Travelers' Tales Alaska (8 page)

To the south, across the two-mile mouth of Hotham Inlet,
Kotzebue crowds the exposed point of Baldwin Peninsula, a long, low finger extending into the shallow basin of Kotzebue Sound. Beyond rises the Seward Peninsula, a rumpled black shoulder jutting to a westward plunge into the Strait. To the east and north spread the Kobuk and Noatak rivers over dendritic deltas which narrow back to the mountains of their origins. When our landscape sweep returns to Kotzebue we spy a charcoal smudge slanting back through town from the prevailing sea breeze. In minutes, the slender column thickens into a dreary funeral plume, smothering signs of humanity's tentacle sprawl. Town, airport, roads—swallowed completely.

Somebody lit the dump again, people tell us when we return to civilization two days later. Happens a few times a year. The choking fog burns our eyes and throats whenever we step outside, but few seem concerned. The fire is a tradition on Fourth of July, attracting young people who stand at the brink of the Mephistophelean pit to laugh, gossip, and cough. This time, the fire department rushed out to douse the blaze, producing pallid cloud mountains until the next afternoon when the fire's noxious rebirth brings back the black.

Three thousand subsistence-dependent Inupiaq people comprise most of Kotzebue, sometimes called the “largest village” in Alaska. As in other northern cultures, no one seems to sleep during summer months, preparing or recovering from fish camp. Outboards and four-wheelers gutter and whine at all hours. Dogs roam the unpaved streets in shifts. Incessant light spills from the Arctic sun.

Our national park friend, Andy, is eager to show us around. When I show interest in local subsistence food, he applies a park interpreter's zeal to call several households. Phones ring unanswered. Finally he talks with Robert, the grown son of Jonas, an Inupiaq elder employed by the national parks as a “subsistence specialist.” Andy says that they still have bearded
seal left over from the winter, maybe muktuk, too. Both are considered delicacies, especially muktuk, the chewy strips of whale blubber prized by northern people for fat content. We order a pizza to be picked up in an hour and pedal single-speed bicycles across town for a taste of local fare.

Five-year-old Martha meets us at the Arctic entrance of a mobile home held together by odd-sized strips of plywood nailed to tar paper over metal sheathing. She pirouettes in the dust, her traditional
kuspuk
skirts flaring around her velveteen middle. Names and intentions exchanged, she pulls aside the Army surplus blanket hanging in the doorway like a magician revealing an astonishing climax. We are assured by her happy chatter, and duck into the small, dark space.

Two opposite windows in the dim interior let in enough light to illuminate curls of trash-fire smoke still clinging to us. Martha points to a man slumped achingly low on a couch in a corner of the L-shaped living room/kitchen and introduces him as her father, Robert. We dutifully identify ourselves. In a voice that booms with nervous authority, Andy explains that Jeannie and I are guests from Haines; he describes at length the location of our home in relation to Kotzebue. Robert rises from his sprawl to shake hands, then settles back to the couch where he refocuses on an ancient blaring television. Farrah Fawcett tugs a man's leather-jacketed elbow behind his back. “Do you watch
Charlie's Angels?
” Martha asks.

Undaunted, Andy explains the purpose of our visit. “Bearded seal or muktuk. I think I told you on the phone. You said you had some.”

“Ugruk.
Kitchen table,” Robert says to Farrah.

Martha seizes both of Jeannie's hands and demands to be swung around by the arms. Difficult to maneuver in the clutter, but anything to distract from our growing sense of trespass. Andy and I step back to the table where we see a blackened
shoulder roast on a platter. Next to it is a stack of small, colorful paper plates, the kind kids use at birthday parties. Unsure of our next move, we stare at the meat until a man emerges from a back room. He introduces himself as Jonas's uncle Ivan, visiting for a Friends convention in town. A spare, neat Inupiaq man in his sixties, Ivan brought his family five hours in an open boat down the Kobuk from Noorvik. He sits at the table, facing us. He is careful not to look at the ugruk.

For the lack of anything better to fill the long, stifling silences, Andy embarks on a rapid-fire series of questions. Whenever he pauses, I follow with further questions. Ivan's slow, careful answers turn terse, jerky, automatic. He often pauses and chuckles into his fist. The behavior prompts flights of fidgety interrogation until Ivan expels a long, pent-up breath and holds up both hands. “You white people,” he says, shaking his head, smiling at the floor. He lifts his eyes to find ours. “You think you can know everything by asking all these questions. Sometimes. You. Have. To. Listen.” He motions to the
ugruk
. “Here. Have some.”

Silence. Farrah grunts as she heaves another flack to the floor. Martha has led Jeannie outside to play. No one moves. My ears burn like candles, hot wax dripping on cheeks and neck. Then Andy: “How do you eat
ugruk?
”

Ivan bursts into loud laughter that forces him to tightly cross his arms over his chest. He wipes tears away with a folded white handkerchief as he gradually catches his breath. “How do you eat bacon or steak?” he returns. More laughter, this time shared by the three of us.

Smoke wisps trail Jonas as he pushes through the blanket doorway. Andy brightens at his friend's entrance, but the elder hardly notices us. Waiting outside is a vanload of Friends who need housing for the night. We shake hands and Jonas apologizes for being so busy, but the church conference demands his
full attention. Three elderly women duck through the entrance and cluster around the telephone. They make several calls, all in Inupiaq. Whoever is on the phone often breaks into giggles, then relays messages to the other women who titter excitedly.

Andy raises his voice above the commotion: “My friends from Haines are only here for the night. They are wondering if they can try some muktuk.”

