I recently spent a week in the Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan, as part of a cross-cultural emmersion program for urban educators of Alaska. I participated in their Sockeye Salmon fish camp, learned about Tlingit culture, and hung out with a great group of mostly women, both native and white. I stayed at the Howling Wolf Bed and Breakfast, hosted by Kimberly, whose sister Loni lived next door and directed the camp. Most of their nine brothers lived on the same street. What follows are segments of my journal while there:
Sunday, August 5th
Sitting on the plane by myself is a vacation in itself, especially after flying from Boston to Anchorage two days ago with my family. I sat in the middle between Elias and Olive as the peacemaker-negotiater-entertainer-snack dispenser. No time to read or write. Not even able to sleep on the red-eye flight we took out of Anchorage for our ten-day trip to Cape Cod to see my parents. Now I can close my eyes if I want. Right now. No small feet will jump on me. No sticky hands grab my chin. No: "Mom, Mom, MOM!!!" No: "Snack!" No Mom.
Aaah. This quiet is nice. Noone is in the middle seat. I have the window to myself. The sun is shining and an adventure awaits.
It was still hard to leave my family this morning. Hard to see Olive, two-and-a-half years wise, look up at me and ask, "Why Mommy?"
Just Mommy is going this time.
"Why?"
I worry about Nick's sanity as he juggles Elias and Olive and his handyman jobs. He will tire of Elias's incessent questions and repetitions. Olives tantrums and whines. I feel both guilty leaving and justified. Parenthood is damn hard, especially with a son like Elias. Multiple disabilities, no empathy, diapers at age eight. Both Nick and need to get away at times. He'll go hunting with Gavin this fall, spend a week rafting and camping and drinking whiskey with good guys. And I get to experience the Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan. Get to step outside of my culture, away from mainstream America, off Facebook and email, free from from kids climbing in bed with me in the middle of the night. A whole nights sleep.
I get to experience a small dose of Tlingit cluture, so maybe, I can understand a little bit more about myslef. A prep-school facuty chid from New England who moved to Anchorage 12 years ago and fell in love both with the beauty of Alaska and the glacier blue eyes of a man.
Ready for take off...
*****
Here I am. In Klukwan.
I really like Kimberly, our host, and feel a bit nervous in that way I get when I'm around someone older I respect. I want her to like me and I don't want to say or do anything wrong but I also want to be myself and relax, and yes, its in my nature to overthink everything.
She just asked if I was doing my homework and I guess I am but it doesn't feel like homework. It just feels like me writing agian. In a notebook. With a pen. Just following my wondering mind wherever it leads. Looking out the window at the Chilkat River...it is beautiful here. The backyard leads to the banks of gravel bars and water that leads around the bend.
I'm sitting at a great big wooden table in the living room of a house I could live in. I have my own room upstairs with a bathroom across the hall. A window looks out to the Chilkat and the mountain range beyond. Camp begins tomorrow and I have no idea what to expect but, I'm game. And tonight I can sleep in a bed to myself, without Olive's little feet finding me in the middle of the night.
I believe I will sleep well tonight.
*****
Monday after lunch.
I ate my first fish head. The eye ball, kimberly said, is the consistency of a raw oyster and she was right. I appreciated the analogy before putting the white blob in my mouth. Eating fish heads and collars and fins felt similar to eating lobster, using my fingers to pick the good parts from the bone. Sucking the meat out of the belly fin with my teeth. Reminded me a bit of Cape Cod and home. But different. We buy lobster from the store, or sometimes, if we're lucky, friends with pots drop some off for my Mom and Dad. But only enough to eat that day. Not ten salmon to be cut and cleaned and preserved. Dried or smoked or canned. Not later but now.
I wish I remembered some of the Tlingit words we learned this morning. I think gaat is firewod. (I was wrong gaat is sockeye and firwood is gaan.) In an academic world, western culture, I'm a relatively fast learner. Here, cutting salmon, feeling the backbone with my kife, I'm clueless. Even on my 4th fish I needed help and still made a mess of my fillet. Luckily, Kimberly and Loni are patient and have a sense of humor. Watching them filet you can tell they've been doing it for years, its natural, where as I'm second guessing and awkward and sawing my poor salmon to shreds.
No cell service here.
When I first arrived and saw my room, I took a picture and tried to text it to Nick, to tell him I made it and show him the view.
Its amazing how quickly we get use to technology. Constant contact with the rest of the world.
As much as I'd like to talk to Nick there is something refreshing about a smart phone that doesn't work.
*****
Tuesday Morning.
Another grey day. Fog and drizzle. I hope before I leave the clouds lift to reveal the mountains. But its rainy season in South East. In Anchorage too, generally-- though it could be sunny there for all I know. Last week I followed the Olympics as closely as I could. Now it doesn't matter whether Bolt won the 100 meter but whether the fish will dry with all this rain.
