Rural Sexual Abuse - Anchorage Daily News coverage v. Tony Hopfinger's Newsweek coverage

The Anchorage Daily News had a front page story today on sexual abuse in rural Alaska. It gives no context at all. If I were relatively new to Alaska, or just uninformed about rural Alaska, I might conclude, from this story, that Alaska Natives are nothing but sex abusers. We get statements, undoubtedly true, but without context, such as:

Ground zero is the Bethel region, where troopers investigated 17 percent of the cases, more than any other post in the state, TePas said.

"We have an epidemic," she said. "It's a statewide epidemic, but the epicenter, our data shows, is the Bethel region."

The early figures paint a disturbing picture of rapes and other sexual violence against adults and children in Western Alaska, where the population is largely Alaska Native and villages are often loose extensions of family.

In all the 989 cases, family members and friends sexually abuse or assault each other in more than 90 percent of the incidents, she said.

While the ADN chose to run a Tundra Drums piece which just gives statistics but no discussion of the context on today's first page, to my knowledge, they have not given any coverage to Alaska writer Tony Hopfinger's in depth Newsweek article mentioned last week by Alaskan Abroad on the multi-million dollar settlement of sexual abuse cases by the Roman Catholic Priests in the Yupik community of St. Michael. [January 23: They did run a good piece on the settlement in November by Lisa Demer.]

I can't give you a precise account of why the sexual abuse levels are so high in Western Alaska. There are probably multiple causes. Alaska Natives being inherently evil is NOT one of them. Tony's other article on Wales that I mentioned in two previous posts gives a lot of context into why a young man in that community might commit suicide. All the issues he raises in that article might help us understand what is happening in Western Alaska. Alcohol is clearly a factor. But the St. Michael's article also suggests that perhaps the church[es] helped cause some of the sexual abuse problems in these villages. In St. Michael's the abuse, according to the article, was extensive - one specific priest had about 60 victims. We know that people who were abused are more likely than others to become abusers, though, as this article from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service suggests, it is not inevitable and it is far more complex than a simple correlation.

It would be nice to see the ADN do a more careful job of reporting about rural Alaska. The Tundra Drums, according to the Alaska Newspapers, Inc website,

is an independent newspaper dedicated to being the definitive informational medium for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and is published weekly by Alaska Newspapers, Inc.

Its audience is in rural Alaska. They have a better understanding of the context than people in Anchorage and other places in Alaska where the ADN is read. You can't just take such an article and drop it onto the front page without some background.

It is important that the problems of rural Alaska be covered by the ADN, but raw data without context may do more harm to urban-rural understanding than no coverage at all.

To Live or Die in Wales 2

Two things have happened since I posted on Tony Hopfinger's story in The Walrus.
First, The Walrus has now posted the whole story, so my issues about getting permission from an appropriate group of elders is moot. The story is now available for all to read at the link above.

Second, I got an email today from an elder in Wales who I had asked if it was ok to post the article. He said he wouldn't know how to go about consulting the elders on this (modestly not including himself in that group) - to explain to them what a blog is and how everyone in the world can read it and give them the story. I'm going to take the liberty here and quote a bit of what he said in the email.

I imagine that in the end they would say in our language "azukiaq taimanapiruaq", meaning what a tragedy it was what happened. They, perhaps would be looking for the moral of the story or how it can help young people today, much in the way many traditional stories were structured, as an educational device. I, myself, would urge you to post the whole article on your blog spot. Mike's story, our story, needs to be told and spread so others begin to understand our lives, just as we, here need to read stories of others elsewhere and how they live.

I would note (and say thanks) that Jeremy commented on the first post:

The ethical questions you raise seem interesting, but trivial in our present context. News people shoot video and edit to create their own message. Advocacy journalists, such as Rupert Murdoch having no scruples feel free to twist the story to fit a predetermined message. Swift Boat advocacy groups change the course of history using techniques that would put Goebbles to shame.

I don't dispute that the issues Jeremy raises are significant and affect a lot more people than how journalists write about Alaska Native communities. But Jeremy's criticism could be made about nearly every post on every blog - there are more important issues to write about. And I have, in other posts written more directly to some of the issues he thinks are more important.

But I would dispute that this is trivial. Everything is connected. It doesn't matter at what point people become aware of their biases and the negative effects they can have on others. Once they have this awareness in one area, it can be applied in another area. Jeremy is concerned with the sort of intentional manipulation of information that George Orwell warned against long ago in the book 1984 and "The Politics of the English Language".



