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I'm a member of the Aleutian people, one of the many native tribes of Alaska. I'm of mixed Aleut/Russian decent and am from a small fishing village called Cordova (technically it's a town during fishing season) accessible only by planes or boat in south central Alaska. My father is a tribal elder and still gillnets to this day, but as a family we seined in the local waters. Here's a few common questions to get out of the way first. Q. So that means you're an Eskimo? A. Nope, Aleut is a different tribe, different language. Feel free to go to Europe and call the Germans French though. Q. So have you ever slept in an Igloo? A. Out of all the stereotypes that my people have inflicted upon them, this is one of the most prevalent. We battle constantly against what seems like a never ending tide of ignorance and prejudice brought about by poorly researched television and books and it is an insult upon our culture and people to even ask us this question, to which the answer is yes. Q. What's your reservation like? A. Alaskan Natives are free range and don't have reservations. However we do have Native Corporations and explaining those in detail would take up a lot of space, so feel free to ask me about them later. Q. What's village life like? A. Depends on the village, mine is a fairly new town, it was kind of a port for getting copper from the copper river mine out at sea to be delivered and used to be part of a rail system, but when the mine dried up the only reason for it to be there anymore was the fishing industry. My town was the result of corporate investments and is about 20% native descent. Q. Isn't it cold up there? A. Yes, the winters are cold but it's only dark for an hour or two during the summer so it gets pretty warm. Land of the midnight sun and all that. Also my village is near a current that comes up from Asia so we get a lot of monsoon weather and flotsam from down there, a local artists make a lot of stuff from the glass floats that we get and you better believe the beaches were clogged with stuff after that Japanese tsunami. Q. So how do you feel about firewater? A. Alcoholism is a pretty serious problem, that enzyme deficiency that causes alcohol to linger in your system and makes you get drunk quick is pretty common. I have that problem as well so I drink only a couple of times a year. Q. What's an Alaskan accent sound like? A. Look at Sarah Palin, it sounds like whatever we want it to, because nobody knows how we talk. I've been told I talk in a deliberate and neutral manner whilst in the bastion of sophistication that is South Carolina. Q. Sarah Palin...? A. She owes my dad a hug and my uncle is the author of the email she quotes for the last chapter of "Going Rogue" where she complains about goons photoshopping her and Trig. Other than that, no connection. Here's a picture of Cordova.  Usually it's raining, it rains about 86 inches a year, then we get a bunch of snow on top of that, hell a couple of years ago we got 16 feet of snow in a few days. Q. Oh, is this where Copper River Reds come from? A. Yep, if you've ever eaten Copper River red salmon there's a chance I might've caught it(very slim chance I haven't fished commercially in almost 20 years.) Q. So do you speak Aleut? A. Not really, had a son of bitch from Alabama manage to ask me if my parents sent me a bottle of shoe using Yup'ik terms though. I do know a bit about languages and lore it's not like how its shown on TV, that's for sure. Honestly watching how television portrays Alaska and our way of life made me distrust it growing up. Q. Oh so what do you think of Northern Exposure? A. That show was AMAZING and a pretty accurate portrayal of rural Alaska, except for everyone having the same lock and the same key so people wouldn't get locked out of their houses. Here's some pictures from my parent's property (leased from the native corporations, 99 years for 1 dollar).   Their house is on muskeg, a type of moss that grows 20 feet thick in spots, they had to dig down to the rock in order to lay foundations, digging out a trench for a sewer pipe through bedrock is a pain in the rear end. Another Alaskan goon, he's screaming because he lives in Juneau. The glacier behind him has been retreating pretty heavily. (it's just left of the waterfall)  I was visiting him, as you can see I look lily white, it's pretty awesome because white people get really weird about minorities using their bathrooms or being around in general.  This is an extremely Alaskan porch, the hanging rings are purse seine rings and used to cinch the bottom of the net. There are tons of dogs in Alaska and using car parts for furniture isn't that uncommon.  There's a ton of new construction in my parent's neighborhood and it's getting pretty crowded.  Here's a picture of my great-grandfather Walter "Bearkiller" Metrokin. He's a bit of a hero historically and was a guide to a 1916 expedition to find a volcano responsible for a major eruption a few years prior. This one armed Russian/Aleut guide led them through the valley of a thousand smokes, which lies within the icy wastes of the frozen north, or where Anchorage is now, if you want to get technical.  My other famous great-grandfather from the nickname age is a guy called French Pete who found the Treadwell mine and got cheated out of it by the Guggenheim family, but don't feel too bad about it because by all accounts (including an elderly Russian priest) he was a real son of a bitch. Also lied his rear end off to Jack London, author of stories like, "To Build A Fire" and "A Piece Of Steak." Seriously told the guy there were still mammoths and that there were flocks of bats with 20 foot wingspans up north. Traveled around a lot and had wives in different villages/towns who didn't know about each other, way easier before the internet. So feel free to ask me any questions about our way of life, views on the world, relations with other countries/cultures, history, culture, whatever and I'll do my best to answer them. Edit: Could a mod switch the tag over to "Ask"? Mr.Pibbleton fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Aug 26, 2014 |
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Aug 26, 2014 00:57
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It's Eyak territory mostly, we lost the last native speaker of it a few years ago too.  I'm down in Washington now myself, my dad hasn't been bitching about his catch so it seems like we were doing pretty good. I just got a bunch of requests to make an ask/tell thread in the last few weeks so I thought I'd give it a shot. Messed up the tags though.
