Debra Dommek sees herself as a tribal elder in training.
Never mind that her cheeks glow with the dewy rose of youth. The old soul in the Anchorage teen shines through when she talks about the traditions of indigenous Alaskans, including her people, Inupiat Eskimos. At 18, she believes it's her responsibility to preserve their songs and dances, art and stories.
"This is who I am, who my children will be," Dommek said. "Sometimes I feel pressure taking on such a position, but somebody's got to do it."
Across the state other Alaska Natives are heeding the same call.
For some it's a counterblow to the grip of technology that has made life so much easier but led to cultural erosion in even the most isolated communities. Elders say this is especially true among young people swayed by the faraway media glitz so absent in Alaska's utilitarian villages. That disconnect is blamed in part for chronic problems in Native society -- alcoholism, suicide, domestic violence, high dropout rates.
But Alaska Natives, who represent 11 distinct cultures and 20 languages, are fighting back with culture camps and rural student exchanges. Villages have resurrected dances and festivals banned a century ago by missionaries. Schools have launched Native language immersion programs. And yes, sometimes preservation efforts involve technology.
Even science is recognizing the value of ancestral knowledge passed on to later generations of Natives, said Patricia Cochran, executive director of the Alaska Native Science Commission. The nonprofit organization brings conventional scientists together with Native partners in studies requiring historical and environmental perspectives on multiple topics, including climate change, pollution and subsistence foods.
"There's a reason we've been able to survive in the harshest of conditions, in the strangest of times," Cochran said. "It's because of our resilience and our adaptability -- and that's the strength that our communities have to go back to."
STRENGTH THROUGH ARTS
For Dommek, returning to her roots meant learning ancient arts, particularly dance, in an after-school program run by the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. Dommek is part Dutch and German but felt a need to connect with her Inupiat side.
"We have so many strengths," she said. "Thinking of all the things we are, I get really excited, especially about dancing."
On a recent afternoon, Dommek and other dancers entertained center visitors, the young women waving fans made of caribou fur while the men chanted and beat on wide, flat drums. In a modern twist, the drums were covered with a synthetic skin of fabric instead of the usual walrus stomach lining.
Through the heritage center, Dommek also narrated a short film called "Asveq, the Whale Hunt," documenting the creation of a dance by Yup'ik and Inupiat high school students.
The dance merges Yup'ik Eskimo lyrics with Inupiat dance styles. Scenes of teens embracing their traditions against an urban backdrop are woven throughout the eight-minute clip, which has been shown at numerous film festivals.
"The big city can be daunting," said longtime program manager Steven Alvarez, who is of Apache and Athabascan decent. "Some of the kids are from villages, and this is a refuge for them. It fills them with pride of culture, self esteem, a sense of place -- and that can help academic performance."
PRIDE WITH PRESERVATION
Some 550 miles to the west, the Nunivak Island village of Mekoryuk reclaimed its own ancient dances and songs that disappeared in 1936 after being outlawed in the Cup'ig Eskimo community by missionaries. The Mekoryuk dancers initially followed recordings made by tribal council member Howard Amos of an elder who remembered the traditional festivals once celebrated there. The elder has since died.
"It has given the community a lot of pride that they are Cup'ig people," said Amos, who runs a nonprofit heritage-preservation center. "I feel a lot more like an Eskimo than I ever did."
Along with dances, there's been a cultural renaissance in the community of 200.
Early elementary grade students attend Cup'ig immersion classes as part of a village effort to preserve the dwindling Native language. Once a month the village school has culture week, offering lessons in dancing, Native arts and crafts, mask making, ivory and wood carving, beading and drum making. Junior high and high school students take winter survival camping trips with seasoned hunters like Amos, shooting and butchering reindeer and musk oxen for their meals.
"They love it," Amos said. "It's a first for some of them."
Other students around the state also are experiencing Native life through a federally funded program that links village schools and students with their big-city counterparts. In its seventh year, the Rose Urban Rural Exchange pairs village and city classrooms to share a cultural curriculum. The program culminates with selected students and teachers visiting each others' communities for a week.
Participating students, who stay with host families, can be any ethnicity, although village students are virtually always Native. Sometimes urban students come from a cultural mix, such as 17-year-old Michelle Kanosh, who is Filipino, German and Irish and Southeast Alaska Tlingit.
Kanosh was among a contingent from Wasilla that paid a visit last spring to Savoonga, a Siberian Yupik village of 700 on St. Lawrence Island. Kanosh learned Native dances and beading, sampled chunks of bowhead whale and ate Eskimo ice cream, a dessert often made with shortening, berries and sugar. She was given the Yupik name of Piitsiighaav, which means daisy.
Even though she experienced a Native culture different from Tlingit, Kanosh said she felt a deep connection with Savoonga residents and even went back to visit in July. Before the trip, she had worried about being rejected.
"Now I see a lot of them as family and great friends," she said.
Rural Alaska is crumbling.
Winds and water continually wear away at scores of Native communities. Every year whole chunks of land simply float away.
And this vast place is eroding in other ways too.
Dwindling funds have nudged some small governments to the brink of extinction. They couldn't afford to pay their workers or keep up with the skyrocketing cost of fuel.
Native languages are fading. Youngsters in even the most remote villages weigh their lives against the hype and glamour blasting from their TVs and computers.
But Alaska's most remote residents -- many of them indigenous peoples -- are looking for new solutions. And they are clinging to past traditions for their survival and a measure of independence from Western civilization.
The Associated Press, in a five-part series, examined the impact of erosion in its various forms as well as the strengths of Alaska Natives who have endured some of the harshest conditions on Earth for thousands of years.
