only thingofthat Alaska Labor & Workforce resonated with Bob about everything that I said Development Whittier was the testimony of a former U.S. Ambassador to July 2012 Nigeria.

“Can you ask Mister Ambassador to help me apSource: US Census TIGERLine point my son as an Ambassador2010 to Nigeria or South Africa?” Bob told me. busy preparing for a native traveling troupe Hal- party attended by straight men and women, and “Are you kidding me? It’s not the job of a former loween dance on Thursday in which a Gwich’in[10] members of the LGBT community in Anchorage. ambassador to nominate or appoint an ambas- mask maker who is also a puppeteer designer, will I can see people drinking a lot of alcohol, smoking sador. It’s the job of the President of the United perform folk tales and legends from various na- marijuana[11] and cannabis. Kevin, the handsome States.“ I explained to Bob, he gets super mad. tive cultures in Alaska. There is also going to be an guy from Boston who worked as a sound manager exhibition of native cultures in the theater as well. and collaborator for Leonora Smith on her show WEDNESDAY: That wasn’t the only event that would be happen- was also in great merriment as he falls in love that Bob’s Hand Scrawled Eviction Notice ing in the theater. On Thursday, there will be a solo night with the sexiest tattooed woman in AnchorWhen I woke up in the morning the next day, I show as well by a popular Boston native performer age who danced as one of the extras in Leonora saw the hand scrawled eviction notice that Bob left called Leonora Smith, and this show is generating Smith’s show. They were holding hands and having on the table for me. The letter reads: a lot of interest. I had offered to volunteer at the box a passionate kissing like a couple who is by the fire “I gave you Deji Abdullahi three days to vacate office to help sell tickets to patrons and also help side. The tattooed woman whom I learned to have my house.” in distributing the show programs. But at the mo- a boyfriend who works on the North Slope even I embarked on a long and cold walk to the Out ment, my main concern now is how to handle the invited Kevin to come and sleep over in her apartNorth Contemporary Art House[7] where I know I situation of my roommate giving me problems. ment once the party is over. Kevin, “Bad Boy” as have friends who may be able to help me. The DiA staff at the Out North had volunteered to give he refers to himself told me that night, that he will rector of the Out North is Collin Bettencourt. me a ride and accompanied me to my apartment to accept her offer rather than going to the motel he I am an artist, and I am always regular at the see the roommate giving me too much headache. is staying with Leonora Smith for this show. While Out North events. On this cold day, I wore a heavy But anyway, by the time we got to Muldoon, my the party was going on, I sat in a seat; I only drank coat and I trekked from the dirt road off Muldoon roommate had thrown my bags outside. We saw cranberry juice because I don’t drink alcohol. To because transportation is an issue for me, I passed my stuff on the entrance to the house. We took my the credit of all the people at the party, they were through Costco to Debarr Road to the Out North bags to Collin Bettencourt’s duplex apartment on so nice and kind to me to make sure I was doing on Bragaw Street. As I was trekking on the pedes- Fairview. The temporary arrangement was that I okay and even offered to help me with the refill of trian corner of the road, I saw moose and a bald will be sleeping at the Out North and in the morn- my cranberry juice. eagle along the way. I also heard the quork of Alas- ing I will go and shower at Collin Bettencourt’s After the party was over, I went upstairs at the ka ravens.[8] house. I was given an extra key to enter the Out Out North in a small room stuffed with some theI saw motorists in their cars, I saw young men North and Collin’s apartment. atrical stage equipment such as costumes, stage and women riding their bicycles. As I was trekcurtains, and drapery, rigging and projection king, I was reflecting on how Bob would make THURSDAY: screens. I must say, the Out North theatre is a big life so miserable for me and toss up my belongBig Show and Crazy Party at Out North place. The upstairs alone is big and divided into ings if I don’t have anywhere to go at the end of There was a party at the Out North after the fi- compartments. I wasn’t alone there in the night. his quick eviction notice. I was also thinking about nal performance of Leonora Smith’s show. Leonora There are two geek guys whose home and office is the Boko Haram renewed attacks on Maiduguri[9] Smith shocked the audience because she was na- the Out North and I meant that literally. They have with rocket-propelled grenades. I was particularly ked in the final act of her solo performance. The been working tirelessly for like a year and half now worried about the safety of my father and sisters. party inside the Out North, after Leonora Smith’s on a radio station project. They called it Out North When I got to the Out North, I told Collin Bet- show turned out to be an extravaganza; it went Art House Radio[12] that will be broadcasting tencourt and others about the development where on from midnight till 4am. People were dancing, across Alaska. The last person that was also with us I’m staying. They were shocked. The theater was drinking, hugging and kissing. It was a colorful at the Out North upstairs in the night was an unSeward Hwy