I think that if someone reads my post and Tony's article and reexamines unquestioned beliefs they have about rural Alaska, then they might also be more ready to question what they hear on any of Rupert Murdoch's media outlets. Understanding doesn't always come in a direct, linear path. Unexpected insights here, affect thinking there. One person can understand the implications of one story, someone else the implications of another story.

I also think in Jeremy's comments there is an understandable concern about the erosions of free press rights of journalists and that he can see me adding a level of permission needed to publish or broadcast something. There is a difference though between asking permission of those who normally have little or no power to protect themselves (what I was doing) and asking permission of George W. Bush before you write about the Iraq war.

The seemingly small courtesy of asking permission for something for which you legally do not need permission can go a long way. It shows respect - and respect for others is one of the most powerful ways to establish meaningful communication and peace among human beings.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN WALES, ALASKA and The Ethics of Outsiders Writing about Rural Alaska

TO LIVE AND DIE IN WALES, ALASKA

A young man tries to make his way in a village still reeling from the flu of 1918
by Tony Hopfinger

Synopsis - Anchorage freelance writer, Tony Hopfinger, published an article about a young man whom he befriended over a number of visits to Wales, Alaska. The young man later committed suicide. This post calls attention to this important piece published in an award winning Canadian journal, The Walrus, in November 2007. It also delves into the ethics of 'outsiders' (non-Natives and/or non-villagers) writing about the problems of a particular village. I've divided this into five parts: The Article, Background to this Post, The Ethics of Outsiders Writing about Rural Alaska, a Conclusion of sorts, and Final Notes


The Article
In this article, Tony Hopfinger tries to understand the suicide of Mike Weyapuk by looking at the what life was like for Mike. He reviews Mike's family situation, issues of isolation and lack of employment and their effects on the people in this village of 150 or so an hour flight (about $350 r/t) from Nome. He also goes back to the 1918 influenza epidemic that nearly wiped out this once major village and forever changed it. His article doesn't look for or name villains or angels, but tells a very matter of fact tale of what he thinks led to Mike shooting himself up on the hill. It begins

For years Mike Weyapuk sat on his bunk, cradling his sunburst Gibson guitar. He stared out at the frozen Bering Strait and dreamed of the day he would leave his village to start a metal band. He thought about moving to Seattle or Chicago, but nowhere too far south; he’d heard about an Eskimo who went to Arizona and almost melted. When he arrived in the big city and stepped onstage, he would play fast and hard and angry and sad, the history of his people aching in every power chord.

You can read the first page of the article here. [It appears that The Walrus has now made the whole story available at this link, which moots my issues at the end of the post.]


Background to this post

• Anyone who lives in Alaska knows about stereotyping and condescension. Once you get off the plane in the Lower 48, when people find out you're from Alaska they want to know about living in a dark icebox all year. You don't live in an igloo do you? Even college educated people ask stupid questions about Alaska, and have the nerve to think we're the ignorant ones. So we know what it is like for others to have totally inaccurate stories about us. Yet that doesn't stop urban (yes, I know New Yorkers might find it amusing for someone living in a place with a population of 270,000 to call that urban) Alaskans from similarly stereotyping rural Alaska.
• I lived in Thailand for three years, long ago. In a small provincial capital where my Thai was better than their English. I learned to see what is invisible to the tourist - the ties of friendship and loyalty, the bonds to the land and to ancestors, how Buddhism has been internalized by the Thais who are more or less successful in their acting out its wisdoms, and how my own society looks from those eyes. This experience has helped me see these things in rural Alaska too.
• I've read Harold Napoleon's book Yuuyaraq (it's the 11th book, at the bottom of the table in the link) and even talked with Harold. It's hard to describe the book without reinforcing all the worst stereotypes non-Natives have about Alaska Natives. But actually reading his story has a profound effect on most people I've met who've read it.

Flash forward to more recent background.

