Friday in Kwethluk

Meeting with the director of the water/sewer project.

Poopsicles for Mr. Mercer.

We started our morning with our last in school breakfast of oatmeal and raisins.  We walked to the Sewer and Water Plant with Amber and David. It is much, much colder today.  The mud was all frozen and made it difficult to walk. When we got there we learned about how they are trying to put indoor plumbing in the village houses. The project started in the 1990s and should be completed in the next 3 years.  It is a challenging project to work on because the ground is frozen for most of the year and they can't start digging until March and work until October.  Kwethluk is one of the few remaining villages that does not have running water in the houses.  Right now people living in Kwethluk have to pack water from the river or use rain water in the summer. We then walked down to the dump and the sewage lagoon and saw "poopsicles." "Poopsicles" are frozen honey bucket waste that form after it is dumped in the lagoon.  We thought about Mr. Mercer and how much he would like the poopsicles.

Writing our scripts for our Yupik/English videos

Yup'ik class came next. We got into groups and made films about our trip in Yup'ik and English. We would say a sentence in English like, Kristen rode on a snow machine, and the Kwethluk kids would say it in Yupik.  We were all given Yupik names. My Yupik name was turtle, Palurrtaq.  Kyong was named cow, Kuluvak, because she grew up on a cow farm. Franklin was name Pigayun which means three and Ms. G was given the name for berry, Atsaq, because she loves to pick berries. Jillian was given a special Yup'ik name, Iiguaq. She was named after Janna's grandmother.  It is a sign of respect to officially pass the name on to someone who shares similar qualities. 

Jillian's Yupik naming sheet.

Dorothy led a traditional naming ceremony.  She had Jillian sit on the ground.  Traditionally she would sit on a piece of fabric but since she didn't have fabric she used butcher paper.  Dorothy sprinkled water around her 3 times in each direction.  Then she sprinkled water on her ankles asking her to walk with humility, on her wrists asking her to work proudly and on her head asking her to think with an open mind.  She opened the door of the classroom and asked Iiguaq's spirit to come in.  It was a really cool ceremony.  Afterward everyone that attended the ceremony signed the butcher paper with their Yupik name.

Teaching the Kwethluk kids the cool art of origami.

Showing off the projects.

We had a yummy lunch of hamburgers and french fries. After lunch Jillian, Kristen, Kyong, and Franklin taught origami to the 6th grade class. We taught them to make a water cup, a balloon, a crane, and a transforming ninja star out of post it notes.  The Kwethluk kids were really into it and were really respectful of our teaching.  It was cool to be a teacher for the afternoon.

Ollie and William lead the singing and drumming.

Zeke is trying his best to keep up with the boys.

The class also wanted to show us some more Yupik dance.  They sang their favorite song which is called teasing cousin about meeting and flirting with a new person.  They also sang the sliding song which represents going sledding.  The kids here are really proud of their dancing and will dance at any chance they get.

When school got out some of the class went with us to go see a fish camp. A fish camp is where you smoke, cut, and dry your fish. It was really neat!

Zeke models his kuspuk and Ms. G is sewing the skirt on hers.

Showing off the skirt.

Made in the USA pizza: Hawaii is made with pineapple and spam, Texas has a pepperoni bull and Alaska has roasted ptarmigan.

 We came back to the school and finished our kuspuqs. We worked for many hours and most of us did the sewing all on our own.  They all look awesome! Zeke played a good game in the Kwethluk Basketball Tournament, but lost by only 2 points. Dinner was a pizza party to celebrate the week. BK (aka teacher Kristen) and Rachel got creative and made a USA shaped pizza! After dinner we watched a movie and went to bed. It was a great day!

Write more soon,

Kristen

Thursday in Kwethluk

Dorothy showing Franklin how to preserve a rabbit pelt.

This morning we woke up to Ms.G's ring tone. "Oh what fun," I thought while laying on my make shift chair bed (it was not soft).  After we were dressed one of the Yupik elders showed Franklin and I how to make sure his rabbit fur would spoil. First she pulled the rabbit's skin tight, then she put strips of scrap paper on the bloody parts so it would absorb the blood and dry the fur. We thanked the elder and headed off to have some breakfast.

Getting ready for ice fishing.

When we got to the gym breakfast was already put away so Franklin and I turned around and started walking back to the library.  It wasn't even 5 seconds until Kwethluk's generous principal offered us cereal. We each ate 3 boxes of cereal! We needed the extra energy before heading out for a day of ice fishing.  We all met up in the library to get ready for fishing, or as they call it here, manaqing.  We put on a ton of layers so we would not get cold while riding in sleds behind the snow machines.

Kwethluk "school bus"

They don't have school buses here, so field trip transportation involves rounding up as many snow machines as possible and making sure there are enough spaces in sleds or on the back of the seats to fit everyone.  By the time we were all organized we had at least 6 snow machines and 30 people.  It was fun riding the snow machine, especially when it hit the bumps, but I'm sure I will be sore tomorrow.