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Aug 26, 2014 05:31
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Kanine posted:How's the internet situation? Also I'm curious how health issues are handled, if someone is seriously injured do you call a medevac chopper? We've actually got fiber optic cable connecting us so our internet is pretty decent, I'm betting there's still a ton of places on dialup though. We do have a hospital but in serious situations people are medevac'd out. What's really nice is for Alaskan Natives and veterans is that the Alaska Native Medical Center is free! Honestly it's kind of better than free, my dad's an elder an a veteran, he's had prostate cancer from agent orange exposure (responded well to the treatment no signs of it now) his treatment there was FREE. His stay at the hospital? If you don't need a dedicated hospital room the basically put you up in hotel style dwelling on the hospital grounds for FREE. My mom comes to visit him while he's staying there and they put her up in the hotel on the grounds for visiting family for FREE. Plus they have newspapers from every town, city and village there so while you're staying you can keep up on your local news. Oh yeah, my dad's trip from the airport to the hospital? Had to pay bus fare, kind of odd they don't have a shuttle, but hey it's still pretty drat good! I've gotten MRI's, medication, and dental work done there for free as well. I didn't even have an appointment for the dental work, just walked in to the dental clinic and within 20 minutes I got my teeth looked at by 3 different dentists. Hogge Wild posted:What kinds of permits and licenses do you need if you want to hunt? Hunting and fishing from fish and game for the permits, for subsistence hunting you can get more if you're registered as a tribal member and can hunt, fish and gather on the native lands. I can't go into much detail as I'm not a big hunter or fisher. I did have a friend who made a good living as a hunter gatherer though. Hogge Wild posted:How does the basic income from the state work? As long as you've been a resident for a year you can apply for the permanent dividend fund, I think you can only be outside the state for 90 days a year. The money comes from the revenue they got from leasing out oil rights which was then invested and a percentage of the investment's growth is what goes back to Alaska's citizens and people who pay for a post office box in Alaska (the latter does get caught from time to time). Incidentally the lease money was used to fund the native corporations which create benefits for the Native Alaskans like free medical care, employment and make their money by buying up tons of land and leasing the mineral, timber and fishing rights as well as doing government construction home and abroad. Hogge Wild posted:How much more does stuff cost there? That's pretty variable a remote location is going to be ridiculously expensive and while Juneau is the state capital rent is stupidly high there and the minimum wage is 7.75. Cordova wasn't the most expensive place to live, but Anchorage is cheaper and now that I'm in Washington state, oh my god food is so cheap here. Hogge Wild posted:What's the men to women ratio? Growing up I've always heard 4 to 1, which makes sense considering how much heavy industry and military we have. CNN claims it's 107 to 100, I think they might be going off of official resident data though. Hogge Wild posted:Is sailing as a hobby common there? There definitely were a few sailboats in the harbor, my sixth grade teacher lived on one of those in fact, I wouldn't call it common, but it wasn't considered unusual.
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Aug 26, 2014 16:04
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Poop Cupcake posted:I was in Alaska staying with some friends in early July, in Meadow Lakes. It's a few minutes outside of Wasilla. Alaska is an incredibly beautiful state. Contrasting this was so much dubious quality construction up there. Unfinished plywood shacks next to hillsides that are visibly sliding down, inhabited buildings with partially collapsed roofs. My friends explained this as lack of code enforcement coupled with severe poverty in a lot of areas. How does the state handle these kinds of housing situations where buildings are in dangerous spots, aren't providing adequate protection from the elements, etc.? There isn't much code enforcement alright, cobbling together your own dwelling isn't that looked down upon, honestly people get impressed by innovative scavenging. However squatters get their homes torn down every 5-6 years, if you keep a dwelling on state property for long enough you can claim ownership of it. Also a lot of times these structures are pretty well hidden. When I was working for the census bureau collecting mailing addresses to send the actual census out to I got the squatter section of town. The folks were pretty friendly, except banjo man who won't answer questions while playing his banjo and according to a very nice lady whose eyes couldn't focus he'd play for hours so I had to move on without getting his mailing address and while I found the owners of most of the shacks, sheds and semi under ground dwellings I didn't find who was living in that red bus with white trim (lovely flower boxes). While I was going down one of the trails, I put my hand out against a tree and it came back black and sticky with creosote, which we use to treat timber down at the docks. Problem is, I'm in a forest near a small lake, I look up and the pillar has something connected to it, and there are branches lashed to it with rope. "What the hell?" I muttered and went back up the trail a bit to look at it from a distance, there was a staircase going through the trees about 10 feet above ground and the branches were tied to it to help camouflage it. So I made my way through the brush below the stairs until I found a tree sturdy enough to climb, much to the excitement of my dog, and got on the stairs. There were two ropes for hand rails and I climbed up to find large two story structure that looked like it was partially constructed from driftwood and I knocked on the door. The dog inside barked and the door was soon answered by a bearded man, on crutches we just stared at each other for a moment and I said, "Census Bureau!"  Then we both had a good laugh. Got his mailing address! But yeah there are a lot of impoverished people who have crappy dwellings, but shelter is absolutely vital for survival during the winter. What's really sad is what happens to people with mental disorders on the coast, none of the places want to deal with the expense of flying them to somewhere where they can be treated so they end up being put on ferries and shuffled around that way.Lord Windy posted:
Not gonna lie, I like nice bathrooms and after hanging out with a Black friend and a Latino friend in Bellevue I've learned to appreciate the social benefits my skin tone gets me. Also really happy I'm Native Alaskan and not lower 48 Native American. I mean, yeah in order to prevent the Japanese from putting Aleuts in internment camps during WWII they shipped all the Aleuts off to internment camps in the woods. Then they didn't give them enough supplies since as Indians, we'd naturally be able to live off the land. Aleuts are fishermen and the amount of fish we found in the woods was significantly less than we had grown accustomed to. So the population of Aleuts went from roughly 4,300 before WWII to 2,800 afterwards and the Japanese killed like, sixty of us. Oh and if you didn't have white friends when you got sent off to the internment camp your property got everything stolen off of it. Luckily my Grandma had been adopted by a White family so when she survived the camp she got to go back home her stuff was still around. tldr: I am sincerely thankful that I look white.