• Last July my wife and I were invited by Joe and Catherine Senungetuk to visit Wales, Alaska where he grew up for a writing workshop. I've posted about that trip. But there was a lot I didn't post. Our workshop participants were half visitors from outside of Wales and half local Wales residents. As we talked about our writing we told stories about our lives and in some cases the stories were not happy ones. But there was an understanding that what was said at the workshop did not get shared. The audio recorders were shut down.
• While I was at the corruption trials this summer and fall I ran into Tony Hopfinger whom I hadn't seen for few years. He's an Alaska freelance writer, formerly a newspaper reporter, and his work has appeared in Newsweek, The Seattle Times, Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. He'd seen my blog posts on Wales in the summer and told me about this article he wrote. How he was a little nervous and wanted to get to Wales before it came out in print. He'd spent a lot of time visiting Wales and Mike Weyapuk in particular. He felt he had an obligation to tell Mike's story, but knew some people in Wales would be upset. Tony gave me a copy of the article when it came out in a Canadian literary journal, The Walrus.

The Ethics of Outsiders Writing about Rural Alaska
An aside on language first. In cross-cultural discussions, it's important to clarify our words. I don't talk about 'white' writers here, because the issue is not restricted simply to 'whites.' It is really about non-Natives. But what about non-Natives who grew up in rural Alaska, like Seth Kantner who not only grew up in rural Alaska, but did so living a subsistence lifestyle using traditional tools? His book Ordinary Wolves [I didn't like any of the links I saw, and even this NPR piece starts out with the stereotypical "Ooooh eeeee. He grew up in a half buried arctic igloo made of sod. He had no electricity, no plumbing..." but you get to hear Kantner himself] writes about that life and about changes in rural Alaska. So, 'outsider', seems an appropriate term. I mean it to include people who have a different way of seeing the world from people who grew up in rural Alaska. It includes those who live in rural Alaska temporarily as government officials, teachers, medical personnel - people who get an intimate glimpse of rural Alaska life through their jobs, but with the glasses of an Outsider. Which is not to say some can't cross the line.

I also don't intend to use the term Alaska Native as though there were a single Alaska Native culture. There are many different Alaska Native languages, and since the article is focused on the village of Wales, I'm basically writing about their Inuit culture. There are many common issues that rural - particularly off road - villages have, even if they are from different language groups.



What are the ethical issues that come up when outsiders write about Alaska Natives?

1. They write their own preconceived stories about rural Alaska instead of the stories of actual rural Alaskans. When they see things, they interpret them using their own cultural norms when they write, reinforcing the stereotypes outsiders have. It’s natural for people in new places to contrast them to what is familiar. But it isn’t usually accurate reporting. Often the outsider sees the tangible different negatives (honey buckets, small houses, dental problems), but can’t see the invisible positives (the intimate connection to the land, the personal generosity, the respect for elders.)

2. Even academics bring their cultural biases with them and see what they are looking for, interpreting behaviors and conditions in terms of what they would mean in Anchorage or Chicago, but not in terms of what they mean in Bethel or Wales.

In other cases, they gather stories from local informants and then write them up with their own names on them and for there own benefit - academic promotion and tenure, book contracts, etc. Or they gather statistics that support the decision that the government agency or corporation they work for wants made.

Alaska Natives are so tired of ‘experts’ stealing their stories or misinterpreting what they see, and bringing harm to the people they are researching, that the Alaska Federation of Natives developed Guidelines for Research. Those guidelines offer the following principles:

1. Advise Native people who are to be affected by the study of the purpose, goals and timeframe of the research, the data gathering techniques, the positive and negative implications and impacts of the research
2. Obtain informed consent of the appropriate governing body.
3. Fund the support of a Native Research Committee appointed by the local community to assess and monitor the research project and ensure compliance with the expressed wishes of Native people.
4. Protect the sacred knowledge and cultural/intellectual property of Native people.
5. Hire and train Native people to assist in the study.
6. Use Native languages whenever English is the second language.
7. Guarantee confidentiality of surveys and sensitive material.
8. Include Native viewpoints in the final study.
9. Acknowledge the contributions of Native resource people.
10. Inform the Native Research Committee in a summary and in nontechnical language of the major findings of the study.
11. Provide copies of the study to the local people.

3. Basic violations of confidences. Rural Alaska villages are small. You don’t need to name names for people to figure out who you might be talking about when you mention 'a woman with three kids who lives next to the washateria.' This issue of invading the privacy of individuals also extends to the whole community. Not wanting their less flattering stories (true or false) shared with the world isn’t a negative Alaska Native trait. Every self-respecting community is sensitive about what is said about them. Often people need to work through an issue on their own before they are ready to have it shared with the world.


Why should outsiders or others write about rural Alaska issues?

