Kotlik Day 6

Day 6, I have been here almost a full week and it has been great! I worked with the two elders again for a little over an hour, and also had one of the guys from the Kuskokwim area sit in and comment on things. Its quite interesting, so while the grammar seems to be pretty similar between the two dialects, which is expected, the words differ to great extents, especially the words for the native plants and wildlife. Additionally, it seems some of the phonetics and phonology differs and the Kotlik dialect may have more vowels, but I don’t have enough data yet to back up that claim, it’s just a musing right now. After my elicitation session, we then listened to one of the elders talk about her life and she told some fantastic stories, like when she was out deep sea fishing as a young girl and they caught so many fish that the water started to pour into the boat and they had to toss some of the fish back. She has lived a long, eventful life and has so much to tell and so much knowledge to pass on. It’s wonderful! The rest of the day I’ve really just been joking around with friends and talking about the Yup’ik way of life.

So Kotlik is one of the last five villages in the United States to continue hunting with spears. Its pretty neat and I got a hold one of the spears today. One friend might be making some new spears in the next week or two and has said I can check it out and see how its done, I should say these are not the type of spears you’re probably thinking about. So the spears are thrown with a little handheld launcher and are used for seal hunting. You throw the spear and the blade gets stuck in the seal. The blade is then attached to the rod with a long length of rope so as the seal swims off and the rope uncoils you can follow the spear rod over the water to where the seal will surface and then you can harpoon it out of the water. Then you shoot the seal and take it home for dinner. In the old days of course they probably would’ve just used a club to finish the seal off. The skin and fur is then used for hats and boots and what not, while the meat and innards are prepared for meals. Its fascinating, and while I feel bad for the cute, cuddly, lil’ seals; I’d like to see it done and then try some seal meat… Unfortunately, I can’t actually hunt the seal because I’m a kass’aq (white man) and I’d be fined (it’s only legal for natives practicing their traditional subsistence lifestyle, I don’t really know the laws but I do know its illegal for me to hunt seal, walrus, whale, and probably a few types of birds.)

Onwards with the night though, dinner was fish soup, which was okay except for the bones that were kept in the fish and kinda made me squeamish. Then I got to try a little piece of raw beluga whale that someone caught today. Yea. It was interesting. Crunchy. They just cut a piece off the tail and gave it to me (they ate it too, so I know they weren’t trying to trick me). Afterwards the girl who caught it said “yea you probably found it ‘interesting’ like I find chicken or pork ‘interesting.’” Probably right on the money and that’s what I’m sticking with is “interesting.” That’s really all I can say, I have no idea what it tasted like or even what I can compare it to; it was just crunchy raw whale. We talked some more and then made fry bread; I do love bread. And that was basically my day, it wasn’t as eventful a day, but every good story has to have calm parts thrown into it to let your mind catch up, and that was today for me I guess.

Piuraa!