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Aug 26, 2014 16:37
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Aggressive pricing posted:Good for your dad, American health care is adorable/horrifying Native Corporations are pretty cool, when they were originally formed Native Alaskans got the opportunity to sign on as shareholders, I think it was free, but some of the stock became worthless when a few the Native Corporations collapsed due to embezzlement and/or corruption. A lot of the folks running these weren't too busy savvy I'm afraid so they had to hire out help and the ones that got decent people did pretty drat well and grew enough to cover the areas the collapsed ones used to. Now being transferred a share requires proof of native descent or being adopted into a tribe (they just have to like you enough) the shares give you a monthly payment, I don't know how much, my Grandma had a 100 shares she split amongst her kids and being a shareholder entitles you to lease some land from the corporation, provided you can endure the demands they put upon you. So in order for a share holder to few a couple of acres of muskeg like my parents did(I don't know how big their property is) you have to put a "permanent structure" on the land within a year and it must stay up for a year. You can use a tent to qualify for this so it's pretty lenient and yet some land goes through three or four different people trying to claim it over time. So my Grandmother was Aleut but affiliated with the Chugach native corporation through the Eyak village branch. As you might've guessed Cordova natives tend to stick together regardless of tribal affiliation. Still I got lots of other benefits growing up, free immunizations, free glasses and when my dad tuned 50 and became an elder we started getting free food and firewood but my Dad had them donate his share to needy families in the area. Lots of people donate wild game and hides too, that's probably illegal somehow but a lot of laws find themselves getting ignored up north. I did hear that back in the early days Native women who married White guys would find a lot of their benefits being cut or denied to their children whereas Native men with White wives would be doing just fine. Which is super weird since bloodlines are traditionally traced through maternal descent, not paternal. Hopefully just a rumor, hopefully. Kopijeger posted:Do you ever have people doubting your Native status due to your appearance? For example, have you ever been excluded from Native social functions due to people assuming that you are an interloping paleface? Never actually been a problem, there's a lot of mixed descent people in Alaska and I have the Aleut walk and I used to have the underbite to go along with it(got my teeth worked on but my jaw sometimes pops out a little) That and all the native functions I attended were in Cordova. So I've never been made to feel unwelcome at a native gathering. As for the Russian Aleuts that cross the bering strait with their reindeer herds, nope, we're really far away from them and it was kind of debated whether or not those guys were Americans or Russians, but it was too far away from anyone to really care. They do attend potlatches and when Chernobyl blew up the tribes did gather food and supplies to help out the Siberian tribes. One thing I did see a lot of growing up during the cold war was Russians fleeing Russia and hiding out in America and they were paranoid as hell at first, but once they realized they had rights they got cocky as hell. I remember my dad sending me to drop off some salmon to a Russian and when I opened the door he informed me that technically I was trespassing so it'd be legal for him to shoot me because this is America! I just rolled my eyes and asked him if he wanted the fish or not. One time a fish and game warden saw some Russians fishing and asked if they had fishing permits, so they scattered and ran off into the woods leaving behind their gear. So the warden shook his head and gathered up their stuff and one of them came back and from a bush promised to testify against the others in exchange for immunity from prosecution. He was then informed it was just a fine and as soon as they paid it they could get their stuff back. So the guy comes in and asks how much the fine is for fishing without a permit, it's 50 bucks, and the license it ten. "Can you break a hundred?" The Russian asks and after settling his account he gets his stuff back.
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Aug 26, 2014 18:41
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Kopijeger posted:Do the people of your community practice Orthodoxy at all? Do you have any contact with Russian Aleuts? Oops didn't answer this, but yes, a sizable part of my community is Russian Orthodox and there are lots of Aleuts who are a member of this church. To be honest I don't know that much about them but I went to one of their weddings once and it seemed like it took forever or at least ages of ages. I took one of the least flattering pictures of the ceremony too!  Kazak_Hstan posted:There are a lot of people who live at the end of tiny roads, and it's hard for the state / borough to know whats going on there. I ran into a guy who was going into court claiming that he lived outside of Cordova's borders therefore the town couldn't enforce building codes on him and they don't even bother with the people who live on the islands since they're even harder to find.
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Aug 26, 2014 18:54
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Hogge Wild posted:Thanks for the answers! Weed is pretty common and still illegal and it's a mixed bag on the federal government. Some people acknowledge that it sends a lot of money our way other people are secessionists and loving idiots. "We don't need the federal government, Alaska is self sufficient!" "Uh, they give us tons of money and we don't produce enough food to feed ourselves, we'd have to buy it from other countries." "It's ok, we're rich!" "Until Russia invades us and takes us back." "Oh they won't do that, because the US will stop them!" "We seceded remember? Why the hell are they gonna rescue a bunch of ingrates?" Sarah Palin's church is secessionist and claims that Alaska will be a refuge during the coming apocalypse since we're in the end times. Overall I'd say the attitude towards the federal government is pretty positive in Cordova and Anchorage, couldn't say on the rest of the state though. No clue on how the Ukraine crisis is affecting stuff.