Today we cut more fish, again tomorrow. Its work that must be done when the salmon run, with a product at the end, and a way of doing it that has been passed down over the years. Its tangible and real, unlike much of the work that the western world promotes. Pushing papers. Computers. Work that is not connected to living, that doesn't leave your hands smelling like fish and your cupboards filled with the proof of your labor.
I recently read a passage from Wendell Berry about how dangerous it is to have a select group of people produce all the food for the rest of us, and how we lose something essential when we don't know how to grow our own. Or catch it. Or hunt it.
I know its why I love our annual dipnetting trip to the Kenai, camping with friends and family and collectively harvesting red salmon. Sockeye. Gaat.
Working together to watch the kids, cook meals, untangle a fish from the net. It feels real and I feel alive, more so than in my days working in public education with our schedules and tests and intangible work that we can't hold in our hands at the end of the day. I love the kids but there is always more that they need, more than I can provide-- we are missing the "village" to raise them.
There is a lot of sadness and frustration that comes with my school counseling job, as I feel that our communities expect schools to excel without putting an effort in to support our children. When kids are scared at night they can't study. When they come to school hungry they can't concentrate. Their test scores don't reflect failing teachers or schools but a society that moves too fast and wants too much to the neglect of our children.
I know Anchorage folks think kids in the village are at a disadvantage, but being here in Klukwan I can see it another way. Last night Kimberly looked out her window and saw that her brother was still outside cutting fish at 8:30. She stopped her kitchen clean-up to open the slider and call out, "Do you need a hand?"
Breakfast time. Sitting at the table with a cup of hot coffee with cream, listening to NPR. Could be home. Not everything is different. Nor better or worse. Kimberly picked us up in Haines in a sporty new Subaru, she uses an iphone, has an ipad on her counter. She likes cream no sugar in her coffee. Just like me. I think sometimes our fear of difference keeps us from recognizing what we have in common. I see this as Elias's mom.
Some kids will look at him and only see his canes, never get past those royal blue reminders that he is different. Never see that he loves playgrounds too. And suppose they do reach out and he doesn't look them in the eye, he doesn't read their facial cues, will they keep trying?
Body language is such a huge part of our communication and when you have a legally blind boy on the autism spectrum with CP, well, you get what you get. There are days when I feel as if we live in two different worlds. I too must find out how to bridge our cultures. I am Elias's mom but I do not live inside his mind. Nor inside the culture of Autism, Visual Impairment, or CP. I am on the outside looking in, like a hungry child, hoping a locked up bakery might just open their door, for a night, so I can taste the dough.
*****
Another guest arrived last night. His name is Steve and he is a professor of Anthropology at UAA. After an interesting dinner conversation with him and Kimberly about ancient fish weirs the Tlingit used to catch salmon, I went up to bed to read. I pulled out one of our assigned books, The Native People of Alaska, and read the blurb about the author: Steve Langdon, an anthropology professor at UAA. Hmmm, I wondered. Sure enough, when I asked him this morning, he humbly admitted to writing the book. Not bad company, not bad indeed.
*****
Black bear sausage for breakfast and moose sausage stew for lunch. Cut dry fish this morning. I butchered my two. Fred, another culture camp instructor, was patient with me and kept cleaning up my strips. "Its not a saw its a knife," he said often, along with, "Right on." And I repeated this mantra in my head. Soon we will begin canning the fish fish. Fish, fish, fish. It would be hard to come to this camp if you didn't like fish.
*****
Wednesday morning.
Helped Kimberly can her own fish yesterday afternoon and I liked the puzzle-like process of stuffing jars. I'd like to can our salmon, or some of it when we go dipnetting next year. Kimberly's friend also helped, a former vegetarian turned avid hunter. She's a doctor with a son with Asperger's. We had a lot to talk about.
One of her comments really struck me. "I think that people with Autism are really more evolved than the rest of us." She also said that now when she asks her son what his is thinking, he is able to explain how his brain processes information differently. Very cool. Who knows where Elias will be when he is 19 but our talk made me a little more hopeful, especially when Kimberly shared how challenging her friend's son was when he was younger. The way he repeated the same questions. Took forever to follow directions. Sometimes threw tantrums about seemingly small details. And persisted.
*****
Last night we watched a movie about the Holocoust based on the true story of a teenage girl who hid 12 Jews in her attic during the war. As always, when I watch something like this, I find myself in awe of the cruelity of human kind. How can one group can call themselves superior to another and kill them, just because?
Watching this movie next to Kimberly, I couldnt help but think about the way the Russians and Americans treated the Tlingit and all Native people here in Alaska.
"No dogs or Indians allowed."
Looked down upon, feared, reviled. All because they had their own seperate culture, with customs and traditions that the westerners didn't understand. Kimberly turned at one point in the movie, as a line of Jewish people shuffled into the Warsaw ghetto and asked, "Were the Jews pacifists?" And I think they just didn't believe it would possibly get so bad. How could they fathom it all? Sure we'll give up our home for a bit until the war is over... How could they predict they would be slaughtered?
