Tired of the "someone should do something" approach to the villages

I read this opinion piece in the Tundra Drums today, and it was frustrating from the outset. Not because a lot of it isn't true, but because it's the least original thing to say about villages.

"We've entered the Native Dark Age. Everything that used to be good, strong, and healthy about Alaska Native villages is gone or fading."

It's the same perspective and complaint I've heard again and again and again. How bad things are, how bad they're going to be. How good things used to be (only to be interspersed with how bad things used to be.)

But this fatalistic view is a big part of the problem. And telling everyone a single, small thing they should do to start fixing everything wrong is enormously unhelpful. Why will having talking circles be the beginning of a revolution? Maybe it will be, but you're hanging an awful lot on something that is easy to say failed if it hits a small snag (and doesn't actually address most of the real issues in the first place.)

It's also enormously short-sighted. Instead of being frustrated with young people who text, why not embrace the new skills and technology being learned? Why not take exactly those things and use them as a tool to improve the community?

The Alaska Native people of history were experts of adaptation. They ability to take and create "new" technology, like halibut hooks, unique stands for whaling Turnagain Arm, and, eventually, steel and the written word - I'm proud of the history of entire cultures not only accepting change, but welcoming it. It's in our blood to adapt to whatever the world gives us, we just need to reach in and own it.

"The Fourth of July used to be so much fun, but now I don't even care when it arrives; same with Christmas, Easter, and other holidays. Long ago, when the elders were here, I used to be crazy about the holidays; now I'm not."

The irony here is, how long have the Native people of this land celebrated the 4th of July as a day of independance? Why was this change in culture acceptable - and why are new changes unacceptable? An old "good" thing about Native ways seems to be the celebration of Easter. But how long has this tradition been going on? A mere breath in the life of Alaska Native cultures.

I admit to fighting despair when it comes to culture. I admit to being afraid that I'll never know my full protocol, and to missing how the 4th of July used to be. You can't look at our history honestly, and not also feel a great deal of sadness, and grief.

But it is more frustrating to me to hear the same complaints and same negative view of entire cultures said over and over again in not very new ways. Because guess what? It doesn't help a damn thing.

I gaurantee you the most heroic, most respected, most loved Alaska Native leaders in history were not the ones who pointed out the wrong, but lead the change. I gaurantee you they were the leaders who inspired youth to be better, who adapted to the situaton as best they could, who fought what wrong they saw with all their might, but didn't give up on living when they lost the overwhelming battles. In fact, I could name a few dozen Native leaders in the past few decades alone who have been this kind of leader.

Here's a thought: instead of telling the young cousin in the village there's no more "moral" people where he lives (which has to include him), encourage the growth of the morality he has in him. Instead of making a sweeping comment about there being no hard workers left in the village, come up with an original idea about jobs in the village (and I know more than a few "hard workers" left in the village to discount that generalization).

Instead of telling a village full of people that the last people with good hearts are almost dead, I challenge you to find their good hearts. They do have good hearts, and it is more sad to me that you're missing out on that than anything.

You'll get a lot of people agreeing with you when you talk about all the bad. But you'll get a lot more done when you help grow the good.

I've met, talked with, and loved too many good-hearted, loving, smart, capable, excellent Native people both rural and urban to believe the sweeping judgements and despairing totality of this article. And they are not the exception.

While you're praying for a miracle to change everything, I challenge you to also pray for God to open your eyes. To believe there is a great deal of hope and brilliance and good things yet to come out of rural Alaska is not naivety, or ignorance, or futile - it is the only way things are actually going to change.

Someone certainly should do something, and that someone is me. I'm doing something. Daily, I'm surrounded by Native people who are also commited to doing something.

As trite or cliche or used as all the terms may be, there's a reason they're said so much. If you're not part of the solution, and you're not actively engaged in supporting the good things going on, get the hell out of my way. You do no one any good with your tired complaints, and I have a lot of work to do.

_

Obama Administration in Rural Alaska

I know, I know, this is kinda late. But I was perusing Tundra Drums, and thought this was a pretty good article about the members of Obama's cabinet who visited rural Alaska recently. Interesting to hear their take on local issues. I liked what the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development remarked on:

Toward the end of the day, as the secretaries boarded their plane, a reporter asked Donovan if he thought federal money was being wasted in Alaska.

“I haven’t seen any wasted money today,” he said emphatically. “This is a critical, critical resource for these folks here and we’re going to do everything we can to take care of the needs we’ve seen here today.”

The image above is from this booklet, which does a pretty fair job of spelling out some of the "problems and solutions" in rural Alaska.

Rumblings in rural Alaska

Alaska Native leaders ARE speaking out!

It's been a bit discouraging to NOT hear a lot of Native leader voices in public (I'm hearing many in private) about Palin's visit to Western Alaska recently. I've been wondering if that's because they are not speaking up, or because they are not being asked. Maybe both?

But the new Anchorage Daily News rural blog, "The Village" had a few bits from two Native leaders, Myron Naneng, the president of the Association of Village Council Presidents, and Brad Garness, Alaska Inter-Tribal Council director. It was in a post about the Citgo fuel program for the villages. I'm glad to see at least two Native leaders speaking out about this publicly (and encourage MORE Native leaders who have strong, well-reasoned opinions who ARE talking behind closed doors to open those doors up.)

