My Alaska Trek

The twin engine Otter flew between the two, snow-patched tundra mountains, slewing sideways, whipped by the wind. It lowers onto the runway and I step into a stiff sea wind, my coat flapping. A Honda four wheeler pulling a cart (standard village motor vehicle) stops with a splash on the tarmac nearby. I dump my bags, suitcase, carryon, black plastic bag full of winter gear and boots into the cart, clamber up on the side of the cart to sit in a spray of mud and melted snow on the ride to the school. The ground is already thawing. The temperature is above freezing, unseasonably warm.

Goodnews Bay is a collection of weathered wood buildings, crooked shanties and a few trailer homes scattered on the shore of the Goodnews River and along the edge of the bay. Behind the ragged homes stand steam bath huts, the only bathing facilities, although the school has showers for the faculty. Two hundred fifty souls live in Goodnews Bay, some seventy are school children.

The school is a modern gray building that squats solidly on the tundra safely back from the water with three or four small houses next tp the school, housing faculty. The school has running water and flush toilets utilizing an above ground septic system. The rest of the village uses honey buckets. All visitors bunk down on mattresses in the school, staying two to three nights, or longer if the weather turns bad.

I am very anxious about teaching in these classes. I had been told that most of the native children would not make eye contact or speak to me. I am not sure I can do this.

The first class I meet are the 4th through 6th grade class, about twenty three students whose teacher, Karin Halpin, my village contact, has been with them for the last three years. To my surprise, after a brief warming up, they speak up, ask questions and comfortably display humor. Classroom behavior is outstanding.

There are only two white children in the school, both in this class. They have come to live with their father who has married a native woman. David says he is called "white boy," and is teased a lot. At the back of the classroom Karin nods. The other boys smile in agreement, displaying no discomfort. In fact they seem pleased. At the break Karin confirms that the village children do not easily tolerate those different from themselves.

One girl speaks softly, barely loud enough to be heard over the others, but always has the right answer. I called on her. She is uncomfortable in the attention, but smiles and answers well. Later I learned she would probably quit school early because their mother was severely alcoholic, and this young child was the primary caretaker for her little sister, the most disruptive child in the 1st through 3rd grade.

The other girls also answer direct questions in soft voices, although hesitant, as though they aren't sure they should speak up. The boys, though, as in the other classes, are almost lusty, taking the lead in speaking, asking and answering. This is grade 4 through 6.

Next I go to a class of some twenty 1st through 3rd graders. One boy and a little girl clearly appear to have been impacted by fetal exposure to alcohol. They are unable to sit still. The little girl wanders disruptively through the class room and fights with the boy.

In this classroom the girls are open and eager to speak and to be heard. They vie with the boys to answer questions, tell stories, describe their pictures. The skill levels of the children vary widely, the most able appear to help the less able. Somewhere between this grade and 4th through 6th the girls lose their comfort in speaking up and excelling.

In the ninth and tenth grade class the boys are interested. They make up a story about a seal hunt by youth in the old, traditional way. In the story the boys catch a seal, pull it to the boat, only to have it attacked by a sea-monster. When I asked if there was a way for the boys to see the sea monster coming, to fight it off, they said "The seal can tell them."

I said, "But it's dead."

"No", they said. "It's not. It's just caught."

The boys were uncomfortable explaining and I was a slow learner. Fortunately they were forgiving. The Yup'ik believe in a life cycle continuum including animals and humans. The seals or any animal they catch, shares its body with them, its spirit returning to be reborn again, next year. Therefore animals aren't killed, but "caught," and its spirit can still communicate. Some of its body must be returned to the place where it was caught, so that next year it will return again to share itself. If they neglect to do this, the catch will be poor in the future. By the same token, out of respect for the animal's generosity, nothing must be wasted.

The girls in the class were quiet, putting their heads on their desks or smiling softly if asked a question, but not answering.

"Seal hunting is not for girls," one boy said. "Uh, uh," said another boy. "Girls can do it if they have to." The girls look uncomfortable.

The older students' classes are dominated by the boys, except for the seniors. Here the class has two clear leaders, a boy and a girl, both articulate, bright and curious. The other three or four (students come in and out in a confusing parade at times) are girls who say nothing, but whose eyes follow the class. Both of the excelling students hope to attend college, the others hope to graduate, or simply reach sixteen and drop out maybe to return later.

Most of the teenagers view me with some suspicion, unsure what I have to say to them that they would want to hear. I feel it in my stomach, which hurts. I explain that we'll start the next day on a group story, one that they put together. They yawn. My stomach hurts more. I am exhausted by three thirty.

After school Karin takes me on the school's four wheeler up on the shoulders of Rocky, a blunt-topped tundra mountain. From there we can see the surrounding tundra, the river snaking into the mountains and the ring of snowy peaks, wispy in the strong ocean breeze. The mountains ring the three sides of the delta valley like white sentries.

Two shots ring out shattering the silence. Below in the bay amid the ice floes is a boat with seal hunters. It is too far away to see if they got a seal. The boat seems stuck in the ice. We learn later that it was indeed stuck and they had to wait for low tide to get unstuck. The seal sank. No luck that day.