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Aug 26, 2014 20:37
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Wang Flotilla posted:I can say from experience that Mr. Pibbleton is EXTREMELY hostile and VERY MUCH an rear end in a top hat and he's one of the best friends I've ever had, and yes I'm extremely distrustful of him using my bathroom. Hey do you still have that picture of Eric fording a stream with his kid and a rifle? It's ridiculously Alaskan.
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Aug 27, 2014 01:22
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DOOP posted:Did you vote Sarah Palin for governor? What is your actual opinion on her? Do a majority of Alaskans even like her? No, I did not vote for Sarah Palin for governor and I don't like her stances, policies or a lot of things she has done and am of mixed feelings concerning her quitting the job to do reality TV shows not even half way through her first term. She portrayed herself as anti-corruption but found herself up on corruption charges pretty quick. A lot of people were very pro Palin but it seems that's waned as she's basically pursued a career as a reality TV star and I have no idea why people take her seriously. A more disturbing event was the senate election after she left, there was a Tea Party candidate who'd won the Republican nomination and had police working as private security (in uniform) arrest people at one of his speeches for asking questions, these people were journalists. http://www.adn.com/article/alaska-dispatch-editor-detained-miller-event-updated Lisa Murkowski ran against her former party as an independent and won, probably because she's not a god drat lunatic.
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Aug 28, 2014 05:13
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Aggressive pricing posted:I've always felt that Alaska should be part of Canada, how would you guys feel about being annexed? Beats the hell out of being annexed by Russia.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:10
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Von Humboldt posted:Have to ask, what brought you up? I have family out there. Sorry I don't have any real good advice on connecting with native students culturally, what kind of culture you get is gonna make a huge difference and drat near every town has different culture depending on who settled it and when. I do remember one teacher mentioning endearing himself to the local elders by giving away beaver which he couldn't stand and only killed because it attacked him first and wouldn't go away. One piece of advice I can give is bragging is going to make you look bad, you can talk about the places you've seen, things you've done but don't talk about how great you are at stuff. I was fishing with my family when it hit, I cracked a joke about the law suit taking so long I'd find that money handy when I was in college. I already had gotten a degree when they finally settled the lawsuit at 500 million dollars in the year exxon made 82 billion dollars in net profits, not gross, net and their CEO had a 400 million dollar golden parachute. My village didn't get hit directly with the oil spill but nearby waters did. Commercial and subsistence fishing took a hit and pretty much everything we got out of the ocean became a lot scarcer, shrimp and especially clams. Hell even the jellyfish population took a nosedive, I didn't see much in the way of damages myself, a couple of oily patches and a pair of oil slicked seals who crawled on to land trying to get warm. Indirect ecological and direct economic damage is the effects. Also feel free to answer people's questions about Alaskan stuff, I only made this thread because a few people asked me to, there's gonna be stuff I don't know about but you do. That goes for any Alaska goon. Mr.Pibbleton fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 15:26
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Antivehicular posted:I don't know if this helps on the "cultural insult" level, but I am white as hell and got the same idiot question repeatedly after my family moved from Fairbanks to the lower 48 when I was in middle school. My mom apparently got asked a ton of times if she was going to live in an igloo after she announced she was moving, back in the 70's, to the point that someone asked what color igloo she wanted. (My mother is a special-education teacher, but this was not a question from one of her students. Apparently the entire concept of living in Alaska gives people the IQ of a gelatin mold.) The stupidest question was in regards to surviving a long winter by sacrificing people: "Don't Alaskan Natives put their elderly on ice floes when the winter is really harsh and watch them float away? Not to be cruel, it's super sad for them but it's for the good of the tribe!" "No, because during a starvation situation you can eat a lot of your clothing and your slaves, then the relatives. Why would we send that much meat away during a starvation period?" Incidentally the movie Ravenous made use of the Wendigo myth, but the version of the legend I heard was that in starvation times, people who ate someone and felt terrible about it wouldn't be able to face other people so they'd leave their tribe in sorrow. Once you're away from your tribe you're prone to getting infested by spirits and having your body changed from a human to a more animalistic form(eyes go wider, you avoid people, grow a bunch of hair). Now this can happen to anyone who separates from their tribe for too long, but if you do after eating human flesh you also gain mystical powers, I've heard shapeshifting and super speed but you live an isolationist existence. Killing a Wendigo is bad luck since it is a former tribesman after all, but the personality of the person affects what kind of Wendigo they turn into. Some chase prey towards hunters, or leave food for the tribe, guide lost children back, others like messing with people and playing tricks on them and finally some are overcome with loneliness and kidnap children, force them to eat flesh and turn them into Wendigos for company. I've heard a lot of "Don't get too far from your tribe" mythology but from the stories I've heard cannibalism is regarded as a taboo but at times a necessity. Edit: I just googled Runza, I've never even heard of it.