Showing off our jigging skills and smiles.

We snow machined over frozen lakes, tundra, different rivers and summer fish camps that are now all closed up for the winter. We arrived at the Y in the Kwethluk River which is about 30 minutes from town and supposedly has the best fishing right now because all of the fish like to feed where the two parts of the river meet.

Patiently waiting for a pike to bite. 

It was nice and sunny out so we grabbed our manaq sticks and found a hole.  There were already holes drilled through the ice from people fishing there over the past few days.  We brought an auger just in case we had to drill a hole which we ended up drilling two.  Traditionally they would make the holes using an ice pick which could take 30 minutes to an hour depending on how thick the ice is.  Right now the ice is 2 feet thick with about 2 feet of snow on top. The way you ice fish is first you clean out your hole of ice using a scoop which looks like a giant cooking ladle, then you choose the right lure for the fish and the day.  Pikes usually like yellow and orange lures with feathers.  You drop your line in and make sure it is about a foot above the bottom of the river.  You then pull up on your stick every 5 seconds or so.  That technique is called jigging. During the four hours we were out fishing only one person caught a fish and she was a elder named Aggie.   Well you know people that have lived longer than you do stuff better. She was excited to boil the fish for dinner for her and her husband.  The fish was about 1 foot long and her son Preston pulled out one of its eye balls to use for bait.  She caught the fish with a red lure so afterwards everyone switched out the color of their lure and thought they had a good chance of catching one.

Showing off the "big" catch for the day.

After 3 hours of fishing I went sliding at a nearby hill with Kristen, Kyong, and Jillian. I went back to my fishing hole but still no luck.  We were pretty cold by that point so we were grateful when they pulled out the lunch.  We ate tuna fish sandwiches, soda, corn nuts, meat sticks, fruit, and ding dongs. Its a pretty typical lunch now in the village, but they never would have eaten it traditionally.  Traditional foods are salmon, rabbit, pike, white fish, and caribou.

Using the eyeball from the Northern Pike for bait.

Aggie, the only successful fisherwoman for the day.

Franklin figured out how to fish and sun bathe at the same time.

Nobody else caught anything the rest of the day.  Some people said it was probably because a west wind was blowing.  The elders also told us stories of people catching 80-100 fish in a day.  The fish were biting so quickly they had to use two poles at one time.  Many of the families in the village live a subsistence lifestyle and its a pretty big deal when they don't catch enough fish to feed their family, especially after you paid a lot of money in gas to get out to the fishing grounds.  Nowadays, they can always buy food in the Native Store or the Sports Store but that food is expensive and isn't healthy for you.  It is a lot of processed foods, microwavable food and canned goods.  The diet in native villages has changed so much that many people are coming down with diabetes.  There is too much sugar in the food they eat whereas before they ate mostly meat, berries and other things they could gather or trade.

The old orphanage

School is in session for Jillian and Zeke.

Buildings on the orphanage property.  The church was built in 1907.

We left the river around 2pm and on the way back to the village we stopped by an old orphanage that housed children whose parents had died of tuberculosis and the flu between the years of 1924 and 1970. When explorers or fur trappers first came to the area they brought with them diseases that nearly wiped out the native population.  Native were just not resistant to the illnesses and it left behind many orphans.  Some of the Kwethluk kids have relatives in town who used to live in the orphanage. The old buildings were left abandoned with a lot of the stuff still inside them like desks and books.  They have been vandalized over the years and now have a creepy feel to them.

A rabbit snare and chew marks on the branches.

At 7pm it is bright and sunny out on the trap line.

When we got back to school, our butts hurt from all the big bumps on our snow machine ride.  We took off our wet clothes and warmed up with blueberry tea and snacks and then we walked to the Sports Store. It sells camping stuff, food and some clothes. It is also where you pay for the gas for your snow machine.  We played football for a while outside with the local kids while Ms. G went with another teacher to check their trap line. The teacher had just learned from the locals how to set traps for rabbit and has gotten about 8 in the last two weeks.  No luck tonight though but luckily we already tried rabbit last night.

Native dinner food party.  On the table is Yupik donuts, dried king salmon strips, beaver and beaver tail, dried ptarmigan and pilot bread with peanut butter.

Kristen and Vasila are excited to eat dried ptarmigan that Vasila's family prepared.

Jillian and Kyong making aqutaq with salmonberries picked from last summer.