There also followed a big response from the governor's office that ADN reporter Kyle Hopkins asked. The governor's response begins:

The Palin administration acted before a crisis manifested itself in Western Alaska, is acting during this difficult winter and is laying the groundwork for improving conditions in the future.

It was hard to read on when it was all a defensive, big lie right from the start. But it does go on and on.

The "acted before" refers to the $1200 check Alaskans got last year. Despite the fact that MANY people said $1200 was not going to do much if the problem itself wasn't taken care of, and quickly (and how many "we-told-you-sos" could have been commissioned since then?

The biggest frustration is that there is still nothing about the BIG CORE PROBLEMS. The idea of fisheries problems is dimissed completely. Half of the people they are trying to get "fisheries jobs" HAD fisheries jobs! Because of laws, restrictions, etc. they can't make a living doing that! The fisheries problem was not some natural disaster - it is a problem that could be addressed by lawmakers. What's more, it's also not news that it's a problem. Fisherman have been part of the David and Goliath battle for decades now (and guess who's David?)

Regardless of the politics, regardless of the governor, regardless of the current national situation - it is frustrating on a very personal level to see more efforts going towards band-aids on the symptoms, not the cause. Even more frustrating for many of the "solutions" to be catalysts for further community devastation.

The causes are complex, detailed, and you may have to get your hands dirty to make a difference, but it would not be so frustrating if I didn't believe it was possiible to turn around.

In other rural Alaska news:

I don't know what I was paying attention to during this thing, but apparently I missed this whole exchange. The Alaska Dispatch posted the new Palin rural affairs advisor's response to Nick Tucker's letter on March 6 (I'm WAY behind on this...)

There was also a bit of a fluff piece from Indian Country Today about Palin's rural advisor (John Muller) which doesn't offer much of substance - more a job announcement really, and only gets a bit down to actually examining the record on the last few paragraphs. It was mostly taken from the Anchorage Daily News article in February... a little strange.

We need more projects like this

No, not ideas like a bear catching an energy bar. Though I'd pay to see someone figure out how to get that to swim up the river...

Spotted this in Indian Country Today. It's an energy bar called a Tanka Bar - made by Native people, created using a modified traditional process (only five ingredients!) and becoming quite successful in a pretty short time. From the ICT article:

"...We worked with government, major corporations and those projects always come and go and we started studying how we could develop a brand or product where the raw materials were coming from the community and the community itself was really marketing it, to really look at how wealth is created in a modern environment and how we could build a company that was sort of along the lines of a Ben and Jerry’s, a highly environmentally responsible company that would really impact society in a positive way,” Tilsen said.

Not only are they producing something from the Native community, they are also trying to build an "environmentally responsible" company. But they were also looking at the health impacts of the community. The answer being this traditional food, made in a modern way, that could be a real solution for this community.

There have been many ideas, and even beginnings, of products like this here in Alaska, and I would love to see more.

Rural blog at Anchorage Daily News

I was surprised, and pleased, when I got an e-mail going around that there was a new blog up at the Anchorage Daily News called The Village - about "life and politics in rural Alaska." I wondered how long I'd missed out on it, and found out I got word the very day they started trying to get the word out (Friday) - so it's brand spankin' new.

So far there's some VPSO news, a bit about the 1A and 2A basketball teams in town, crazy village snow pictures, and some other interesting bits. I'm very interested to see where this goes. It's hard to find out news about rural Alaska, especially on a regular basis. You have to visit a bunch of different papers, and a lot of the places (including most that I'm interested in) don't have anything online.

I asked ADN Reporter Kyle Hopkins about it, and he was kind enough to answer me. He said it's something they've been wanting to to do for a long time. His answers below:

Why did ADN start this blog? What need did you see?

It was kind of a natural thing to do. I'd moved from covering City Hall in Anchorage to covering more rural affairs stories, which is what I've always wanted to do at the paper, and didn't really have a place to blog about it. Many of the stories I work on now are a little off topic for the politics blog, and it made sense to start a new page/site.

So, that's more traditional side of it: Blogging news as part of our coverage of a beat, or topic at the paper.

Then the thing that hopefully will make this blog a little different is that -- as much as we can -- we want to be posting info/pictures/video that people send us from around the state.

It could take time to establish that connection. But I really like the idea of people being able to go to one place and maybe listening to an interview with someone from Western Alaska, and seeing photos of a hunt from another village, and reading a letter from another.

How do you see this blog being used? To connect rural people? To let urban people know what's going on in rural Alaska?

Hopefully both. A way for people to tell the rest of the state: "This is what's happening in my community. This is what life in my community looks like."

New Anchorage Daily News Village Blog

Hey, when did this start?

The Village

From the little blip about it on the side:

The Village is a Daily News blog about life and politics in rural Alaska. Its main author is ADN reporter Kyle Hopkins. Come here for breaking news on village issues, plus interviews, videos and photos. But that's just part of the story. We want to feature your pictures, videos and stories, too. Think of The Village as your bulletin board. E-mail us anything you’d like to share with the rest of Alaska -- your letters to the editor, the photos of your latest hunt or video of your latest potlatch. (We love video.)

Could be very cool... keep you updated.