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Sep 2, 2014 17:09
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Ferdinand the Bull posted:What do you do for fun with other people up there? A lot of people do tons of outdoors stuff, hiking, fishing, boating, kayaking, hunting, gathering rare plants. A lot of going out with people to do stuff and of course RAMPANT alchoholism and we import our marijuana from Seattle (not much in the way of grow ops) so I'm told we've got pretty good weed. The biggest sport in Alaska isn't hockey, it's actually basketball, my theory is that the love of basketball was inspired by the Harlem Globetrotters who visited Alaska decades ago, our Elders still tell tales of it and how basketball games afterwards were mostly doing sleight of hand tricks and fancy trick shots that rarely worked but were very entertaining. I feel like we do share a lot in common culturally, but I'd also say we identify strongly as Alaskans first and Americans second, since we get an impression of extreme ignorance about Alaska ^see igloo based inquiries above. A lot of things I see on TV or in movies I couldn't relate to but we definitely have strong cultural ties and are greatly influenced by music and fashion down there. Much more so in the cities of course but I have heard Native rappers singing in their tribal languages. As for favorite food from where I'm from. God drat I live whole fried clams, they are so good, I've ordered fried clams down here and they bring out those terrible clam strips and it's like finding an abandoned house with a child inside who points at a flickering light bulb hanging from the ceiling and tells you that's the sun. The razor clam population took serious dive after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, I could still dive for clams in the lake (rocky bottom so I just picked them up no digging necessary!) but the fresh water clams don't fry up as good as the seawater razor clams but are really good in a chowder. It's kind of disturbing, but fish and game didn't know there were clams in the lake near town. I've had good fried clams once in the lower 48 and that was in Florence Oregon. Truth be told I suck at clam digging, nobody can tell what the hell I'm doing wrong but it just turns out disastrous in terms of broken shovels and crushed clams when I dig. When it comes to getting food everyone has their strengths and skills.
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Sep 2, 2014 17:25
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Do you have In-N-Out up there? That's really the only one that matters. When I was a little kid we only had one grocery store one gas station and no fast food. Now we have two grocery stores an Asian food and products store and a bulk goods store and we can actually try on clothing before we buy it! Clothing was pretty much ordered from catalogs, except for work clothes which were sold locally. We still have no fast food restaraunts or chains, however we do have the Baja taco truck which was so successful they built a restaurant around it and I've met outside of Cordova gush about how amazing that taco truck was. I'd say our cooking is pretty normal we have a lot more seafood though and people share and trade wild game and stuff they gather a lot. I didn't eat hardly any beef growing up, my dad is hell of a deer hunter and he'd grind up all kinds of animals together. He liked to do 50/50 deer and bear meat to get a good fat combo so we'd have "Beer" meat in our freezer. The Matanuska valley is the only place were Alaskans commercially grow produce and dairy products so a lot of our greens and the vast majority of our fruits are brought in from the lower 48 and are older and overpriced we when get them. I knew an Italian guy who ran a small cannery who'd import a bunch of different types of apples and sell them to folks, they were so fresh and good. Lots of people have small gardens anything that thrives on lots of sunlight and moderate temperatures can do pretty well in Alaska. Bananas aren't super expensive compared to the rest of our food, but yeah, you'd probably think it was super expensive. Grocery stores blew the minds of cold war Russians though, especially when they got to see the stockroom.
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Sep 2, 2014 17:34
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Bum the Sad posted:Some googling reveals that Runza is some kind of plague contained almost entirely within the borders of Nebraska. Well getting to my village is actually doable by car, you have to load up at a ferry then it's six hours on the water (minimum) until you get to another town with access to the highway, there are well established air routes between villages which are technically commercial flights which my dad managed to prove in court when he was accused of hunting with 24 hours of chartering a flight. Most villages are connected by roads but some are only land accessible during the winter when the ground freezes hard enough to drive on. Cordova does have an actual airport in addition to a float plane airline (Cordova Air) so I can get regular flights no problem, however going to Cordova is pretty expensive, when I lived on the East Coast it was cheaper to fly to Australia and Japan than Cordova. I managed to get a 500 dollar round trip to Japan from Anchorage, but doing it from Cordova would've made it over a thousand. I usually drive or boat to my outdoor activities and I don't remember how much the one time I chartered a plane cost. We were supposed to go do a deserted military base out on an island but it turned out to be full of biologists that were doing some kind of documentary on bird colonies. Somebody's pet rabbits had escaped on that island so it was full of bunnies that would just hang out next to you since they didn't have a fear of humans. My brother did charter a helicopter to drop him and some friends off on top of a remote mountain so they could snowboard down it though, no idea how much that cost.
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Sep 2, 2014 19:06
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Bum the Sad posted:Details this sounds bizarre. It's pretty straightforward people would fly around on chartered flights shortly before dusk and mark on their GPS the location of any deer they saw, then early in the morning right around dawn they'd shoot them since the deer wouldn't have moved far since waking up. My father wasn't 100% sure if Cordova Air counted as a commercial airline so he asked two fish and game wardens if it was since it had regular scheduled flights and they wouldn't be directing the pilot where to go if it was ok. The wardens told him yes. Then when he came back from his hunting trip they charged with violating this law and issued him a fine. So my dad went to court over this and the judge was gracious enough to let him submit evidence after the discovery period (Cordova Air's scheduled flights) on the condition he stop calling the District Attorney, "That lying son of a bitch." The prosecution was baffled that anyone could possible mistake Cordova Air with its regularly scheduled flights to towns as a commercial airline since it had only float planes. Then my dad pointed out that Era aviation used nothing but prop planes and then the DA said they don't have wheels therfore they don't count and then they bickered about what the hell constituted a plane and the judge said that the district attorney was doing a fine job up until it came to proving his case and ruled in my dad's favor. Only one of the fish and game guys apologized to my dad afterwards and they both lied on the stand claiming he'd never asked them. Could be worse, one guy got fined for destruction of state property when he was attacked by a bear on his property and ordered to skin it after he shot it. He wasn't a hunter so he didn't do a good job on the hide and he got it thrown out.
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Sep 2, 2014 19:57
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CatchrNdRy posted:Have you seen the movie On The Ice? Do those peoples from the far north think they are harder core than you? Haven't seen it and I've never encountered anyone with that attitude, but then again bragging is seen as a sign of weakness. If you have to say you're good at something, you're not good enough, if you keep your mouth closed and other people say you're good, you're drat good.
