Blog Entry #8: Contemporary Alaskan Writers

For this blog post, I will write about three of the modern Alaskan writers with pieces in our Alaska: The Last New Land book and how what they write reflects a modern version of Alaska.

The first author is Kim Rich, who wrote the book Johnny's Girl, an excerpt of which is called "Shattered Dreams" and begins on page 695 of The Last New Land.  The piece is about the Good Friday earthquake that hit southern Alaska in 1964.  I chose this story because my mother was in that earthquake.  Her father was a doctor for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and their family had been moved to Alaska 6 months earlier and settled in Anchorage.  My mother had just turned 11 years old when the earthquake struck.  The experience was so traumatic to her that she mentally blocked out most of what happened.  She and her sister were setting the table for dinner when the earthquake hit and the last thing she remembered was screaming while she watched the kitchen table shake so much that the juice from a bowl of beets spilled and trickled down the table leg.  When I was a little girl, the story of the earthquake utterly fascinated me and I begged her to tell me everything she knew and remembered about it over and over.  I guess I was a weird child because at bedtime I also begged her to tell me all about the Mount Saint Helens eruption and other disasters she experienced!

My own interests in the 1964 earthquake aside, I think this piece of writing is a good example of modern Alaska.  The earthquake devastated Anchorage, Valdez, and other towns in the area, and over a hundred people were killed while many, many buildings were destroyed.  If the earthquake had occurred 500 years earlier, the area would have been much less densely populated and there would not have been any large buildings, only homes of the Alaska Native people.  The earthquake undoubtedly would have terrified them, but it probably would have had much less of an impact on their lives and settlements since they would not have had much in the way of construction that could have been damaged.

 

 Earthquake damage of an Anchorage street.  Photo by the USGS and found on THIS website called Vibration Data.

The second writing is an excerpt from The Man Who Married a Bear by John Straley, which begins on page 702.  This piece is only a couple of pages long and confused me because there is no mention of either marriage or bears, but it is nonetheless a good example of modern Alaska.  It describes modern day Juneau and Anchorage, and states what I have heard many Alaskans complain:  that Anchorage and Juneau are not really Alaskan cities and have more in common with Washington, Oregon, and California than with Alaska.  I do agree that there is more disconnect than normal between these cities and smaller places in Alaska, perhaps because of the large populations, the number of people who are not Alaskans, and simply how metropolitan and commercial driven the two places are.  I am reluctant to call these locations un-Alaskan and think a person's actions and knowledge of Alaska are more indicative of their residence status.  As an example, my husband has lived in Alaska his entire life and grew up in Anchorage, but has never gone camping, fishing, hunting, lived in a dry cabin, gone on a snow machine, and has very little knowledge of Alaskan history or Alaska Native groups.  There are people who have only been here for a couple of months who probably have more of an Alaskan spirit than he does!

The final piece is the poem "Progress" by Karen Randley and is on page 705.  The poem is about the author's return visit to Fairbanks some time after she moved away.  She lived in Fairbanks for six years in the late 1970s.  In the poem, the woman implies that it was very difficult to live in Fairbanks the first time, and she left because she couldn't stand it anymore.  When she returned, Fairbanks has changed so much and was so un-Alaskan that she had to go home early.  I have lived in Fairbanks for 7 years now and must admit that this poem made me bristle up in defensiveness a bit.  The author writes that, "every corner had a shopping mall selling pistachio nuts and gourmet delites from the lower 48."  Aside from that being patently untrue- Fairbanks only has one shopping mall, the teeny tiny Bentley Mall which is more commonly known as "Bentley Hall" because it's so piddly compared to most malls- I just don't think her evaluation of Fairbanks is fair.  How "real Alaskan" of an experience someone has depends so much on what they want and do.  Plus, people have been hauling supplies to Alaska for centuries now since we cannot grow flour, sugar, and the like to sustain ourselves!  Bringing in food and delicacies from outside Alaska is hardly a new practice.

Blog Entry #7: Sharing of Culture

The writing prompt for this week is how different cultures in Alaska coexist and share traditions and values.  This is a very interesting subject to me because I've always been fascinated by anthropology, and it seems unlikely for people of multiple cultures to spend time together without some cultural interchange to occur.

The first thing that came to my mind is the many Alaska Native people who are Christians.  Many religious conversions occurred when Russian Orthodox (and later American) missionaries came to Alaska with the express goal of converting people. This was hardly a gentle process much of the time and in many cases wreaked havoc on traditional cultures with children being separated from parents and sent off to far away schools and forbade to speak their own language.  I cannot help but admit that I consider the presence and impact of the missionaries to have had overall a very negative influence and in general am quite opposed to missionary work anywhere.  It's also hardly an example of two cultures coexisting- more like one culture (the Christian one) steamrolling over the Alaska Native ones.  That being said, I find it unbelievably presumptuous and callous to imply that modern day Alaska Native people who are Christians are in any way taken advantage of by their religion, should not be Christian, or are somehow less Christian because of the painful history of Christianity in Alaska.  I think that Native Alaskan people today who are religious chose it on their own and are probably benefited by the loving community and hopefully the sense of spiritual peace that they get from their belief in Christianity.  This is I think a prime example of how different cultures have shared traditions and values in Alaska.