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Diversity Indexes of Anchorage’s Many Neighborhoods

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The 3D map on this page illustrates the diversity indexes of the neighborhoods in the metropolitain Anchorage area by height. The taller the tract, the more diverse it is. The borders of the neighborhoods were drawn by the US Census Bureau with around 4000 citizens in each designated census tract. In the north section of Anchorage, there are several tracts which are among the most diverse in the United States: #6 (Mountain View), #9.01 (Fairview/Airport Heights), #8.01 (Wonder Park), #7.03 (Muldoon), #19 (Midtown), #9.02 (Chester Creek), #8.02 (Russian Jack) and #20 (Spenard).

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All maps were prepared by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, and reflect data from the 2010 Census.

Highest and Lowest Diversity Indexes in Anchorage 25.9%

89.1%

= One Person

24%

16%

11.9%

12.7%

9.5%

2% Native Other/ Hispanic 1238 Multiracial 921 738

Black 985

Asian 2005

White 1860

Mountain View (Anchorage Tract #6) Diversity Index: 96.3, Population: 7747

seen ghost. I am sure you will find that surprising.

There is always a sound of music going on inside the theater or of something breaking up or cracking inside the theater. My time of sleepover inside the Out North was also short-lived when Collin Bettencourt was traveling early for the holiday until next year and asked me to move inside his duplex apartment located in Fairview on Medfra Street. He also introduced me to his nice landlord called Edward. To my surprise Edward actually told me that he is half-African. His father that he said abandoned him and his mother when he was a toddler is from the country of Guinea in West Africa. His mother is a white woman from here in Anchorage. Edward lives with his wife called Mary; she is a Pacific Islander. They have a huge black dog called Lily, the first time I saw Lily, and she jumped on me. I was scared. Edward and Mary asked her to stop, they told me that Lily always get excited whenever she sees new visitors or old family friends and that I will soon get used to her. By my nature, I always get timid about dogs, the experience I had in Nigeria while growing up made me to be scared of dogs to my bone marrow. There

2.5%

3.6%

Native Other/ Hispanic 52 Multiracial 92 65

0.1% Black 3

2.6% Asian 67

White 2291

Girdwood (Anchorage Tract #29) Diversity Index: 27.7, Population: 2570

are lots of wild dogs roaming around the streets of Maiduguri where I grew up. They always pursue kids to bite them. Often, they always succeed.

I have had close encounters of being pursued by rabid dogs to getting to being bitten.

I told Edward that I am working on a science fiction novel about crime fighters using extinct animal powers in Alaska[13]. He said he has a friend, who is a Gwich’in Athabascan, and he is an anthropologist, he teaches at UAA, he said the name of his friend is John McGuinness. I also later find out that John McGuinness is a shareholder in the Gwich’in native corporation[14]. I must say that the period that I moved in to Fairview apartment also brought me some good luck. Time flies so fast. It seems like yesterday when the Out North had Leonora Smith’s show, but it was in the first week of November.

FRIDAY: Great News! Lawyer Calls Asylum Granted, Also Meeting Athabascan Family Right now in the second week of November my lawyer sent me a text message that we should meet

up for coffee at the Starbucks that is close to the Fifth Avenue Shopping Mall[15] in the afternoon.

He broke the good news to me that I have been granted political asylum. We were both ecstatic. At last, I am no longer an illegal immigrant. And I am not homeless. Within that week I began the necessary steps that will enable me to work as a substitute teacher in the Anchorage School District[16].

I also need someone to take me on a round trip of some schools in Anchorage. Luckily for me, John McGuinness is not just an affable guy, he volunteered to take me to many places when I finally got a chance to meet with him.

John McGuinness’s house is in Richmond Avenue near the Mountain View car wash[17]. It is a two-story frame house that has gone through different phases of renovation. This two-story frame house is a family house of John’s wife called Linda.

There are portraits of Linda’s late parents that sit on the windowsill. One thing that struck me about John is that he is living in his wife’s family house.