Loni told us that many Tlingit renounced their culture in order to gain the right to vote because they understood the importance of political representation and wanted to save their aboriginal lands. In order to do so they needed a number of Native people to vouchthey had given up their native ways.
As a white girl from New England I've never experienced anything like this. The closest I've experienced to this form of prejudice is with sexism but its hard to even compare. I wasn't told there was no worth in being female only that I was less valuable than a male. I was told I couldn't do things because I was a girl.
When I started on a boys soccer team, the other teams laughed at us. You have a girl on your team!! (The poor boys on the bench got teased the most.) I have been called names and whistled at while I walked down the street. Locked in a room by a boy who told my friends, "I know how to sober her up." Lived with a man who thought his needs and interests mattered more than mine. Been a notch on a guy's bed post and dismissed in conversation by far too many guys. I've worried about my safety around men, but never felt like my life was truly in danger. Never made to feel like I was nothing, garbage, disposable, waste.
*****
What is it about women working together that threatens men? Is it that our focus is not on the color of our eyes or the size of our chest? That our backs are turned to their glance, our arms too full to hold? Is it that we laugh with ease instead of covering our mouths with the palms of our hands, hands that callous and slice and kneed, not a mans touch, but flour and suger and butter for bread we break with each other.
*****
Tonight we will eat dinner over at Loni's house. Its my dream house. Beautiful wood beams and copper tiles and an open floor plan with plants everywhere. Nothing at all like the stereotype of a village home. When we drove in on Sunday, Klukwan, at first, seemed "depressed." Lots of buildings with broken windows and trailers with plywood additions.
And then we drove up to Loni and Kimberly's houses, beautiful. Not pristine, working houses with supplies piled on the side but nicer than my own. And you can't beat the view of the Chilkat River and mountain range. Or the quiet. No sirens or planes overhead.
And now, when I walk down the street, I don't sense a depressed village, but a hard working community that cares about each other. And one that lives right alongside their food.
*****
Thursday Morning.
For dinner last night we had ribs, rice, and salad. Before it was ready, I had an interesting conversation with one of the teenage girls whose 19 -year-old brother has Asperger's. When I told her a little about Elias, she asked, "Can I ask you what its like as his Mom?"
Its a full moon and fire. Hurricanes and avalanches. The fist light of dawn.
"What's it like to be a younger sister," I asked later.
If Olive turns out anything like this young woman, I'd be proud. I know there will be times when Olive will wish she had a "normal" brother. I know it won't always be easy for her and that as her Mom, I need to let her go through her own process of grief and acceptance, wherever it shall lead.
*****
Friday morning. Breakfast: French toast, moose sausage, and cantelope.
Yesterday we cleaned the cans of fresh pack that had been in the pressure cooker the day before. We filled new jars with our smoked fish bellies and fillets and for lunch ate salmon salad with pineapple and pesto noodles. After lunch we cut the nayaadi and packaged it in saran wrap. Naayadi is dried fish skin with the leftover meat and bones from the fish strips we cut.
*****
Last night I found the Olympics on TV. It was nice to be a part of it all again but I realized how easily I can do without. Especialy if I am involved in meaningful work and the rhythms of the seasons. I could live like this. Unplugged. Surrouned by a community of people who know me well, who would help me when in need.
Time to write and reflect in the evenings. Hard work all morning long. Nice conversation over lunch. Maybe a little quiet time in the afternoon before returning to work with my hands and my heart.
*****
We divided up the fish this morning, we each got a case of smoked salmon jars, five pints of fresh pack, a bag filled with dried strips, 5 packs of naayadi, a half gallon of broth, and optional smoked fish tails for dogs. 
And now its 11:00 am and we are done for the day.
****
Been reading The Native People of Alaska, with Steve's voice/face in mind as the anthropologist author. The history of colonization and forced assimilation always overwhelms me. The superiority felt by missionairies and the utter disrespect for native culture.
And what I despise most is that somewhere in my brain is this belief as well, that as a white woman I am somehow better than people of color. It is not a conscious thought but an old tape passed down that still plays in a back alley of my mind.
My grandmother had black and white caricatures of African Americans, framed, and hung on her stairway, that I passed every night I slept at her farmhouse in Vermont. I remember their exagerated lips and one picture in particular, of their long legs running a race as spectators shook their cups. I don't remember the captions or the artist but I remember my Dad telling me they are collectors items now. I wonder do they hang them on a wall or hide them in a closet like the biases we all stash somewhere under our bed.
*****
Saturday morning.
Took a short nap yesterday afternoon. Pure luxury. I miss my family, especially Olive, because at two-and-a-half this is my first time away from her and she is changing so much every day. She will have new words for sure. I wonder if she will run to me or play shy. I can't wait to hug her and Elias and of course, Nick.
Woke to our first blue sky, with the mountains fully exposed.
*****
And I laughed too.