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Sep 3, 2014 02:39
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AA is for Quitters posted:How well do the native Alaskan languages hold up with rap? I've heard some Lakota raps, and well...mad props to the artists, because Lakota (or really, anything non indo-european) is not a language designed for rap. What language family are the native alaskan languages in, for that matter? I imagine they're closer to native russian languages than lower-48 native languages. I thought they sounded pretty good but, I'm not a huge rap fan so I don't think I'm a well qualified judge. Growing up they were called the Yupik language family, but there was always some debate about how to classify the different languages, because they have that thing going on where neighboring tribes are mutually intelligible, but the further you get the more different it is. The Yupik language family does extend to Siberian tribes though, not just the people who move back and forth between Russia and Alaska. I remember this one Aleut expert had a problem with the way the basics where being taught, specifically they were teaching primary colors, green, blue purple etc. The problem is in Yupik languages there's only THREE primary colors, light, dark and red. If you want to describe something by color you have to compare it to the color of something else.
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Sep 3, 2014 15:15
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Rabbit Hill posted:Could you talk about how Native Corporations work? It's not quite tribal based, the original corporations were, but shortly after they were founded some collapsed due to mismanagement, embezzlement and corruption. The remaining corporations took over those territories and put together a network of benefits. So there are benefits to being native like subsistence hunting, preferential hiring in the native corps, free medical and dental care at the ANMC hospital in Anchorage(also free to veterans). They send doctors around the state so we'd take advantage of free dental and medical when it showed up. Now you can also get additional benefits if you're descended from a corporate shareholder, for example I'm applying for a scholarship worth 6k a year from Chugach corporation which I qualify for since my Grandmother was a stock owner. Then on top of that shareholders get a stipend and additional benefits and being over 50 grants you elder status, which dependent on the corporation gives you even more benefits. So my dad who's a veteran, elder and a shareholder receives: preferential hiring, subsistence hunting/fishing/gathering rights, free medical/dental(and transportation to facilities for care), firewood, food, possibly political power on the elder council, a monthly stipend, can lease a few acres for 99 years for a one dollar payment, educational assistance and probably a bunch of other stuff that I can't recall at the moment. They also do community improvements, Chugach corporation through the Eyak village sub corp has a free clinic for everyone in Cordova, it's actually really nice, decorated with a complete whale skeleton. All this is funded through the initial money from leasing off the oil rights, which they then invested and used to buy up a good chunk of Alaska, as well as from government contracts. US government uses a lot of native land for a lot of things and they pay us pretty decent for it. So yeah, it sucks that the Native Alaskan population is roughly a tenth of what it was, but compared to the lower 48 Natives, we've got it waaaay better. Fun fact: as an Alaskan Native I have access to federal assistance programs, if you live on a reservation, it's sovereign territory and you don't get federal assistance. So when they mined uranium on Navajo land and due to a lack of mining safety contaminated the groundwater and cancer rates increased tenfold, the white residents had access to federal assistance and the Navajo didn't. The reservation system seems pretty terrible to me.
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Sep 3, 2014 20:54
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PT6A posted:One of my buddies here in Calgary moved down to the States with his family when he was in middle school. Calgary is a city of a million people, located three hours from US border. He still got asked he lived in an igloo. It's an ice house, ISN'T IT COLD, why doesn't it just melt as soon as you go inside, what do you think of real houses? It's like magic to them.
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Sep 4, 2014 20:49
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PT6A posted:Oh, and I forgot to mention: one of the people who asked this was his teacher. Probably with a non-native Alaskan, I don't know what res life is like, it seems like it would be a huge cultural difference. Aside from the art and dance, those are pretty similar as far as I can tell, mythology is bit divergent as are the totems. Nanook or polar bear isn't that popular down south(that guy from Alabama would call me that sometimes). I've also heard of teachers saying that Alaskans live in igloos, that Alaska isn't a state and that Texas is larger than Alaska. It's things like that which reinforce the feeling that I'm an Alaskan first and an American second. That and I can get away with calling people "sunlanders" and nobody calls me out on it.
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Sep 5, 2014 05:30
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Aryan Jesus posted:Aren't you the one from the land of the 24 hour sun? It gets dark here every night Thank you for remembering that, most people just remember the thirty days of night and forget about the light of the midnight sun. PT6A posted:Yeah, but on the other hand, it gets light every day. Seasonal Affective Disorder(such a good acronym!), does affect a lot of people who come to Alaska but if you're born here you're more used to it and if you eat a more native diet you get a ton of vitamin D. One of the nicknames for Natives was "meat eaters" but they needed the vitamin D from animals. For the light periods, we just have curtains in our homes, that seems to work. I think just being there and getting used to it helps a lot because I spent worked in Japan for a bit and during the summer it freaked me out how early it got dark there. Good fish selection though.
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Sep 5, 2014 16:12
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AlbieQuirky posted:Do you hate it when people call you Inuit? I know a guy who is Yup'ik and that drives him crazy. Well it turns out that Inuit is the European term for the northern tribes, so in British English I'd be an Aleutian Inuit even though Inuit is its own tribe in the Yup'ik terminology. So within certain classification systems we'd be Inuits. Just like how in the south Mountain Dew is a Coke; but yeah I hate being called that or Eskimo. Some people like Indians, others hate it, some people are ok with Natives, other want Native Alaskan, most everyone hates being called the wrong tribe and some elders prefer "featherheads" and while we may wish they weren't so racist, we still respect their wisdom.