He later explained to me that Gwich’in culture has a matrilineal system and that the children belong to the mother clan.

CLARK

MIDDLE SCHOOL

WONDER PARK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

HIGH SCHOOLS MIDDLE SCHOOLS ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

Schools in the Anchorage School District that Ranked as the Most Diverse in the Country John and his wife Linda are proud parents to a six months old baby girl named Amy. John’s mother called Claire and John’s brother-in-law called Erik also lives with the couple in this two-story frame house.

I was told the reasons they are both living with them is to be a force of good guidance and offer advice to John and his wife. Besides, John’s mother and his brother-in-law will play a crucial role in helping baby Amy learn about Gwich’in culture and tradition from her uncle and grandmother.

Let me tell you more about John’s mother Claire, she is a woman in her seventies and a force of guidance. She is a native elder who knows a lot about her people’s tradition. She speaks and prays in her language, and she was raised in Fort Yukon in subsistence lifestyle. Her father fought in World War II. Claire cooked for me a delicious Gwich’in food of baked king salmon steaks and moose soup[18].

After I had finished eating, Claire suggested to John and Erik to get me some Athabascan clothing from their wardrobe. Within a minute, John and Erik dressed me in clothing made of caribou and moose hide, and I wear waterproof boots made of mammal intestine and insulating socks made with grass. The purpose of me dressing like this now is because they all wanted to see how the clothes would fit in on me. We all laughed with how I looked in the costumes. I told John that I carried

a lot of things with me from Nigeria to Anchorage, and I also told him that I also have a gift for him and his wife.

“It is a Yoruba dashiki dress[19]; you and Linda will love it.” I gave the clothes to John, he wears it, and it is a colorful garment. We laughed again, and he passed on Linda’s own to her.

Later that day John drove me in his truck first to West Anchorage High School on Hillcrest Drive.

“Here is where I got my High School Diploma in 1993.” It’s a good public school. “Paul O’Neill the former United States Secretary of the Treasury graduated from here in 1954,” John said with pride. I didn’t know that John had a surprise thing for me after we left West Anchorage High School.

He took me to Sullivan Arena[20] to watch the practice of the professional ice hockey team called the Alaska Aces[21]. I was told Alaska Aces and the South Carolina Stingrays hold the record for most championships won in the minor ice hockey league. They have won three Kelly Cup championships. John pointed out to me that the defunct “The Alaska Wild”[22] used to play indoor football inside this arena.

I had a great time watching the practice of the Alaska Aces; I had the opportunity of exchanging handshakes with some Alaska Aces players after their practice. One of the players even invited me and John to also come and watch him in a mixed

EAST

HIGH SCHOOL

Diversity in the Anchorage School District

This map shows a sampling of schools in the Anchorage School District, whose ethnoracial diversity indexes are the highest in the United States. This includes the most diverse high school (East), middle school (Clark), and elementary school (Wonder Park), highlighted in the detail map above. Wonder Park Elementary is the most diverse K-12 school in the country with a diversity index of 98.5.

martial arts training at Anchorage Brazilian JiuJitsu School on Northern Lights Blvd. Anyway, it was an exciting moment for me to watch the Alaska Aces practice. But as we were leaving after it was over, John told me that we should pass through the west side of the Sullivan Arena that he would like to show me the Mulcahy Stadium[23] that has a 3,500 seating capacity. I was told it is the home of the Alaska Baseball league teams called

Anchorage Glacier Pilots[24] and Anchorage Bucs[25]. Mulcahy Stadium is a beautiful place with effervescent natural grass outfield, and a nice field turf.

After we left the stadium, John took me back to Fairview where I am staying. As I alighted from his truck John said, “I know we are yet to talk about the science fiction novel about extinct animals[26] in Alaska that you want to write. I’ll take you to the Alaska’s Zoo[27] in Anchorage tomorrow.”

SATURDAY: Naming Ceremony I know John liked to talk, but I didn’t know that he is a storyteller. He came to pick me up around noon the next day to go to Alaska Zoo at O’Malley Road. “Once upon a time there was an orphan polar bear named Binky[28], he was found on Alaska North Slope but he lived at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage. He was an international sensation and a local hero.” I stopped John after he finished those sentences.

I thought it might as well be good for me to reconstruct Binky’s lives into my science fiction novel. John was generous he told me everything I need to know about Binky, a local and international favorite polar bear at the Zoo. Unfortunately, he mauled two zoo visitors, and Binky himself later died of a parasitic disease.