Tonight was our Native food dinner party.  Many of the locals donated food for us to try.  On the menu was beaver and beaver tail, Yupik fry bread that looked just like donuts, smoked salmon strips, dried ptarmigan still on the bone, caribou stew with veggies and rice, seal oil that you eat by dipping the salmon strips or ptarmigan into, and aqutaq.  Aqutaq is also known as eskimo ice cream.  Kyong, Kristen and Jillian learned how to make it from Cindy, a really nice woman in town who has helped us sew kuspuks and brought the beaver.  The best part about making aqutaq is that you can only use your hands.  You mix together Crisco shortening, mashed potato flakes, sugar and whatever berries you have.  We had salmonberries that someone collected last summer and froze.  It sounds gross but once it is all mixed up it is delicious!  It tastes like a fresh berry jam.  Before the Yupik had shortening, aqutaq was made with whitefish.  There are some taboos surrounding making it, like you can only stir in a clockwise direction and you can never play with your food while you are preparing it.

Kristen modeling her ptarmigan tail feathers.

We all stuffed ourselves silly at dinner.  There wasn't one thing any of us didn't like.  After dinner I played football outside with some of the boys and the others played Would You Rather? It was an awesome day and all of us are beat.

Write more later.
Zeke

Wednesday in Kwethluk

Colorful homes in Kwethluk

We woke up at 7:50 A.M and had cereal for breakfast.  It was a nice change from the grits even. We started our school day with a visit to the 6th grade class and we played math game. 

Our first field trip of the day was to visit the washeteria.  We learned how most people in Kwethluk do not have running water so they have to go to the washeteria to do laundry and shower.  The washeteria is also like a community meeting hall.  There are important announcements posted all over the walls and when the people come to do their laundry they can get caught up on the local happenings.  

Vasila's steamhouse

Next we visited Vasila's house so we could see a steam house and a honeybucket.  Most people in Kwethluk prefer to steam rather than shower because they feel they can get cleaner.  They build a fire in the steam room and sit in it for an hour or so and scrub themselves clean.  Sometimes they heat the room up to 200 degrees!  It must feel good on a night when the temperatures are fifty below.  The honey bucket was really just a bucket with a toilet seat on top.  They dump it at the dump when it is full.  Many of the newer houses in Kwethluk have a toilet and a shower ready to go, now they are just waiting for the water pipe construction project to finish.  It has been years in the making and everyone is excited to see it completed.

Dorothy shows off her Yupik fish net.

Kristen is learning how to make a mosquito.

Jillian quickly learned how to tell Yupik string stories.

We returned to the school for Yupik language class with Dorothy.  She was teaching the class about Yupik string stories, which we call Cat's Cradle back at home.  You use a loop of string and make different shapes or symbols and use the shape to tell a story.  We learned how to make mosquitos and fishing nets.  If you make a good fishing net then you will have a good day fishing.  There are some taboos around the string stories, like you can't make them outside or else the weather will turn cold.  We want the kids back in Juneau to learn from the Kwethluk kids about the string stories when they come visit.

Kristen getting "booked" at the police station.

We were all apprehended at the Kwethluk police station.

In the afternoon William, one of the Kwethluk ambassadors, and our group went down to the police station. The building was name after Max Olick, who is the village police safety officer. He told us lot about history of Kwethluk safety and the police station. He also told us that Kwethluk is dry place. People can not sell, buy or drink alcohol. 

Personal Yupik dance lessons after school.

William is a only 12, but he is already a talented drummer.

After visiting, William and Andrew came with us to do the Yupik drumming and dancing. We had our own private dance and drumming lesson!  You can tell the Kwethluk kids are really proud of their dancing heritage.  No one danced in Kwethluk for many years because they Russian Orthodox church forbid the dancing.  It has only seen a revival in the last three years and now everyone, from kindergardeners to the elders are taking the time to learn the dances. 

Kyong is hiding in that helmet.  She and Mary are getting ready for the snow machine ride to Birch Hill.

Juneau kids and Kwethluk kids having fun on the sledding hill.

Zeke showing how tough Juneau kids can be.

We had a sledding trip planned in the afternoon for us and the RURE kids but by the time we got organized at least 20 other kids from all the other grades had joined us.  It seems like everyone does everything together.  Kwethluk is a very close community.  We took five snow machines and sleds to Birch Hill which is about 15 minutes from town.  It is a very tall and steep hill. I think it is taller then Porcupine Hill at Eaglecrest. Everyone had tons of fun. I think Zeke had the most fun because he was riding the sled like snowboard. He fell about ten times but just bounced back up like he was made of rubber.  Everyone was laughing hysterically. 

Rabbit for dinner.

We had a really nice dinner at Kristen's house with all of the Kwethluk RURE kids. We ate rabbit meat that another teacher had caught in his trap line. It tasted like steak! Franklin asked to keep the hide because he wants to make slippers out of it for his baby sister. We played Apples to Apples again, our favorite game here.  Curfew is at 9pm here and you can't be under 18 and wandering around the village so teacher Kristen gave us a ride on a snow machine back to school. I will never get tired of riding in a snow machine. We had tiring and busy day today. I hope tomorrow is as fun as today.

Write more soon,

-Kyong-