Like so many other Alaskans, I am shocked and saddened by the recent suicides, four of them in Hooper Bay. It reminds me of my West Anchorage High School days, when two of my classmates took their own lives.
In Hooper Bay and in other Yup'ik villages in Western Alaska, I believe suicide is also related to loss: loss of Yup'ik identity and culture. And I believe urban Alaskans can do more to reverse that loss.
Hooper Bay is situated in one of the world's most important areas for Arctic nesting geese and other migratory waterfowl. Each year the people take thousands of migratory birds for food. These birds also play an important role in their traditional dancing, legends, mask making and spirituality. From 1989 to 1992, I made several trips to Hooper Bay as part of my work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, coordinating surveys of subsistence use of these birds. My Yup'ik speaking co-worker and I gave presentations on migratory birds to secondary school students and hired local people to collect data on annual migratory bird harvests.
When we traveled to Hooper Bay and surrounding villages, we sensed negative student attitudes and boredom in several of the classrooms. The teachers in those classes often regarded our presentations as some form of unusual entertainment rather than as a vital, culturally relevant part of the students' education. On the other hand, we occasionally encountered teachers who were really interested in our presentations. They were familiar with the local flora and fauna and with their students' cultural relationship to it. In these cases, the students had a more positive relationship with their teachers and were happier and more attentive.
As part of trying to understand what I was observing, I talked with two people in the area who had had many years experience with the local education system. They both told me that a prime reason for the low self-esteem among young people, which was manifesting itself in alcoholism and suicide, was the subtle downgrading of the Yup'ik language and culture. Teachers (mostly non-Native) were assuming their students did not want to speak Yup'ik, and they were not learning Yup'ik themselves. They were acting superior to the Yup'ik teacher and students, and using culturally irrelevant teaching materials. This was doing lasting damage to how children felt about themselves.
This subtle downgrading was a theme in 1990, when I attended a "Pathways to Wholeness" symposium at Bethel's UAF Kuskokwim Campus. One well-known Yup'ik educator told us that people feel good about themselves when their culture is validated by people from outside the culture as well as by the culture's own members. She also told us that culture "from way back" is at the basis of people's identity. Her words had a lasting effect on me.
Around this time, I became familiar with job scarcity in the villages, where people need some cash in order to continue to hunt and fish and pay for fuel. In Hooper Bay, there were eight applicants for two part-time survey worker jobs (one young man stayed on the job for 17 years: it was his only job, and he was proud of it).
Since 1990, when it comes to the Yup'ik peoples' subsistence harvest of migratory birds, I have seen both positive and negative developments. On the positive side, since 2000, people can legally hunt migratory birds before Sept. 1, taking away the shame that was associated with their traditional spring subsistence hunt. Yet on the negative side, federal budget cuts mean the harvest survey is no longer conducted every year, taking away those precious, culturally relevant jobs in Hooper Bay and 25 to 30 other villages. And to save money, the Yup'ik names of the birds are no longer printed on the poster. What message does this send to the young people about the importance of preserving their language?
So what can we urban Alaskans do? Besides urging the reversal of these federal budget cuts that negatively affect the most suicide-prone area of our state, we can take a more positive interest in the culture of the young people in Hooper Bay and nearby villages. We can arrange for these youth to give presentations at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, or even by video, on their masks, their dancing, their language, and their hunting and fishing. Educate us! We can begin teaching Yup'ik in the Anchorage school system, where we have thousands of Yup'ik students (including families from Hooper Bay) but no Yup'ik language classes other than at the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School. All Anchorage students could have the opportunity to learn Yup'ik, or other Alaska Native languages (as well as Spanish, Russian, and Japanese). We can have programs for young people to make and sell Alaska Native art. Initiatives like those would send the message to Hooper Bay that we value our Yup'ik citizens and their culture, and that they have special, unique gifts as one of Alaska's first peoples.
Cynthia Wentworth spent over 30 years working with Alaska Native subsistence economies, mostly with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She is now a cultural anthropologist.
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