Back from the Bush

Here's a few photos from the trip out to Toksook. We stopped in Bethel and visited a few places for research.

We stopped in at the Yukon-Delta Wildlife Refuge offices where I took some photos of woolly mammoth jaws and Jennine goofing off with a stuffed walrus head.
Oh, and a picture of the "state bird" aka "skeeter maximus" after it was killed in action. Yes. I'm a tasty morsel.

We also stopped by Bethel's city office and met the city manager, Wally Baird who was very welcoming and gave us great advice about conducting public meetings with Native people. For those of you wondering, yes, it is acceptable up here to refer to the Native Americans as "Natives" which I would never have done down south.

We are working specifically with the Yup'ik people of the Nelson Island area. They have their own dialect but all of the delta area speaks Central Yup'ik. To say "thank you" in Yup'ik you say "Quyana" (kwee-ya-na).

Mr. Baird took Jennine and me out to visit a man named Tim Myers that is making really cool houses that are partially underground. The part that is underground is your refrigerator and pantry for food that needs cold storage. The outside working space is enclosed so you can store your gear and dry your meat while being protected from the elements. He can make a house that is very spacious yet very compact only 450 sq feet (indoor living space) with tons of storage and all of the furniture is built in. Here are a few photos of his house designs.

cold storage room

kitchen
outdoor protected living space
chicken coop from inside house
living room

After we finished talking with Mr. Myers, he gave us a lift over to the Yup'ik Cultural Center where I took a few photos of a really display describing the "story knife" of the Yup'ik people.

See below.

Then we caught our plane out to Toksook Bay. Settled in for the night and caught up on our sleep. The next day was very rainy and through the night there must have been some good downpours because the roads had turned to mud and muck. I didn't bring my boots so I had to scramble to borrow some. Jennine and I squished our way around the village taking photos of buildings and generally talking up the meeting that was taking place.

here's a few photos from the day:

Whale Bones

Village dog strangely out of place as a very small dog in a community of much bigger mutt dogs.

Drying Musk-ox skull - we found out the herd was in the hills nearby but it was too wet to slog on up to see them.... next time we are going to try and see them.
Yes. It's sorta macabre, but drying decaying things are everywhere in the villages...due to hunting. That's just how life is there.

We discovered that most of the "movers and shakers" in the community were out commercial fishing in Bristol Bay so our meeting was not well attended. We did have about 22 residents show up and we got some really great information about how they see their community. One really cool thing about the meeting was that is was conducted in Yup'ik and translated into English. So I would have to ask a question in English and wait for it to be translated, hear the answer in
Yup'ik and then wait for the translation back into English.

By the end of the meeting, we were definitely pros at phrasing our questions for easy translations!

So after the meeting, we headed on back to our pad at the clinic which was palatial compared to our first time in the village sleeping on the floor. We had our own beds and bedrooms in the clinic housing which is no more that one year old. We got some shut eye and caught our plane back to Bethel, then Anchorage on Sat. morning.