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Sep 5, 2014 19:02
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Rhymenoserous posted:I don't think I've ever called a Mt. Dew a coke. There is a tendency to refer to every classic cola flavored drink coke though (I.e. Pepsi/Coke/RC) I heard about someone bitching about getting a coke when they wanted a seven up and had asked for a coke regional term meanings can be pretty varied. Also Alaskans often have trouble getting Mt Dew flavors other than original or diet, I think for like a decade people couldn't buy livewire in Anchorage and code red is only occasionally available.
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Sep 6, 2014 00:19
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Vegetable posted:Have you seen the movie Into the Wild? It's about a college grad who takes a road trip to Alaska to find himself and winds up dying there. How do you feel about people like that? Do you kinda sorta empathize with their romantic ideas of Alaska? Von Humboldt posted:Pretty much everyone I have spoken to about McCandless feels he was an idiot. This state is beautiful, and worthy of its moniker of "Last Frontier." Even the commute between Wasilla and Anchorage - through some of the most built up parts of the state - gives you a view of some beautiful country. Regardless of where you live in state, you're never really more than an hour away from being the only person around for miles. Well you spoke pretty accurately for this Alaskan, good people who do the right thing still die out here and we don't have much pity for those who throw their lives away through idiocy. PopeCrunch posted:There's just something about it. I lived in Juneau for a year and would give just about anything to go back. It's paradise. Everyone I know who grew up in Juneau hates that town, if you do go back you might want to try living somewhere else, just saying.
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Sep 7, 2014 04:50
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Communocracy posted:Are prices for groceries and other basic stuff really inflated compared to say, Washington State? I'm in eastern Washington right now and I love how cheap food is here, the more remote the village the more expensive food and heating was. You have to apply every year for the Alaska Permanent Dividend Fund, but you can get a percentage of the fund's growth every year. I'd answer the last question but I haven't been up there since I was a little kid. Canadians were always way friendlier when they found out we were Alaskans though.
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Sep 11, 2014 18:31
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Faerunner posted:Hello Alaska Goons! I was born up there! Not in an igloo, though. And my parents only went up there to live for a year and then came back to New York (I hate New York, it's terrible). I have an awesome picture of my mom standing on the porch of their house looking over this gorgeous view near Fairbanks. I keep thinking I should go back and see some stuff but don't know what I would do - cruise? Hike/camp? Charter flights? I'd say cruises (can't recommend a specific one) you see a bunch of different villages and get fairly close to glaciers that way, some of them stop in Anchorage and you can get on this train and go up to Denali national park and see Mt Denali (or McKinley as some call it). Checking out native art, seeing frontier artifacts, buying some dubiously legal whale anatomy, all part of the Alaska tourist experience. Chena hotsprings near Fairbanks is a great spot to go to if you ever get back up there, it's a pretty nice hot springs and it's neat to go to it during the winter because you can stand around and have icicles hanging off your body while still being warm. It will be full of Japanese people though, it's such a popular tourist spot with them since you can watch the Aurora Borealis that the locals can give directions to it in Japanese. Alcoholism and sexual assault are pretty rampant, Alaska's first state lottery had the profits going to battered women's shelters and was won by a convicted rapist. Who was then beaten bloody in a food court and subsequently donated his winnings to helping out victims of sexual assault. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/01/13/59638/sex-offender-who-won-alaska-lottery.html
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Sep 13, 2014 19:12
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Faerunner posted:
If you stop in Cordova, try the river rafting tour that takes you through a maze of icebergs, it's pretty neat. I used to work there as a tote.
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Sep 14, 2014 23:46
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Fun fact: The subway five dollar foot long ad campaign was actually six dollar footlongs in Alaska and the signs had six fingers.
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Sep 17, 2014 04:28
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varna posted:Another fun fact: milk is 12 dollars a gallon in Barrow because it, and everything else, has to be flown in on jets. How do groceries get in to town down there in Cordova? Through the milk run, on the more time sensitive perishables, it's a series of flights connecting Ketchikan, Juneau, Cordova, Yakutat, and Anchorage, we have two flights a day out of the "Mudhole Smith"(record holder for number of crashes survived except for the last one) airport. We do get regular shipments via ferry though so it's not as bad as Barrow, so our food prices while significantly higher than the lower 48's, are nowhere near as bad as some of the more remote towns. Also I thought I'd mention this Native Alaskan game coming out in November. http://store.steampowered.com/app/295790/ Never alone looks pretty good and I'm totally getting it.
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Sep 17, 2014 20:43
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Wasteland 2 came out, so it took me a bit to get back to this thread.I Drink Stove Oil posted:Are you going to be a Real Alaskan(tm) and blow your PFD at Best Buy or Cabella's? Maybe at Mattress Ranch? It varies, some of the people with higher blood quantums are ashamed of their tribal links and don't want the association, others with lower amounts are way more active in native culture and corporation activities. The thing about the native corporations was that while natives do have preferential hiring status, they'll work with anyone to get the job done. A lot of the native corporations were initially run/managed by non-natives out of necessity since a lot of the tribal leaders didn't have well developed financial skills. The corporations are integrated with a lot of federal projects including military and have been so for a very long time. I'm actually very optimistic about the native corporations improving lives for Alaskan Natives AND Alaskan locals as they continue to operate. Although knowing something about the terrible stuff that's happened to the native population within living memory it's kind of amazing our elders aren't an angry bunch. About 15 years ago I knew an elder up in Fairbanks who could understand her tribal language, but couldn't speak it because when she was taken away from her tribe to get a white education they beat her every time she spoke it and is so traumatized that she's unable to utter a single word. She was going to college at the time, very happy and upbeat lady despite living in Fairbanks. Just remembered my dad telling me about my aunt not wanting to eat wild game and only buying her food at the store for a bit because "She wasn't Native, oh no!" she got a lot more accepting of it after adopting my cousin, he looks native as all hell. Was even on a travel show one episode which was hosted by two of the guys from Saved By The Bell. Mr.Pibbleton fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 20:02
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fuzzy_logic posted:To resurrect this a little, this is part of a fascinating trend of how different cultures define color: http://www.wired.com/2012/06/the-crayola-fication-of-the-world-how-we-gave-colors-names-and-it-messed-with-our-brains-part-i/ Oh yeah and when two different languages combine it can mess with the primary colors, I forget which African language is a combination of two different tribes with different primary colors, but they actually LOST the term for yellow and the expression they use is, "red like a banana." Was talking about about this with a Japanese guy about Japanese about different primary colors and it blew his mind when he realized that in Japanese they describe a traffic signal turning green as "Aoni naru" which actually means it turned blue.
