Kotlik days 14-15

These past couple of days things have been picking up again and on Sunday evening I was invited to attend another youth meeting. I joined the circle this time and got to hear the elders speak again about the importance of this youth organization and about what the name they’ve given it means which roughly translates to “awakening.” I also participated in a game or two and more-or-less was officially welcomed into the village. They said I would always be welcome here as they will always remember me as surely as I will always remember them. Since then all the kids have been stopping me and asking who I am and why I’m here and this very friendly village somehow got even friendlier. Sunday night ended with some Eskimo Dancing put on by some of the kids who are using traditional dance to help reclaim their heritage and language.

On Monday morning I worked with two new elders at their house, and am excited because it seems they will have some stories to tell me! We recorded at their house, which was quite nice, but the recording wasn’t the best because their grandchildren woke up about half way through and started to run around the recorder, so next time they’ve agreed to come to the school where I can ensure a quality recording. Unfortunately, my other two elders got busy so I wasn’t able to record with them yesterday but hopefully we’ll pick up again today. Additionally, yesterday some opticians arrived for the day and what the adventures they have! They travel across the state to all the villages and towns giving eye exams and all and have some fantastic stories. So now I’ve decided I need to make it to St. Lawrence Island one day because that’s where they still carve ivory (mammoth ivory and walrus tusks) and it looks amazing! Additionally some of the villages down south still make traditional clothing (gloves and mukluks and all), which would be cool to see! So many places to go and see now and they’re all in Alaska; it’s awesome! I was also told that in the olden days the Elders in these regions would actually feed the wolves and sometimes even use wolves to pull their sleds because the wolves and people got along so well, but now that those ways have become lost and wolves are hunted instead, they’ve become warier of humans and keep their distance. How much of this is fairytale and how much is truth I’ll let you decide because we probably will never have proof, but it still would have been awesome! The old Europeans and now the modern world vilify wolves to absurd extremes so I like the idea of people and wolves living side by side. We also talked about a lot of other things and about the cultures here in Alaska so it was pretty neat. One of the guys even gave me some beef jerky he made on his own, and it was delicious! Apparently its not to hard to make so I’ll have to try someday because it was much better and probably a lot cheaper than the stuff you buy in the store.

Yesterday evening I went out on the rivers again with my friend and his 3-year-old son. I’ve probably mentioned this before but the rivers here are crazy, Kotlik is at the mouth of the Yukon so there are tons of rivers ranging from creek size to so massive I don’t want to swim across kind of rivers. They all connect to each other at various points and in various ways so sometimes two rivers merge into one larger and sometimes one river will split into 2 or 3 or 4 other rivers. I get lost after about 5 minutes or so on the river, but my friend knows his way like we know how to navigate a city. So we began by heading up river to the fish and game camp that is about an hour away. Going up river you get into heavy shrub land with tall grasses and small, bright blue, purple, and white wild flowers growing along the banks. The shrubs are small willows, which at max maybe grow 10 feet tall but most of them are only 5-6 feet. It’s really quite beautiful.

At the fish and game camp we talked to some of the guys who work there and I got to meet that husky again. He is a beautiful Alaskan Husky mutt. He’s big and predominately white with large black and brown splotches all over, and with gorgeous golden eyes. He really is a true husky and he’s playful too. I wish there were more dogs like that in the village. Apparently there is still one dog musher in Kotlik though, so I’ll have to go meet him one day. We then left the camp and headed downriver using completely different rivers, and along the way we got to see a moose calf along the banks but he ran off before I could get a picture, sorry. Slowly the shrub land gave way to the vast expanses of open tundra; here tall grasses grow along the banks with short grasses and moss stretching off to the horizon and tiny yellow flowers dot the landscape. Pictures really cannot do the terrain justice, its amazing how the tundra can just go on and on without a single shrub in sight, but this is not the prairie, its much prettier than the prairie. Eventually, we found ourselves along some smaller channels and started seeing the type of ducks we were looking for (not sure what they’re called, they’re brownish-gray but not Harlequin ducks or mallards). These ducks are interesting in that they fly north, mate, lay their eggs, loose their wing feathers so they can’t fly just dive, slowly re-grow their wing feathers and then fly south again for the winter. This means that right now they are pretty easy game for predators; aka us, bears, foxes, wolves, wolverines, ect. Basically, this was the point of the trip, to see if they were out yet, and apparently they are, or at least they’re beginning to come out. So I got to drive the boat while my friend pulled out the gun. We ended up getting four ducks. I kinda felt bad but really only for the one that didn’t die immediately and had to be put down in a different way. The kid was having a lot of fun though running around and pointing at the ducks and was just really excited. Afterwards we traversed along still new rivers and headed back to Kotlik for the night. More exciting still though, was along our way back while we were still following some of the smaller rivers we saw a small Kaviaq (red-fox)!! He was down by the bank and really cute too. He stopped to look at us for a few seconds then dashed off into the tundra as we passed. It was awesome! So it was really cool getting to go hunting and boating, and was a lot of fun, but its too bad I won’t be here in two weeks when the hunting really gets going. It also looks like the seals may start coming down this way pretty soon which is exciting, but we’ll see if it happens before I leave, I really hope it does! Ultimately, I have to say though I think I prefer kayaks (“qayaq” in Yugtun, this is were we got kayaks from) and canoes over motor boats, much quieter, more peaceful, and serene, and “at one with nature,” and if it wasn’t for the engine of the boat, the tundra would’ve been completely silent save for the wind, the flowing water, and some birds, also the animals would have been more likely to not run off. Of course, using a kayak it would probably take at least half a day to paddle to the fish and game camp and a full day or two to paddle to where we caught the inducks, and then you’d have to return to Kotlik. So modern technology is useful, and you begin to see why the Eskimos were semi-nomadic people traveling from their summer camps to their winter camps following the game for each season and such.

Today, I then met with one of the elders for an hour again and began eliciting verb paradigms. It slipped my mind for a second that Yugtun is a crazy language, and I thought getting the transitive verb paradigms would go kind of quickly, just ask for a few verbs and be done. I quickly remembered however that the language has mandatory verb-subject-object agreement morphemes so really just to get all the different permeations of this agreement morpheme I’ll have to go through at least 9 full paradigms (1,2,3 person; singular, dual, plural; for each subject acting on each object), and then add into it tense, aspect, modality, mood, transitivity, active/passive/antipassive distinctions, and locatives at the minimum. I really love polysynthetic languages especially Yup’ik, they’re (its) complex and challenging and just plain fun. So I got started on some of those things today, trying to mix it up so it didn’t get too old too fast for my consultant. I got a lot of good data, like “all the foxes swam across the river,” which is one word, and “the wolves all chased the moose around the lake,” which is two words. You might also notice I’m beginning to look at quantifiers in the language too. It went really well and were having fun with which is great, and I now if I know a verb I can start producing simple sentences on my own, I think!

That was basically the past couple of days and we’ll see what happens in the next couple. There’s a tournament coming to Kotlik (basketball I think…) for the 4th of July. There will be something like 10 villages here it sounds like. They might also have fireworks on Friday though we’d have to wait until 3am for dusk to come in order to set them off… I’m also hoping to get many more hours of recordings with the elders and perhaps get out on the boat again, see some seals, make a spear, and so on. It should be fun week or two.

Tschuss!