There are legitimate reasons to address real and deadly serious problems in rural Alaska. There is no question that rural Alaska faces a myriad of problems, just as urban Alaska does. Is the role of the outside writer to ignore them and defer to locals to solve their own problems? This is a reasonable question to raise. Are people - particularly children - being seriously harmed while the people harming them are protected by some sort of cultural “it’s none of your business” card? Responding to this is complex. Some aspects to consider:

1. Outsiders carry significant responsibility for the problems in rural Alaska. Alaska Natives survived for at least 10,000 years without help from outsiders. They didn't come into Outsiders' territory, the Outsiders came to theirs. Thus outsiders have some responsibility for cleaning up their mess. But many problems exist because outsiders tried to fix what they considered 'problems' in the first place. So it has to be done differently this time.

Cultural destruction first by the Russians and then Americans is real. Much non-Native rhetoric about rural Alaska still echoes those 19th Century stories of bringing civilization to 'primitive' Native Americans. “We’re here to help you poor, not-as-enlightened-as-us, people by assimilating you into the American way of life.”

However, as in the Lower 48, people came into Alaska Native communities mainly to exploit natural resources (furs, gold, whales, timber, fish, oil) or to fulfill their own spiritual needs by converting them to various forms of Christianity. The imports - religion, disease, wooden houses (in the treeless tundra), school books written for Lower 48 white kids, guns - displaced the self sufficient traditional ways of life that had served Alaska Natives for 10,000 years. The imported wisdoms, housing, tools, and expectations didn’t improve Arctic survival skills, but they did require a commodity hard to find in the tundra - cash.

Killing off the carriers of the oral traditions and skills, through diseases and Western schools where Native languages were forbidden, pushed many Alaska Natives into a no-man’s land in between cultures. Living the old ways was no longer possible, but neither were the new ones. While people in Wales have electricity, potato chips, and Pepsi, they still have to haul water from outside of town and they carry their toilet waste out in ‘honey’ buckets.

All this leaves people in the total cultural and personal disarray that Tony captures from his conversations with Mike. They need money to buy the products or a ticket to Nome, Anchorage, Seattle, that they are pressured to buy, but there are few decent cash paying jobs. Yet outsiders come to these villages and bemoan what they see as the terrible conditions and blame the residents for lacking motivation.


3. The issues are not unique to rural Alaska. Many village problems mirror the problems of rural America and urban America, but in those places they aren’t usually so publicly visible. Rural America is also losing its population to cities and can’t keep doctors and other professionals for long. In this context, Alaskan rural communities aren’t particularly inept as they are often portrayed.. Neither are alcohol, drugs, suicide, or teen pregnancy unique to rural Alaska. Yet much coverage of rural Alaska makes it sound like Alaska Natives are singularly incapable.

Rural Alaska does have a level of isolation not experienced elsewhere in the US where every town at least is connected to the road system. Wales, for example, is about an hour away from Nome by small plane - I think it cost us about $350 round-trip. I don’t recall any of the roads being paved and they don’t go far out of town. Most of the people in town are related. There’s a fancy school building with Outside teachers (which is not to judge them, I was an Outside teacher in rural Thailand), alcohol is illegal, but is available at tremendous markups. People still do hunt and fish and gather local greens and berries for a good part of their food. Subsistence has been made easier with motors and guns, but harder with restrictions on when and how things can be caught. And the introduction of manufactured goods requires cash that can't be hunted or gathered. Health care beyond first aid is in Nome or Anchorage.


4. Difficulty of honestly addressing all this. There aren't many outside writers who have the experience and understanding to write well on this (at least based on what I've seen.) The imposed Western culture’s story says that these problems are the personal weakness of the individuals who aren’t taking responsibility. The story chides Alaska Natives for not appreciating all the wonderful things the missionaries, teachers, government agents, small businesses have brought them.

The traditional wisdom has been devastated. The Inuit and other Alaska Native equivalents of ‘libraries’ and ‘museums’ of traditional culture were ‘burned’ and ‘looted’ when the 1918 epidemics killed off the generations who would normally have passed that wisdom on. And the missionaries followed through by often banning Native ways like dancing, drumming, and speaking Native languages.

Today's village children are the first or second generation that does not speak the ancestral languages. Instead, they are sucked away from their parents and grandparents by schools, television, video games, music into the invading, dominant Western culture. Think about all the families in non-Native America who put their kids into private religious schools of various denominations to protect them from losing their family and cultural values in public schools. Most villagers don't have this option. Alaska Natives have to fight huge battles just to have their kids study their own languages in their local schools. Only a few have won this right. And these aren't immigrants. They don't have a home to go back to. They are home.

