Kotlik day 5

Today, has been filled with tradition and experience. It began last night with the convening of a youth conference designed to both promote the mental heath of the village youths but also to support the transmission of traditional knowledge. Youth and elders from 5 different villages boated or flew here to Kotlik for a weekend of fun and learning. Last night a circle was formed and the each of the elders addressed the convening youths and adult observers and talked about tradition, learning, being self sufficient, merging the old ways with the new, and the importance of learning from the elders and learning how to be a yup’ik. The messages were quite inspiring and they had wise things to say and impart though some of the kids, being kids, seemed not to care and spent their time secretly on they’re cell phones. Kids these days; just don’t appreciate their elders. After the elders talked, the Kotlik kids preformed traditional Yup’ik dances. It was quite neat. Each dance tells a story, they can be about fishing, hunting, myth, or anything really. This group has only been performing together for about a year but they were quite good. They said it’s their way of connecting to the culture and trying to learn the language, which I think is great and applaud them for it. For several of the dances many of the adults actually got up and joined in. It was a great time and the community had a lot fun. After the Yup’ik dances several of the kids got up and preformed some break dancing, they were fantastic and you could tell they practiced a lot. The whole thing started breaking up and people started leaving around 1am, so it was a late night. I should also say that before all this, I joined the organizers for a potlatch and had moose stew, some more salmon, native vegetables (we would probably call them weeds, these were things picked from the tundra but they were pretty good, one kinda of looked like parsley, it wasn’t but looked like it, and another one was very bitter and curled in a spiral shape), Eskimo ice cream (Crisco and vegetable oil whipped, with flakes of salmon, and then mixed with some sort of berry) it was surprisingly delicious, and of course flat bread which was even more delicious.

Today I met with two elders (they lady I told you about and the monolingual speaker gentleman) and did an hour recording with them; it was fantastic! I elicited the words for some native animals, birds, fish, and then the body parts. They also discussed things in Yugtun the whole time, I have no idea what they were saying but it was beautiful. It was a great session, I had some technical difficulties I regret to say, but now that that’s happened everything else should run smoothly (knock on wood). Fortunately, they both agreed to meet with me again tomorrow for some more recording and elicitation. Basically, fantastic!

This evening I was introduced to the muke (steam bath); this was the traditional way of bathing and cleaning yourself. Basically it’s a small room with a wood stove covered in stones and when it gets hot enough you start pouring hot water over the rocks which creates steam and intense heat. And I mean intense, it get to be about 2-300˚F and it hurts to breath. You pour water on the rocks a couple times and sit and enjoy it for a few minutes then leave the room to an outer chamber to cool off and relax then repeat as much as you want. In the end you use washbasins to wash up, repeat the stream for those not here anymore and then it’s over. Cleansing, relaxing, exfoliating, relaxing, and really hot; you have to learn how to breath though because it burns. During this I learned all about the Yup’ik rites of passage into adult hood, about the traditional migratory subsistence living and types of houses, and a few more words and phrases mainly dealing with the muke (muk means ‘water’ by the way). Afterwards I felt super relaxed and clean and it was quite the experience!

That was basically my day: festivities, fun work, and relaxing. Another busy day tomorrow, and then on Tuesday I might be heading down river to another village for a day. I also hope to get several more hours of recordings this week (and hope to go hunting at some point while I’m here) but we’ll see what happens. It should be an exciting week all in all.

Piuraa!!