A sudden hush amplifies the
oofs
and smacks of three beautiful TV crime-fighters taking out the last thugs of the show. The whale blubber strips about which Andy inquires are food for celebration and family. Like it is with fine wines, if you have to ask, you're probably not in the loop. Ivan smiles into his hand. Jonas flashes a quizzical look at us. “Wrong season. Besides, it's in the freezer and I'm in a hurry.” He shrugs at the women. “We've got a convention going on.”

Tendrils of toxic fog creep under the hanging blanket and settle just above the floor. More chuckles around the phone. No one mentions the
ugruk
rising like a promontory from its puddle of congealed grease. Robert turns down the TV volume, walks to the table. Looks at the
ugruk
, then at us. Patiently, curiously, the men watch their white interlopers.

Shame and hunger rings in my ears. “Pizza must be ready now,” I say to Andy. The men nod their heads, chuckle agreeably. We excuse ourselves in a round of hasty handshakes, then exit into the roiling haze.

As I write from this remote, roadless shore of home, thousands of birds scream from the tideflat that stretches into mirroring fjordwater. Last week silver-blue balls of herring rolled into our little bay for their annual spawning frenzy. The bursting females laid a two-inch rime of roe on swaths of bladderwrack, bull kelp, dulse. Milky surface froth represented the
final, best work of males driven by moonlight and destiny. On this bright May morning, surf scoter, gull, eagle, plover, sandpiper, duck, crow, and heron gorge themselves on the pale pudding exposed by one of the lowest tides of the year. I watch seal, sea lion, and otter patrol the glassy water for stray herring or their gilled pursuers. Cutting wakes among them are skiffs and diesels with nets outstretched on a bet that enough fish might persist for bait or pickling. With Jeannie close behind, our three-year-old Charlie lurches along the high tide mark seeking egg-studded fronds to festoon a “wombat stew” overflowing with pebbles, clamshells, dandelions, beach-hay. I sit at this keyboard thinking about the power of instinct, how life attracts life. And the yawning gulf between computers and wild food.

This week, subsistence burns in the hearts of many more than those gathered outside my window. In Anchorage, an eight hundred-mile road trip from here, nearly two thousand advocates marched yesterday for a “We the People” rally declaring the right of Native and rural Alaskans to a subsistence “preference.” Signs tell the story: “Subsistence Feeds Our Families,” “First Come, Last Served,” “Great Nations Keep Their Word.” In a state once blessed with abundant resources, a battle rages between subsistence users and
commercial interests. As human population grows and wild stocks diminish, competition heightens over the remaining fish, berries, caribou, whale. Should food leave Alaska to be mounted on walls or gussied up for gourmet markets? Who most “deserves” the animals that each season fulfill their genetic contracts to return to the creek mouths and mountain passes dedicated by human elders to their grandchildren? Many more questions persist, none of which may be answered simply. After generations of inviting guests to the table, traditional peoples are forced to inventory their larder, perhaps to turn some of us away.

It is a somber stewardship, this new way of looking at food. It means confrontation with non-Native bureaucrats and corporations. It means leaving one's village and wearing a white man's suit to Washington, D.C. or Anchorage. It means uncertainty about future supplies. Sharing a meal with outsiders, once a source of great pride for our original hosts, has been reduced to an exercise in scarcity.

In the early 1980s, Canadian justice Thomas Berger held a sweeping series of hearings throughout Alaska to record villagers' views about the success of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, especially as it pertained to subsistence. The results of his study for the Alaska Native Review Commission were published in the keystone book,
Village Journey.
Like Edward Curtis seventy-five years before him, Berger came to listen, watch, and record, keenly aware of his role in preserving essential aspects of a culture in transition.

I observed Justice Berger's procedure during hearings in Klukwan, a Tlingit village twenty miles up the Chilkat River from Haines. Other than a plain explanation of purpose and an open invitation to speak, Berger said little to the crowd that spilled from the old tribal house to the muddy street beyond.

Oratory is a highly regarded skill among the Chilkats and Chilkoots. Even so, the speeches that followed were remarkable. Words spoken in English and Tlingit supplied concise, poetic descriptions of a vibrant people whose identity hinges on the food of their place. But more than eloquent proclamations, pressing questions comprised the backbone of most presentations.

From her wheelchair, eighty-four-year-old Annie Hotch spoke in Tlingit about the pain of “losing our total lifestyle.” Fewer fish, she lamented, would starve them: “Do you suppose that a non-Native would allow it if she were told to use only four or five dozen eggs a season? How can we live with four or five dozen salmon?” Young mother Lani Strong Hotch asked a similar question pinned to their tenuous future: “What's going to happen if they decide, ‘The Natives don't need that fish, they can buy hamburger from the store?'” Chilkoot chief Austin Hammond wondered how whites could, in good conscience, supplant Tlingit stewardship traditions. Natives, he declared, should manage subsistence fish and game because “if we don't take care of it right the bears are going to get mad at us.” As Berger noted near the end of the evening, the villagers' testimony reflected concerns that were much deeper than allocation of resources, “it is, rather, an issue of a different order of magnitude—the survival of village Alaska.”

Tribal members gave their views over several hours, often dressed in their finest regalia passed down through generations. Shoulders draped with priceless Chilkat blankets, headdresses rimmed with brown bear claws and porcupine quills, smocks and shawls covered completely with impeccable beadwork. These are the images, too, that caught the eyes of Edward Curtis and a handful of other early photographers whose work reflects the grandeur of a richly artistic culture. It may even be that some of the finery displayed at the hearings
appeared in those first portraits.