5. Individually, most Alaska Natives are not living in despair, but rather have found ways to navigate successfully between the two cultures. They are doing overtime duty with their Western world responsibilities and their Native world responsibilities.

6. . Collectively Alaska Natives through various organizations such as regional,
urban, and village corporations , the Alaska Native Professional Association, or the Alaska Federation of Natives have many initiatives to restore cultural identity and pride and develop skills to make Alaska Native village communities economically, socially, and culturally healthy. Despite the media exposure these organizations get, most non-Native Alaskans have no idea of who they are or what they do.

So, outsiders who get involved in all this ought to respect the people they are involved with. This may not always be easy. Their styles of doing things are different and this takes adjusting to. Instead many outsiders interpret "quietly thinking" as having nothing to say and they interrupt before a person is ready to speak. And Alaska Natives don’t speak in a single voice. They - surprise , surprise - don't know which path leads to the best future and they fear taking one that will cause harm. Just like everyone else.

7. There is a real clash between American rights to free speech that writers have as US citizens and the values of respect, discretion, and compassion. The free speech rights of Americans are also abridged at times. Anti-gay demonstrators have been banned from protesting too close at funerals for American military. Writers should recognize this same sort of right of Alaska Natives to have their private lives respected. Just because one has the legal right to do something doesn't mean they should do it.

8. Outside writers may shy away from these stories because they have seen others burned for raising thorny topics, or understand their own lack of background. It would be helpful for Alaska Native organizations to do more work to help train Outside writers about rural Alaska. The Alaska Humanities Forum's Rural-Urban Rose Exchange sends urban teachers and students for week long exchanges in rural Alaska as one way of raising their understanding of rural Alaska. But only a few get this experience. It would be good to include journalists.

So, do Outsiders have the right to talk about the issues of rural Alaska they have gained from the confidences of Alaska Natives?

My short answer is yes, but with conditions.

• They need to have the permission of the person who confided. And of the other people who are brought into the limelight by their writing. Getting the permission of a whole community is not as easy. I don’t think one person can make that decision.

• If they are doing it for the right reason, and

• If they know what they are doing.

There are problems with my criteria. Most people assume they know what they are doing and that their motives are pure. Even when they aren’t. The AFN Guidelines for Research are more specific and thus easier to measure against.

If we look at the AFN research guidelines, I would say that numbers 1, 3, 5, and 10 tend to be more appropriate to formal research projects. The others, though, are also appropriate for outside writers coming into Native communities. Numbers 2, 4, and 7, and 9 all would be covered when getting consent. If consent isn't given in advance, then 11 - sharing the findings - would be necessary to get permission at the end.

Having talked at length about this with Tony, I believe that

• He had Mike’s permission.
• His intentions are sincere,
• And he mostly knows what he’s doing.

Mike Weyapuk talked to Tony knowing Tony was a writer. But simply introducing yourself as a writer isn't enough. Writers need to make clear the intention to write a story and that what the other person says may appear in print. It appears Mike understood this and saw Tony as his way to make a mark in the world, to not live his life in vain. Tony certainly believes that Mike would strongly support his decision to publish this story.

Tony is an outside writer who listened for Mike's story instead of imposing his own story on what he wrote. He wrote this to tell Mike’s story, to give his life a meaning beyond the small village of Wales. But I also read in Tony’s story a great frustration and anger at the destructive influence of the West on the people in this westernmost point of the North American continent and a desire to help other outsiders get past their stereotypes about rural Alaska.

He doesn’t blame any individuals for what happened to Mike, but rather helps readers feel and begin to grasp the unintended devastating consequences of Western culture’s imposition on rural Alaska. It’s a story that Harold Napoleon tells explicitly and Seth Kantner tells less directly. Tony tells it by painting the picture of one, bright young man, trapped in this cultural crevasse. The story isn't one way. Tony also reveals his own private struggle with depression. This self revelation, fits well in the context of the story, but also shows that Tony too is willing to expose his own vulnerable side.