I exclaimed to John that I have found my story while we were sitting on the grass at the zoo.

While John and I were at the zoo I received a phone call from the chief Imam of Senegalese/ Gambian Muslim community in Anchorage that they would love me to attend a naming ceremony of a baby girl born to a young Gambian woman named Fatima because they want African residents in Anchorage to be there.

He gave the house address where the naming ceremony will take place, and John promised that he will give me a ride there. The last African event that I attended in Anchorage was Nigeria’s Independence Day Party[29]. It was held at a hall, the Nigerians who came to that event numbering about twenty, they were also joined by their spouses and other immigrants from African countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Gambia and Senegal.

They danced to Fela Kuti’s Afro beat music[30] while cutting Nigeria’s Independence birthday cake.

There was this pretty young woman from Ghana called Irene who works in the assisted care living home of a Nigerian man called Mr. Nwordi. While she was dancing to the Afro beat music at the party, someone alerted her that a guy who claimed to be her husband was looking for her. Irene was really furious on sighting the guy who dressed in worn out clothing. She yelled at him. “I told you that you should stop looking for me again! And stop telling people you’re my husband. You’re blocking my chances of getting the right guy.

Go back home! I’ll bring you food,” Irene commanded the guy. I later find out from other at-

tendees at the party who know Irene very well that Irene and the African-American guy who came looking for her are actually married. It is a marriage of necessity, the guy is an homeless person, Irene married him to get a Green Card, while Irene’s boss Mr. Nwordi, who runs the assisted care living home sponsored them since the “couple” does not have enough income that would make the Department of Homeland Security approve the marriage. Yes, they are living together as a couple but it is not a romantic relationship I was told.

After John dropped me at the house where the naming ceremony is taking place, I urged him to also stay there with me and observe the Gambian naming ceremony. Muslim naming ceremonies are usually held on the seventh day of the newborn child. The mother of this newborn baby girl is a 20 year old woman. The baby’s father is unknown. The young single mom lives with her mother and two older sisters.

They all came to the U.S. on diversity lottery visas. John and I took off our shoes when we entered the living room and joined the prayers for the baby. I noticed the hair on the head of the newborn had been shaved. The Imam of Gambian/Senegalese Community said that shaving the head of the baby will provide the newborn with strength. They named the baby Halimat. Both men and women at the naming ceremony wore beautiful African textile clothes. The guests were served Jollof rice[31] and goat meat.

After John and I left the Gambian party, John received a phone call from his wife and he told me that his family wanted him to bring me to their house again that evening. I didn’t know that they have a surprise gift for me.

On getting to John’s family house, John and his wife Linda presented me with a gift of Athabascan Velvet Caribou Antler Drum that has the frame of birchwood. They called it “The Enchanted Drum”. We were all in drum dance motions moving our arms as John’s mother mesmerized us with a Gwich’in song. John is very adept at playing antler drum; I am also a very good handmade drum player. I am a Yoruba from Nigeria. I could play the talking drums to mimic patterns of speech and eulogize the king.

So that is the story in one week of my big wild life[32]. There is a Yoruba proverb that says: “If we stand tall, it is because we stand on the backs of those who came before us.” Talking drum is a form of communication in West Africa. It is handed over to us by our ancestors. Talking drums have two drumheads, and are connected by leather tension cords. Back home, I played the talking drum at ceremonial and religious functions. Back home, the talking drum wakes me up in the morning, telling me about the challenges that I faced and that I will need to overcome, as well as the methods to solve them. Talking drum is my therapy in overcoming adversity.

Mountain View

Fairview

Russian Jack Augmented Endnotes

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Mountain View and America’s Most Diverse Neighborhoods BASED ON HIS ANALYSIS of the 2010 United States Census, Dr. Chad R. Farrell of the University of Alaska Anchorage concluded that the Anchorage Metropolitan Area[33] was home to the three most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the United States, with Mountain View being the most diverse. Two other neighborhoods bordering Mountain View took the second and third spots: Fairview to Mountain View’s southwest and Russian Jack to the southeast. The diversity in these neighborhoods directly contributes to the diversity of the area’s schools, making the Anchorage School District one of the most diverse public school districts in the country, with one of the largest proportions of students speaking languages other than English at home.