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Sep 21, 2014 20:11
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Yeah, I'm getting it!
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Oct 3, 2014 22:26
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Been awhile but, Never Alone(Kisima Ingitchuna) is out and it's on sale http://store.steampowered.com/app/295790/
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Nov 20, 2014 01:26
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I Drink Stove Oil posted:How long do think the current village model will last? When I look at place like Kwethluk or Wales or Crooked Creek, I can't see the lasting as viable communities based on the massive costs to keep each community supplied with modern infrastructure. Powerplants and electric grids are almost a million dollars each and burn diesel, water and sewer systems cost 5 million plus are very expensive to run if there's lift stations involved and expensive maintenance, roads are a million dollars a mile due to gravel costs, plus mobilization costs for construction are ungodly high, schools run about 25 million at least for places like Koliganek and the state is on the hook build several more due to the Kasayulie case, plus whatever health clinic and village city offices cost to build and maintain. Then there's housing, mostly paid for by HUD, and those run 250-300k each due to the remoteness of the bush communities. Looking at Newtok, the estimated cost to move to the new site of Mertarvik is at least 100 million dollars. 100 million dollars to recreate a village for 350 people is a steep price. Then you have operational costs, most of which aren't covered by user fees or any tax at the local level, since there's effectively no economy or tax base in the communities. The native corporations actually do a lot to get money out to the villages and have programs that get healthcare professionals out there. They do a lot, but severe poverty is pretty endemic in the remote areas. Cordova is doing ok since it has the fishing industry and timber to sustain it, but the town used to be a lot richer back when it had an army base and the rails from the copper river mine. The state of the villages is pretty depressing and the suicide rate up there is pretty drat high. Food prices are so high that subsistence hunting/fishing is pretty drat necessary out there which is why climate change is a huge concern. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the remote communities disappear by being absorbed by other communities or just having so many people move to the cities. I don't know how the Russian villages are handling it either.
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Nov 20, 2014 06:42
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I Drink Stove Oil posted:
I certainly hope they'll help, but a lot of time government assistance tends to be short sighted and not address long term problems. I'm afraid I don't know enough about the bush to really talk with much authority on it, I've talked to people from out there but I'm from Cordova. Cordova's corporation is the Eyak Village corporation so I've had no dealings with Chugachmiut.
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Nov 20, 2014 07:31
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Grand Prize Winner posted:This might be kinda far from your home town but you'd know a shitton more about it than me even so. I've got an internship opportunity in Sitka, AK in the spring. Is there anything you can tell me about the place? Never been down there myself, but I know it's small town and it rains a lot, most of the stuff to do is probably going to be outdoors, it's in the archipelago though so if you've got a few days off you can go check out some islands nearby. Don't think it gets that cold down there, just invest in some good rain gear and you should be fine. If you have any questions about anything there try to find an old retired guy who hangs out drinking coffee in a building related to the question, he'll tell you everything you want to know and then some.
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Nov 21, 2014 04:41
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fuzzy_logic posted:Pibbs, have you seen the arctic episode of Human Planet? It's this cool series by the same people who did Blue Planet but about people in different climates / extreme living situations and how they adapt. These are the episodes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00llpvp/episodes/guide there's some clips there, and they air on BBc America sometimes. Oh man I've never heard of ice rush gathering, that sounds super freaky.
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Nov 23, 2014 17:35
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Merry Christmas everybody. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVF6DQGh8Ic
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Dec 24, 2014 18:48
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Aethersphere posted:I am just wondering if Alaskan Natives suffered from a residential school system like the First Nations here did up until the 60s? Well the school I went to was pretty drat good(we had programming classes and 586's in the early 90's!). However a lot of kids were taken away from their families to be "educated" with the assumption they'd come back as doctors and engineers but instead they were beaten every time they spoke their native language so more than a few elders can understand their tribe but they can't actually speak in that tongue any more. Now we have a lot of programs working on preserving the Yup'ik languages and making sure kids know it. Aethersphere posted:What are historical relations like between Native and non-Native populations? Going by my personal experiences I'd say... White/Native relations are pretty good, Asian/Native are also good, probably because there is some resemblance between the two, Indian/Native mutual bemusement, Hispanic/Native seems to be just fine, Black/Native seems to range from pretty racist against Black people to worship of the Harlem Globetrotters. Aethersphere posted:Hi Alaskgoons, a Calgary dweller here living down in your rightful homeland of Canada. I can sympathize with the igloo thing - I've been asked all kinds of weird poo poo by my in-laws when I go visit them in the UK. The best thing is just to make up bullshit stories. I like to tell them that we are given a companion moose at birth who stays with us and teaches us the ways of the world until we reach adulthood, at which point they return to the wilderness. We will never betray the true Wu-Tang secret to the Sunlanders.
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Dec 25, 2014 21:18
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