While Tony probably had Mike’s approval for this story, he didn’t have the community approval. To tell Mike’s story, Tony, had to also include parts of other people’s stories. Ideally, Tony, using my criteria, should have gotten the approval of the respected elders of Wales. [I should make it very clear that my criteria are way above any journalistic standards I've ever seen, and what Tony did in all this far exceeded any journalistic standards I've ever seen. Discussing all this in the context of a piece that does it right, seems much better than in the context of one that does it wrong.] Having spent several days in a writing workshop with some of those elders in July myself, I believe Tony might well have gotten that approval. I think Tony knows this. When we first talked about this article (he told me about it because he'd seen my posts on Wales) he was planning on going to Wales to share the story with people before it was published. But as I understand it, he never worked out time or financing to do that. The AFN standards don't require approval by the community leaders of the final product, but it does require permission to do the research at the beginning. [But those are research, not journalistic standards.]

I think Tony’s intent is good. He didn’t write this for money. What little The Walrus paid him will never cover his time and expenses over five years of writing this. He worked hard to see Wales through Mike’s eyes, not his own. He brings the context of Wales’ history to bear on this story. His writing expresses not only Mike’s pain, but Tony’s too, and his hope that this story will help nudge, however slightly, the way urban Alaskans think about rural Alaskans.

One problem is that most Alaskans don’t know Tony's article even exists. A Barnes and Noble staffer told me they get three copies of each edition of The Walrus, but had none when I called this week. The UAA library has a copy. The Walrus website only lets you link to the first page or so of the article. I think it’s an important article, but I also think that any article like this one needs to be read in the context of the question I’ve raised - how can outsiders ethically write about Alaska Native villages?

One path through many cross cultural ethical dilemmas is to recognize that first, we are all human beings. Thus non-Native people should first behave as human beings with human beings, rather than dwell on “I’m White (Asian, Black) and you are Native." (There is also the pesky fact that many so called Alaska Natives have a parent or grandparent who is non-Native. Why should someone with a non-Native father and a Native mother automatically be labeled Native rather than non-Native?)

So first we are human beings working with other human beings. Those human beings have cultural variations that add to the richness of human experience. Just like we have learned to cherish cultural variations in food and music we can learn to appreciate cultural variations in other areas. I think Tony took this approach. He and Mike, from one perspective, were two young men who had a number of things in common - like electric guitars - about which they talked and on which they based a friendship.

For non-Native Outsiders going into Native communities, I think the most appropriate role is to listen. They should do their homework. Read what Alaska Natives have written. Attend the AFN annual conferences. Seek assistance from Alaska Native organizations. They need to prove to their hosts their recognition of their own ignorance of local ways and their intention to do no harm.

To the extent outsiders have access to resources that might be useful to rural Alaskans, they should offer them for inspection. The decision whether and how to use them belongs with the village residents themselves. This is an approach I think the dominant American culture might use around the world. Our modern technology is easy to see. But the culture of other peoples is like an iceberg - only the tip is visible. Rural Alaskan culture is more vulnerable than most overseas cultures which have sufficient population, territorial sovereignty, and thriving cultural institutions. But indigenous peoples around the world are often even more vulnerable than Alaska Native cultures.

[The rest is now moot, since the link to the Walrus now gives you access to the whole article.]

Final Note
While writing this, I thought it would be neat to be able to provide access to the whole article since it isn't easy to get. The managing editor of The Walrus said it would be fine if Tony, the author, approved. Tony has approved, but we haven't worked out the best way to do this. (And he asked me to mention that he got partial funding for this project through an artist grant he received from the Rasmuson Foundation. Tony also asked I include his email address so readers could contact him.)
But as I revised this post, I realized that I personally feel the need to get some sort of approval for this from the people of Wales. I will try to do that, and if that approval comes, I'll find a way to make the article accessible. Meanwhile you can read the first page of the article here. Since this is already publicly available I don't think I'm violating any obligation to the people of Wales.

I realize that some people will think I'm going way overboard in my caution and others will think I've violated the confidentiality of people in Wales by calling attention to this article. I'm making the call that this is an important article, written for the right reasons, and that overall, I estimate that its effect will be positive. Harold Napoleon also took a lot of heat for his article too. But I also respect the people of Wales and want to include them in the decision to make the whole article itself available.

(And if anyone read all the way to here, send me an email or leave a comment.)

Wales 9 - A Sunny Stop in Nome

The Bering Air van took us downtown (we walked back later for our flight, about 30 minutes) and the sun was shining bright and the beach is just behind the buildings on the main street. I slipped over the rocks protecting town from the ocean and stretched out in the warm (oh, high 60s, low 70s I'd guess) sun. The water was sparkling. I wondered whether my trunks were in my day pack. They were. How often are you at the beach near the Arctic Cirle on a warm day with the water so inviting? I slipped into my trunks and went to test the water. It really wasn't all that cold - it's felt colder in LA - but the surf wasn't good enough to tempt me to go in further than my knees.







