This is a reply I wrote to some friends we made in upstate New York while visiting family there. I got carried away as usual. I hope they don't mind my using it, adding to it, and sending it to you all. Some or all of the content I have written about previously, so it may be a bit boring, if so, sorry about that.
Allow me to add to this while I am thinking of it as I am leaving Monday for a four day stay in Selawik, one of our largest villages which is south of here. I am going with another PHN to do school screenings and immunizations. I figure I may have a whole lot of other things to write about on return.
We had a contingent arrive Thursday from the Army. They arrived in a Blackhawk helicopter after a four hour cold flight from Anchorage. This is the vanguard of a joint exercise scheduled to start next month involving the army, navy, airforce, and marines (sounds like a commercial). This is code named operation "Arctic Care". They will be here for about four weeks and will use Kotzebue as a staging area. There is supposed to be a multitude of helicopters, equipment, and personnel. I have seen the correspondence sent to the military personnel with instructions on everything from money, food, what to wear, conduct (leave no little soldiers in the oven) and so on. I have found out that Public Health Nursing nationwide is playing a huge role these days in homeland security and bioterrorism precautions pre and post occurrence. So, with this in mind we will be part of the liaison between the military and the villages. The military will be going into each village with a contingent of doctors, nurses, dentists, eye docs, and other support personnel. We are cleared to fly with them if we are going to a village or the need arises. It is kind of exciting to think I may get a ride in a Blackhawk helicopter even though it is supposed to be cold and noisy as they are not pressurized, and with my joy of flying, well...........It's still exciting. I am scheduled to be in Ambler, one of our other villages while the operation is going on. I have to say though that the folks that arrived here this week had a problem with the helicopter. I am not sure if it occurred before arrival or after but I was told the fuel lines froze up and the helicopter had to be moved into a heated hanger to thaw. I'm thinking I might get a ride in that? Yea, I sometimes think my right brain and left brain take vacations on a regular basis. Anyway, I should be quiet for at least a week if nothing occurs today or tomorrow so you can breath a sigh of relief.
Hey Ya'll,
Heck, to us New York is foreign. I like getting your responses and please feel free to share the emails with anyone you want. If you don't know about it we have a website www.samsicles.net On there you can find hundreds of pictures and almost all the emails I have written since coming here.
As far as mounting the head of animals here it just does not happen. As the Inupiat say, "you can't eat horns". These animals Cathy and the her local friends have been taking shed their antlers in November or December. All the meat is used by someone here as well as most hides. Heck, even the hoofs are used sometimes in local art. The locals in town, the villages, and in the remote camps all do what is called "subsistence hunting"-literally hunting for their existence. This area has only been exposed to modern convinces for about the last 50 years, mostly in the last 20-30. Diabetes is soaring among the natives due to the readily available processed sugar products in the stores. Anyway, muskox is an exotic animal even here, although the natives do take them and eat them. Mostly it's the caribou, fish, seal, and wild berries picked during the summer that is used by the locals. They also hunt and eat moose, rabbit, and ptarmigan and they trap beaver, otter, wolverine, wolf, fox-red, black, and arctic-lynx, and a type of muskrat. They eat some of these animals that are trapped also. Of course the furs are either used in clothing or sold. As far as tasting exotic...heck, I don't know, I just know it tastes good. Caribou has almost no fat in it either. What the locals do is take the seals they kill, strip the thick layer of fat, cut it up and put it in buckets. This they put aside and allow to rend naturally. They then use the oil for all types of purposes such as storing the berries picked in summer, as a dip to provide fat in their low fat diet by dipping caribou or raw fish in it, and sometimes as a medicine. The animals Cathy has been involved with taking have all been kept by or distributed to locals. There is a senior center in town that is like an assisted living center. People go out and hunt and fish for these folks too. Back to the heads-you can go all over town and see caribou and moose skulls with antlers attached, sometimes on the roof or hanging outside the building, but more often than not you see antlers in a pile by a building. They are used in a lot of art here, but again it is just an incidental part, not the reason for killing the animal. When they make a kill the animal is dressed on the spot before it freezes. The lady Cathy hunts with will not let them scatter around the parts of the animal they will not use. She takes the parts not used such as the legs and the hide if it is in bad shape, and puts them in a pile together. This way all the parts go with the spirit to.....wherever it goes I guess.
Two days ago Cathy went out to a camp and helped them pull up fish nets. This may not seem strange until you realize that all water here is frozen to a depth of at least three feet. The Eskimo's have a way of setting them under the ice by drilling multiple holes and feeding a line from one to the other until the length of the net is reached. A rope is then passed under the ice to which the net is attached and then stretched out. Poles are set on each side and the net has to be checked every few days to keep the holes open on each end. She got to sample raw sheefish and seal oil. Her response, "tastes really fishy". Patty told me that one of Cathy's friends asked her the other day if she was really happy here. Her response was-"where else could I jump on a snowmachine after work and go hunting, or riding, or fishing, or see what I am seeing, and participate in the activities I am". She has even helped run traplines.
The Eskimo have lived here thousands of years and has existed on these resources. The tundra looks barren to me but many of the plants are edible and used for medicines. The land provides many types of edible plants and berries during the summer. It also provides caribou, moose, bear, beaver, fox, rabbit, ptarmigan, wolverine, and other fur animals during summer and winter. We have pamphlets developed by locals telling about the benefits of the old ways including instructions to keep the stomach of the caribou and ptarmigan. These animals eat the tender leaves and the lichens which we cannot, or are tedious to pick. There are instructions on how the Inuit have prepared the stomachs for hundreds of years by taking the contents out, cutting up the stomach and other meat and adding it to the mix, placing it in a container and allowing it to ferment. Heck, there are even instructions on which caribou would be the best for this. I know how this sounds, and I am not sure I would want to try it, but it is nutritious. This is a flyway for multitudes of waterfowl during the spring and summer bringing fresh fowl to the table. The sea provides salmon, sheefish, (both of which start in the 10 pound range when taken, with the white fleshed sheefish getting up into the 30 pound or more range) both of which may be eaten raw or cooked, a small fish called a tom cod which is frozen whole and either eaten raw with seal oil or boiled whole for soups or stews, and herring which are eaten the same way as the tom cod. Some here fish crabs, and most hunt the seal which are plentiful and of different types. Seals are prized for their fat and fur and are a staple. The bearded seal, or ugruk, is the most common, along with the spotted seal and others I cannot remember the name of. Up the coast they hunt the bowhead and beluga whale. Almost all of each is used, from the blubber to the meat, the baleen, and even the bones for art. When a whale is taken by a crew the captain gets the choice part. The rest is then divided between the people of the village. It is a delicacy of which part of it is saved by some for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The walrus is also taken up the coast and is where much of the ivory here comes from. The blubber and meat are used along with the bones for artwork. Again these people have lived here for thousands of years-long before the arrival of the white man and modern conveniences. Many of these ways are still practiced today as you can see. So, here the folks just shake their heads at the animal rights people and the antigun groups. Here it is a matter of survival for many. It is literally only in the last 20-30 years that money became the standard to procure goods. Alright, let me hop off the soapbox and stop my oration.
Darn, I just started to write a reply to your email and got carried away. I hope you don't mind if I use part or all of this letter to others and on the website. Anyway hope you folks are well and take care down there.
Carlo
For problems or questions regarding this web contact
carlo@samsicles.net
Last updated:
08/29/05