Dr. Farrell’s findings were based on a series of questions the U.S. Census Bureau asked as part of the 2010 census, and on how participants chose to identify themselves. These figures were then calculated

together using the proportions of the various racial identities that live within the same census boundaries. For a neighborhood to be diverse there must be significant proportions of different ethnicities in the same area. Some neighborhoods in the U.S. have high minority populations but are not considered diverse because there is a lack of other racial groups living side by side within them[34].

Here is a formula used to determine the multi-group diversity of a city (E):

with Q referring to a specific ethnoracial group’s proportion inside of a particular geographic area.

Mountain View is unique in that different people, from many various walks of life, are living together in such close proximity. This is not true of all neighborhoods in Anchorage, many of which fall right in the national average, or slightly below average, in terms of diversity. The schools that rank as the most diverse in the nation are located mostly in the north Anchorage metropolitan area. Anchorage is a city where a large portion of its population was born elsewhere.

Much of its diversity is rooted in the influx of new people and the loss of residents born in the city who leave once they become adults.

For many years Moun-

tain View did not have a major financial institution easily accessible to its citizens[35].

The neighborhood was considered too risky for a bank to have a sustainable business model, and many residents of Mountain View became trapped in a cycle of check cashing services when bills came due. Crime in Mountain View reflected its status as a risky neighborhood. At the same time that Mountain View and its surrounding neighborhoods are being declared the nation’s most diverse, the city of Anchorage is declared one of the most dangerous cities in the US[36]. Anchorage’s crime rate is higher than the national average[37]. There have been major investments in Mountain View over the last several years, and even some explicit attempts to gentrify the neighborhood, but the diversity is persisting. Currently, previously vacant major properties in Mountain View’s (Glenn Square and Tikahtnu Commons) are being transformed into major shopping areas[38], mostly catering to the economic needs of those living on the JBER military base.

Anchorage ranks in the top 15% in overall diversity among 716 cities in the US. It ranks 1st among cities in terms of the size of its indigenous population, many of whom identify as multiracial. Many residents refer to Anchorage as “the largest Native village in Alaska” because of its large population of the many different Alaska Native groups from around the the state. Anchorage is 10th overall in terms of its Pacific Islander population and also ranks high for the size of its Filipino (30th), Korean (26th), Hmong (9th), Laotian (11th), and Thai (15th) populations. It ranks an impressive 2nd overall in its multiracial population.

To the left and below are 38 illustrated endnotes to items mentioned in “The Enchanted Drum” that warranted further explanation. Scanning the cropped images will open up full size images which go to links and videos online. Most images are taken from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons.

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Salmon Social Kodiak residents celebrate their shared connections to Alaska’s iconic fish

By Priscilla Naung• ag• iaq Hensley

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A L A S K A H U M A N I T I E S F O R U M W I NTE R 2016

Last fall,

Kodiak fishermen.

Photo by Ash Adams

posters went up around the town of Kodiak advertising the second annual Kodiak Salmon Social.

They encouraged attendees to B.Y.O.E. (Bring Your Own Everything) to a public event open to “all lovers of salmon.”

The people of Kodiak (Sun’aq in Sugpiaq) have long had deep connections to all five species of Pacific salmon, which are native to the local waters. The first salmon fishing on Kodiak was done by the Alutiiq/ Sugpiaq people. Commercial fishing and processing began in the 1880s and remains critical to the area economy, since the port in Kodiak is one of the nation’s largest by value and volume.

Salmon sportfishing is a big draw for visitors. The combined effect makes salmon a key source of sustenance and employment for people in Kodiak, and the ripple effects of every fishing season are felt across the community.

“Salmon means life. Our whole year revolves around it,” said Astrid Rose, one of the organizers of the Kodiak Salmon Social. She manages the onshore part of a family-run commercial fishing operation during the summer while her husband, Nate Rose, is fishing on their boat, the F/V Historian.

“Our community is so engrained with salmon culture, whether we realize it or not, we all have some reason for being part of a salmon fest,” he said.

Most of the festival was held on a broad meadow partially surrounded by a semi-circle of dense forest opening out to the ocean. Mountains and shimmering water provided a brilliant, natural backdrop for the tented stage, the words “Salmon Life” spelled out in lights and sparkles across the front.

Kodiak musician Drew Sablon played his guitar and sang as families walked down the dirt road, put their names in for door prizes, and settled into camp chairs on the lawn.

