I left the village for seven years. Six years to get 1 1/2 degrees in California, a year to get half of a Master's degree. And then I returned.
I was afraid. I know I had changed. My worldview had become both complex and very simple at the same time. I knew how to grow tulips and what fork you used for salad at fancy restaurants. My body had grown soft and contained a massive amount of preservatives. I returned with more respect and more love for my family and culture than most people would imagine. But it came at a price.
Our culture revolves around the ties that bind, around growing up with familiar faces, everyone knowing every single aspect of your history (even though you wished they didn't), knowing how you would react, knowing what to expect from you. The first thing people ask you is "Who is your family?" because it will tell them something of your background. These ties are celebrated, they even have their own Inupiaq words to explain them, like "atiq," which means "namesake" in English, but that does not translate the close relationship implied. In the Lower 48, I found out that they pimp something other than ties and binds. They revel in the Individual. In the separateness and distance between each person. That's not to say that there are people who are not close to others, but I remember finding it odd that some of my friends would go years if not decades with no contact with siblings or family. Their history ended with their parents. It was very different. And that smell clung to my clothes ...
And then I returned ...
For one thing people looked at me differently. They were wary. My family and friends whom I grew up with and loved looked at me as if I was a two-headed sloth, and none of them knew what a sloth was. Some turned and rolled their eyes. Some ignored me completely, their backs turned in rejection. Most took some time to get to know me again. They sat and marveled at how much coffee I drank. They sat and gasped at the tattoos. They sat afraid of this grown woman who came back, but were willing to take the chance that there was something of the little Point Hope girl left inside of me.
For another thing, I think people have a misplaced conception that now that I am educated, then I "must" think villagers and village life are abhorrent and disgusting. That I have returned to make them feel bad about themselves, about their world, MY world, about the clothes they wear or the words they use. That any sane, educated person would look upon the Native life in disdain. What interesting things we learn from interesting places ...
They could never be more wrong. I try my hardest to recapture the time in my childhood. To run around covered in mud and catch lemmings. To try and recapture the feeling of belonging that was destroyed by the education system ... Sometimes they see it ...
But sometimes I am met with acid-laced words. Words meant to belittle. Or looks casted with disgust. I learned when I came back to be quiet and keep to myself a little more to avoid making others shown their disdain. Which of course made it worse, because I looked like I was avoiding them. And a snowball erupted and grew.
It makes me sigh now. Sigh because I had such good relationships with some people before I left, and now all that will exist from them is good memories. That girl who left for college from the village no longer exists. And I work to build new relationships. A stranger meets another stranger. They talk about their ties.
It's a funny world. An ironic, twisted world in which you are raised with people asking you to leave and become educated. That it's sorely needed. That it is the only way your culture will survive. Yet they fail to tell you the price you will pay. And no one asks you if you are willing to pay it. And those who see the price I paid ... are reluctant to get an education. It comes as no surprise that most people who leave the village and get an education successfully ... never return. Or only return for funerals ...
But I have returned. To many villages, not just one. And when I get the chance to ... I still chase lemmings.
Rainey Nasugraq Higbee grew up in Point Hope and attended college in Northern California, where she earned a degree in studio art. She was a teacher in Barrow for a couple years after attending graduate school at UAF. She now lives in Anaktuvuk with her fiancee, working as an artist mainly making jewelry and 2-D art. Visit her online store at salmonberrydreams.etsy.com and her blog at salmonberryblood.blogspot.com.