This year has been an unusually dry warm winter. The bay is open, ice rimmed and treacherous. This year has been a hard year with little snow, warm temperatures, strong winds and the fishing has been bad. The villagers are subsistence livers. Seal hunting has been tough. The seals, though, have fed well and are fat and heavy. The Yup'ik use guns to shoot them and harpoons to bring them to the boat. Many of the seals have sunk before they can be hauled to the boat.

Breakfast next morning is with the kids. Cereal, peanut butter on large, unlevened crackers, and apple juice. None of the children eats the cereal, only the juice and peanut butter slathered on the crackers. A monster can of peanut butter is newly opened. By that afternoon it is nearly gone.

The seventh and eighth graders are uncomfortable, tired from staying up too late and I feel I am pulling hen's teeth to get a response. We struggle through story structure and group story building. At the end of class I say to their teacher that I'm not sure this group will do it. Maybe they'd rather not. It doesn't seem worth the struggle. I think to myself, that if the rest of the classes are this tough, I've come a long way to do next to nothing.

Failure is a hard word to swallow. My throat is sore and my face hurts. I think I'm coming down with something.

The next class is the seniors. They're miles different. For one thing, they're older and more poised. The girls are silent, except for the two students who excel, but they participate in their silence. I decide to take the easy route. I ask the silent girls for their input, take their silence as acquiescence and move on with the two who will speak out and are clearly interested. They choose a female protagonist with an English first name and a Yup'ik last name.

The two of them readily put together characters, their situation, opponents, disasters and begin. It is a complete joy to work with them. The girl has a certain grace with words. At the end of class she says she was surprised how easy it was to actually begin the story and to see the outlines of it. She says she wants now to talk with her grandmother to learn the old stories and write them down. This girl is tall for a Yup'ik and has a long, narrow face with soft, almost sad eyes. She hopes to go to college.

Next the 1st through 3rd graders. I brought a little rubber lizard for each of them Stella the Stargazer has a pet lizard, Fluffy, and I figured, abstracts being tough at that age, the little kids will relate to a "pet" storytelling better. I pass out the lizards and within moments realize it was a huge mistake. Rubber lizards are careening overhead, climbing up my arms, down my legs, over the children. They love them.

Paul, their teacher, sees my wild eyes. He tells the children to hold their lizards tight in their hands to keep them safe. They do it. The room is quiet, lizards out of sight. I learn from him. I tell a story about the Fluffy the lizard. Paul is laughing. The children are delighted. They are going to draw pictures of their lizards for me and name them.

Oxenia is a round-faced girl with thick, dark hair parted in the middle that falls straight to the bottom of her ears in two curved wings. Her lips are well-defined, plump, the upper one peaked, like the twin peaks that stand guard north of the town. She has a smile that bursts over her face. Oxenia's picture of a lizard is a muddle of colors, the shapes are poor, organization lacking, but she effectively settles a fight by moving between Joe and Marielle, blocking their anger, all while showing me her picture. It takes a social worker two years to learn these people skills.

Into the 4th through 6th grade room where the kids are reading, lying about on cushions on the floor or sitting at desks, or propped against the wall. They put away their books and we talk about story...what makes a story, how it's constructed, how many pages, etc. They are interested. We talk about characters, situations, descriptions, opponents, goals, disasters. My nose is running like a faucet, but I'm happy. They're on board.

There's a big debate over male or female focal character. Boys easily win, but the girls speak up and add a girl character for two main characters with Yup'ik names: a boy training for the Olympics, a girl who sensibly tells him to stay home, but he goes out anyway. They want an avalanche for the disaster. Class is lively. They are amazed at how quickly we can put together a story. We won't make the ending while I'm there. They are each to work out the ending they like best. They're happy. I'm exhausted.

At the potluck that night the police chief settles into a metal folding chair next to me. I comment on the number of people there who were aunts, uncles, nieces, cousins. "Of course," he says. "Everyone pretty nearly is family. If a young person marries someone from another village, they are lost to the family. So, maybe a second cousin in the village is better. Family is important."

There is little evidence of the scourge of alcohol and drugs in the adults I saw, but the Chief of Police says suicide and alcohol are terrible problems in the village. Even he, he says, drinks too much on occasion, although less now. (The village is dry, but alcohol seeps in through cracks in the system and appears to be tolerated within certain limits.)

Most of the people in the village stay in the village. It is not shrinking, but staying about the same size, year after year. They live on seal, salmon, reindeer, caribou, deer and berries gathered on the tundra. Salmon are supremely important to the people. Every spring when the salmon run, the town packs up and heads upriver to fish camp where they catch and dry salmon for winter. If there is sufficient snow and rain, meat and berries come in plenty. This year there are worry lines in their faces at the potluck. The snowfall has been too low.

There is a strict order in the food line. Elders go first, then guests, then men, then women, finally children. I worry the children will be left hungry, but the loaves and fishes prevail and somehow everyone gets something to eat. Not much, but something.

The people want the old ways preserved. The young are taught the dances both at home and at school. They are willing to dance for me and once over their self-consciousness, throw themselves into it. The songs and dances are part of a long oral tradition handed down. Although the children of the Kuskokwim District are taught in Yup'ik until third grade, they are taught in English after that, so they will have their mother tongue as well as English.

I leave Wednesday afternoon after final story writing sessions with each class. Amazingly, even the seventh and eighth graders come to life. Several of the little kids hug me goodbye. They are wonderful kids. I was there barely two full days, forty eight hours, and in that time they have stolen my heart.