A L A S K A H U M A N ITI E S F O R U M W I N T E R 2 01 6

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Astrid Rose and baby Silas are part of a fishing family.

The scene at the Kodiak Salmon Social.

Volunteers decorate before the event.

Three photos by Ash Adams

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A L A S K A H U M A N I T I E S F O R U M W I NTE R 2016

Kodiak Salmon Social co-organizer Danielle Ringer is a University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate student working on an ethnographic research project about the upcoming generation of Kodiak commercial fishermen.

“People maybe get their first job on deck on a salmon boat or it’s young guys who get their start on entry-level fishing on salmon seiners,” she said. “Salmon fishing is so much more than any kind of a job. It’s how people sustain themselves the whole year round.”

At the door prize table, Sadie McCusker was one of the volunteers. She had people estimating the number of red Swedish fish in a couple of Mason jars and signing a guestbook made from a life ring. “I was born and raised here and my father owns a marine electrician business, so he works on all the salmon boats, rewiring and keeping them running for the season,” McCusker said. “My boyfriend is a fisherman and he fishes year-round, but without salmon I probably wouldn’t live here… So it’s not just financially part of my life. I grew up salmon fishing all the time just for fun and to feed my family.”

The air was filled with kids’ bubbles, smoke from the chimaneas park officials had permitted (a burn ban nixed the bonfire), and the sounds of people laughing and visiting in English and Spanish. Games were underway and Sablon’s cover of Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ Down a Dream” floated through the clanking of thrown horseshoes.

Volunteer grill-master Lexa Meyer presided over cooking donated salmon. She’d pre-seasoned it four different ways and wielded long tongs with the accuracy of a barbecue veteran. Meyer’s connection to salmon and seafood is multifaceted — she is a commercial setnetter, an artist who created a public commission about salmon, and a shellfish biologist. Asked about a fishing future for her eight-month-old daughter, she said, “Hopefully she thinks it’s worth it. That when she becomes a teenager she doesn’t want to work at a fast food restaurant because it makes more money than salmon fishing.”

Julie Kavanaugh’s family boat, the F/V Sylvia Star, contributed to the Kodiak Salmon Social in 2014 and in 2015. They liked the “homespun and grassroots” nature of the event, but also its inclusivity. “Astrid is reaching out not to just one specific type of salmon person,” said Kavanaugh. “She’s reached out to cannery workers, to setnetters, seiners, gillnetters, sport fishermen, personal use – she’s encouraging us to have this common thread in this community and to rejoice in having that in our life.” ■ Priscilla Naunġaġiaq Hensley lives in Anchorage with her family. Her favorite ways to prepare salmon are to cook it frozen and to make poke.

This article and the accompanying photographs were produced in partnership with The Salmon Project (salmonproject.org). An earlier version was published as part of the The Salmon Project’s online documentary and storytelling series, Salmon Life: Salmon Love.

Photo by Dr. Sven Haakanson Jr., Burke Museum

after image

Swim Out and Get It At the Akhiok Kids Camp, we teach and share

how traditional harvesting practices are done. Speridon and Albert Simeonoff were watching the seals from the beach and decided this was one of the only opportunities for us to get a seal that week. Albert agreed to swim out and get it, if Speridon shot it.

“I was photographing petroglyphs on the opposite side of the beach when I heard the shot. As Albert was bringing the seal back to shore to be processed, I captured this image.

“We use this time to teach the students how to butcher and use as much of the seal as possible. I harvested the intestine to be made into gut skin materials, such as bags. We kept the skin for sewing, processed the fat for oil, and ate the meat.”

— Dr. Sven Haakanson Jr. A L A S K A H U M A N ITI E S F O R U M W I N T E R 2 01 6

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Photo courtesy Mary R. Katzke

Photo courtesy Christine Terry

Image courtesy Chad Farrell and Nathan Shafer

Koniag, Inc. Collection, courtesy the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository

ANCHORAGE REMEMBERS TWO TALES FROM 1979

The Third Weaver one Educator’s Cross-Cultural Immersion

the enchanted drum augmented fiction

by Ademola Bello

gifts of the ancestors Archaeology and Alutiiq renaissance

ALASKA HUMANITIES FORUM

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Non Profit Organization U.S. POSTAGE PAID ANCHORAGE, ALASKA PERMIT NO. 519

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THE MAGAZINE OF THE AL ASK A HUMANITIES FORUM WINTER 2016