Then we walked through downtown with views of the beach to our right. Stopped in the library to check e-mail.






Then continued til we were out of town










On the way back, I took these pictures of houses on the main street that face toward the beach - and the sun that day.

Wales 8 - Back to Nome

Lena helped get people's luggage to the airport, but most of us just walked the 15 minutes to the airport. After just a few days, it was hard to say good bye to the people we came to know.







But we were glad the ceiling was high enough that the plane was able to come in and the flight back was beautiful.

Wales 8 - Reindeer Corral Walk

Sunday while dinner was being prepared, we managed to get almost everyone togeter for a group picture on the steps to the Community Center. You can see how low the clouds were. Planes weren't flying in that day.




Sunday afternoon we had done some more writing exercises and worked on small arty notebooks we learned to 'bind' just by cutting a little and rolling some of the paper. Very clever, we couldn't figure out how they had been made until they showed us. And Alice had brought in this shell from the beach.





After dinner, Joan and I walked to a lagoon to see the reindeer corral. It was an almost rainy evening, with a brisk wind. We took a left on the dirt road at the airport and walked through the beautiful marshy landscape with plovers, dunlins (picture), ravens, and various other unidentified birds.















Finally we got to the reindeer corral and the lagoon. The reindeer were out somewhere eating. As I understood it, they only come here when necessary - like to harvest antlers.






On the way back we could hear the helicopter, but only see it now and again in the fog. It was taken boxes in the net up onto the hillside for the seismic team's research. I asked the pilot the next day if he could see. He said he only needed to see down, that seeing straight ahead was overrated. They weren't taking the equipment far up the hill from road where we were walking.


I couldn't help wondering how much it costs to rent a helicopter and how much it would cost to hire some local folks, where employment is scarce, to take it out on their four wheelers and then lug it the quarter or half mile further up the hill.





And when we got back they were still singing hymns in the Community Center.

The next day, Monday, July 23 - see I'm getting further and further behind here - we flew back to Nome and spent a gorgeous afternoon there. I'll post those pics tomorrow I hope.

Wales 7 - Writing Workshop

The ostensible purpose of the trip to Wales was the Writing Workshop. I'd never been to one before and didn't know what to expect. We had a bona fide writer leading the workshop. Actually, someone who has extensive experience in teaching writing - Kim Stafford director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College..


I was pleasantly surprised. Starting in Nome, where we spent the first night because Wales was fogged in, we regularly did little writing exercises. Our first exercise was to "take a line for a walk." After about five minutes or writing we stopped, volunteers read what they wrote, then we were supposed to pick a line we really liked in what we wrote, and start from there.

We got another assignment to just write a run-on sentence - we weren't to worry about proper grammar or anything like that, just keep writig your thought.


Saturday, in Wales, when we had all the participants, we did an assignment on "What makes me want to live?" I'm attaching a page Kim printed out with one or two lines from most of the participants. These are pretty short and anonymous and they've been printed and passed around so I don't think I'm betraying any confidences by posting this here. I'd love to put up a couple of the pieces that were printed in the booklet at the end of the workshop. Even though people picked what they wanted in there, and it is pretty public by virtue of being in the booklet, I don't have anyone's permission to put their stuff up here, so I'll pass on that.



I've never really written in a group before, where we shared our writing with others as we wrote and it was an interesting and useful experience. I explored ideas I wouldn't have come up with on my own. I also got a better focus on things I sort of knew. Since this was my first and only such workshop, I don't have much experience to base recommendations for such things on. Things I know contributed were: 1) an experienced, articulate, thoughtful facilitator, 2) interesting and diverse participants who brought a lot of different perspectives and ideas to the table, and 3) being in a pretty isolated place. There was only nature and nice people to distract us pretty much.

Oh yes, I would also add that many of the people in the group identify themselves as artists rather than writers, so some of the participants led art exercises. We did watercolors one afternoon and made little books out of beautiful pieces of paper. All - the writing, the watercolors, the bookmaking - were incorporated in the booklets Kim had published on his new printer that he'd carefully carried all the way to Wales.

Wales 6

I'm still trying to catch up with the reports of the Wales/Nome trip. Last Saturday, while we were walking, Tony went out and caught a salmon for dinner.








