At Remote Eskimo School, Yearning for the Lower 48 (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

At Remote Eskimo School, Yearning for the Lower 48

Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News
February 24, 2005
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0224_050224_tununak.html

Perched on a barren Alaskan coast, the village of Tununak receives
little shelter from the cruel winds of the Bering Sea. A storm last
year wiped out its community center.

Yet it is perhaps the mercurial winds of globalization that are leaving
the greatest imprint on this remote Yupik Eskimo village, population
350.

Like hundreds of other indigenous settlements throughout Alaska—and
thousands more throughout the world—Tununak finds itself clinging to
the last vestiges of its native heritage against the onslaught of
Western-style modernity.

The older people in Tununak complain that their native culture has moved
to the brink of extinction. Listening to the younger generation, which
is tied to the outside world through the Internet and satellite
television, it sounds like the culture has already gone off the edge.

"This place is dead," said Aaron Link, who is 16 years old. "There is
nothing to do here. We would like to make new friends, meet new people

 be part of the rest of the world."

To that end, Link and his fellow high school-age students from Tununak's
Paul T. Albert Memorial School are raising money for a future trip to
the lower 48, as Alaskans refer to the continuous United States.

Their plan is not to travel as cultural ambassadors to promote their
traditional way of life. Instead, they are going simply to discover the
outside world—a world they have only seen on television but one in which
they see their own future.

Cut Off

The Yupik are a group of Eskimo people. Some 20,000 Yupik people live on
the southwest coast of Alaska. Situated on Nelson Island, Tununak, which
means "back of the river," sits near the Tununak River and the Bering
Sea.

Native Americans settled in the village as early as 6,000 B.C. Over the
millennia, the village population rose and fell as Eskimo warfare raged
in the area.

Today residents speak facetiously about "downtown" and "uptown" in the
collection of modest houses that make up the village. In addition to
the school (the largest employer), there is a medical clinic (without a
registered nurse) and a general store. The store now has an Internet
connection through which customers can order food online from Bethel,
120 miles (190 kilometers) away.

The one road that cuts through the village is riddled with potholes, but
fixing it is hardly a priority, since only one resident has a car. There
is no road out of Tununak, which is accessible only by small airplane
and when the weather permits.

Instead, the primary mode of transportation is snowmobile. During the
six or more months out of the year when Tununak is covered in snow, the
frozen river serves as the main thoroughfare.

The residents, however, revere the stark landscape of rolling hills and
cragged shoreline.

"This is God's country," said Victor Kanrilak, a community advocate and
counselor at the school.

Tununak is still a subsistence community, with residents relying on
hunting and fishing for their survival. The fishing is done in the
summertime, and the catch includes salmon, blackfish, halibut, herring,
and trout. In 1969 musk oxen wer introduced on the island. Today there
are 300 to 400 oxen, and hunters are allowed to kill 30 per year.

"Village English"

A future of subsistence hunting hardly appeals to the students at Paul
T. Albert Memorial. But getting out of the village—and finding a job—is
an uphill climb. In the last ten years the school has only graduated one
male student. Most students who try for college do not succeed.

Language is one of the main obstacles.

Students begin their studies in the Yupik language then switch to
English in third grade. Most young people in the village become fluent
in neither Yupik nor English, putting them at a big disadvantage when
it comes to taking statewide tests.

"The kids speak a sort of 'village English,'" Kanrilak said. "They'll
say things like, 'We'll check you.' That means they will come to see
you."

Kanrilak speaks to his eight children in both English and Yupik.
Although his children can understand Yup'ik, they respond in English.
Kanrilak says his generation was the last to be immersed in the Yupik
language.

"We have been told that our language is inferior and we should speak
English," he said. "Today we have to compete with television. A
minority of people in the village speak to their children in their
native language."

Experts say that language loss is perhaps the strongest indicator that a
culture is eroding. According to Wade Davis, a National Geographic
explorer-in-residence and an expert on struggling cultures, there were
6,000 languages spoken around the world 50 years ago. Today, fewer than
half of them are being taught to schoolchildren.

"Unless something changes, [these cultures] are already dead," Davis
said. "Language is not just vocabulary and grammar. It's the flash of
the human spirit, a vehicle through which the soul of a culture comes
to the material world, and every language is like an old-growth forest
of the mind."

Language is hardly the only cultural loss. Already gone, at least in
Tununak, are the spiritual traditions. In Yupik culture, nature is a
metaphysic—a source of abstract knowledge of cosmology and being.
According to Yupik tradition, shamans, dreamers who are receptive to
nature's voices, can travel freely in the unseen world. They return to
this world with new rituals.

But there are no more shamans in Tununak. A single Catholic church
serves the community.

Kanrilak, the community activist, says the cultural loss is tragic, but
inevitable.

"It happens to indigenous people, the lifestyle changes as they come in
contact with another prominent culture," he said. "A lot of the things
we used to do are memory now. Yes, I'm sad about it. But it's something
that had to happen.

"If I let my kids live in the past," he added, "they would be left
behind in this world we live in."

Telling Stories

Some parts of the Yupik culture are kept alive. Traditional dancing,
involving both young and old people, is popular, particularly at
special feasts.

Ladies, waving fans made from caribou neck hair and woven grass, dance
to traditional drumming with young boys who kneel and wave feather
fans. Most dances tell stories from long ago, many about hunting.

For their trip to the lower 48, the students plan to put together a
presentation, including dancing, on traditional Yupik culture.

"Our students would like to share their culture as an awareness of the
people who came before them," said Janet Hoppe, a teacher at the Paul
T. Albert Memorial School. Hoppe, who is from Wisconsin, is organizing
the trip.

But, Hoppe said, "the students are more interested in learning what the
world is like, how to interact with their peers across America and gain
confidence to step outside the village."

An itinerary has not been set, but Washington, D.C., would definitely be
one stop on a trek that could last several months. Hoppe is thinking
about taking a few students to the lower 48 on a nine-week "trial run"
this summer.

To Joanne Albert, a 15-year-old student, it doesn't matter where they
go. "I just want to see new faces," she said. "In the village we see
the same people all the time."

As one might expect, the dating scene in Tununak isn't exactly huge,
since most people are related to each other.

"The needs and aspirations of the youth are changing," Hoppe said. "The
elders would like the tradition of young people staying in the village,
taking care of the old, to continue. But the youth see a different
future. They want to go out of the community and join the modern
world."