One of the most beautiful expressions of this sharing to me is the practice of Selaviq, the primarily Yup'ik version of a Russian Orthodox Christmas tradition that is practiced in Western Alaska.  Entire villages get in on the fun of Selaviq.  When night falls, people carry a large star around to different houses in the village and sing songs about the birth of Jesus.  The people in each house then invite the singers in, feed them and give out candy, then join them as they go to the next house.  For more information about Selaviq, check out this article from Alaska Magazine.  It would be foolish to say that the people participating in this now centuries old tradition are oppressed by their religion.  They have taken a Russin Orthodox tradition and made it their own, which I think is magnificent.  Religion aside, Selaviq sounds like a wonderful way to nurture peaceful and loving relationships within the community.

 Celebration of Selaviq in Unalaska.  Photo by PRI's the World and found on Flickr.

For an example from our readings, I immediately thought of the excerpt, "The Changing Times" from Frances Lackey Paul's book Katahnah.  The excerpt is a short one and details how a young married Tlingit couple who are from the same clan seek shelter with the chief of their clan.  In the traditional Tlingit culture, marrying someone from the same clan is taboo.  One must find a person from a different Tlingit clan to marry because it is considered incestuous to marry someone from the same clan.  A person is always the same clan as their mother and being in the same clan as someone does not necessarily mean that they are related genetically.  It is cultural incest rather than biological incest.  However, tradition was that if a couple from the same clan married, they would be put to death.  In the excerpt, the clan chief decides not to put the couple to death.  The chief of another clan argues with him that they should be killed because brothers and sisters should not marry, but the chief replies that the couple has no blood relationship and points out that if they killed the couple, it would bring them huge troubles from the white people.  He says, "Perhaps the law of the white man is better than our law.  We are willing to try the white man's way.  The young people will have a home in my house." (page 660). 

What sparked my interest with this story and why I think of it as an example of cultures mingling is certainly not the chief's line about the white people's laws perhaps being better.  Issues of murdering the couple aside, I would be extremely reluctant to ever say anything like that.  What interested me though is that the chief differentiated between the traditional Tlingit belief of what qualifies as incest and the white people's belief of what qualifies as incest, and that he seemed to believe that the white definition had some legitimacy when arguing with the other chief.  I think this is a prime example of one culture's beliefs infiltrating another.  If he did not really believe the white definition held water at all, he would not have used it as an arguing point and would have considered it ridiculous, like if someone said that it was incestuous for two people with curly hair to marry.

All in all, I find the sharing of cultural beliefs in Alaska to be a fascinating subject.  While I deeply lament the huge loss of culture Alaska Native groups have had to endure, I have a difficult time casting aspersions on adopted beliefs that lead to love and harmony within the community.

Blog Entry #6: Wilderness and Me

Here is another post about the Alaskan wilderness and how I interact with it.  Sad to say, as much as I admire the wilderness here, I do not have much to do with it.  My husband and I live in Fairbanks, a town of about 30,000 people, and it's completely possible to live here without having much interaction with the wilderness if this is how someone chooses to live.  As much as I admire the wilderness and find it beautiful, I am just not very rugged or outdoorsy.  We do like to roam around during the summer and pick blueberries, but that's pretty much it.  When I was a kid, I loved to go camping, and wanted to go as an adult, but then I started reading about bear maulings and chickened out!  I don't even really go hiking over uneven terrain because I'm so clumsy that I end up watching where I'm walking instead of looking at the lovely scenery!

All in all, it's definitely true that I don't interact much with Alaska's wilderness.  However, that does not mean I don't value it or have no interest in it.  I love to read books about Alaska from the warmth and safety of my living room, and am very much in favor of protecting the wilderness and wildlife here.  It seems to me that a lot of people romanticize and underestimate the power of natural Alaska, which is something I do not believe that I am guilty of.  While I find it amazing and beautiful, I know that it is very difficult to eke out an existence in secluded areas and that it can be very dangerous, even for people that do have a great deal of experience with the outdoors.

The fact that I've lived in Alaska for 7 years now probably makes my lack of experience with Alaska's wilderness rather surprising.  There are probably a lot of tourists who have only spent a week or so here that have experienced more than I have!  I chalk it up to: 1) I grew up in a family that greatly valued the indoors.  We moved around a lot, but always lived comfortably in suburbia.  Hiking trips and fishing and hunting were never, ever part of our lives, though I did go camping every year with aunts and uncles until I was about 10.  2) My aforementioned clumsiness and appreciation for comfort.  3)  My husband, who has lived in Alaska his entire life, has just about as much to do with the outdoors as me.  He certainly doesn't dislike it by any means and feels pretty much the same way about it as me, he just hasn't had much experience! 

So, there you have it.  I am basically an indoor creature, but with an appreciation for the outdoors.

 

The place that I mostly view Alaska's wilderness from- the inside of a cozy cabin!  Picture from Trip Advisor and taken by user ctimm1202.