Here's the group filling their plates. Catherine had shipped in a lot of food and we had a nice mix of local and outside food for our meals.




Then the drumming practice began. The Kinggikmiut Festival will bring drummers from different villages to Wales later this year. Writing workshop participants were proud of the young drummers and dancers who were maintaining the local traditions.









One former Wales resident, who is now an engineer in New York State, was visiting and getting video of the drumming and dancing.











They told us the drummers could make the sun shine, and the only time we saw the sun in Wales was that evening toward the end of the drumming.




And I couldn't help notice the back of this sweatshirt from one of Wales' residents who had on a World Eskimo - Indian Olympics sweatshirt.

Wales 5

Joan and I took a walk on Saturday afternoon along the beach to see the sculpture on the hill. There were several nets drying on the beach.













Here I'm starting up the hill at the end of the beach looking north, we can see the south end of Wales.







The hillside is lushly covered with green stuff.





Here, again, looking north from the hillside we can see the village of Wales from the south. The sculpture was created by Joe Senungetuk, the organizer of the workshop, in memory of his brother Skip. He worked on this with sculptor David Barr from Michigan. Barr's website has a little more on the sculpture:

Arctic Arc consists of two sculpture installations at sites on the Bering Sea (Naukan, East Russia and Wales, Alaska) which are sites of the first human migrations into North America. The sculptures are a peaceful symbol for a border of international tension.

This is the inscription.



A tractor slowly disappearing on the beach.











On the way back we saw a snow bunting, a bird I hadn't ever seen before.

Wales 3

On Friday afternoon (still our first day in Wales) we did some writing exercises. Then we broke for dinner. Tony and his wife Joanne prepared reindeer in the kitchen. I'm not going to talk a lot about our Wales hosts and the other workshop participants because in the writing workshop they talked about themselves and the village of Wales, and while they didn't say anything terribly sensitive, there was an agreement that things we talked about are confidential, and it's hard for me to separate out what they might not want shared from what they wouldn't care about. However, we did 'publish' a small book with highlights of what people wrote and that I can share as i go along.





In addition to the reindeer meat, we got to taste walrus flippers cooked in seal oil and locally picked greens also preserved in seal oil While the reindeer was definitely a more familiar type food, the walrus and greens weren't bad.





Here's everythig ready to eat.







Joan and I both enjoyed being right on the beach. I think this was an after dinner walk.





There are no trees anywhere around, but there is lots of firewood in the form of driftwood on the beach (see Wales 1 pix) and lots of interesting other things like these dead starfish.














That evening the community center was busy with bingo. There is electricity, though the experimental windmills weren't on while we were there. They are made, I was told, in Kotzebue, a little further north, and when they first tried them the wind was so strong it broke the windmill. There are very harsh winds here.



This picture was from the plane when we flew in.

Wales 2

That first day in Wales - Friday - after helping Alice get her tent up, we had a late lunch. Here you can see Winton (from Wales) and Eli (from Anchorage.) Eli was the pool manager at the University for years and is originally from Germany. She is now a sculptor and has an outdoor 'studio' along the beach somewhere in Anchorage where she builds natural, temporary sculpture in the manner somewhat of Andy Goldsworthy. And just a part of Barbara's face. She's a writer from New Jersey who has been a museum curator and has done extensive work with Alaska Native art and has spent a great deal of time in Alaska. There were so many interesting people.





And here Joe's wife Catherine is talking to Lena. Both Lena and Winton were important participants in the writing workshop. Both have lived in Wales their whole lives and know so much about the history, the natural world, and the social world of Wales.

















There was a picture earlier of Marie on her four wheeler going out to get water. Well, in Wales they still use honey buckets. There's a white bucket with a plastic garbage back in the 'toilet' on the right. When this gets filled, someone has to take it out and dump it.



There are little honey bucket stations all around town. Here is someone coming back from dumping. Think about it. Alaska has a Permanent Fund of savings from oil income (and more recently investments on that income) of $40 billion. This fund pays annual dividends to all the citizens of Alaska. Last year it was around $1000 per person. And yet we have people living in villages that still don't have running water and decent sewage systems.

I'll try to get a little more up each day. My mom and daughter are both here visiting. Yesterday we had a triple birthday party - my daughter, me, and a friend, Alex - and we've got lots to do so I can't do too much at once.

Most of the pictures can be enlarged somewhat by clicking on them.