‘Respect’ a theme as Elders and Youth Conference launches convention week for Alaska Federation of Natives

Honoring ancient ways and elders who survived without modern conveniences were messages taking central stage on Monday as the First Alaskans Institute's Elders and Youth Conference kicked off a busy week in Anchorage.

The 35th annual conference, running through Wednesday and attended by more than 1,000 people from around Alaska, is the precursor to the much larger three-day Alaska Federation of Natives convention starting Thursday.

Both conferences are being held at the Dena'ina Civic and Convention Center.

"Respect your elders, the land, animals and each other," said Ugiaqtaq Wesley Aiken, 92, giving the elders keynote speech on Day 1.

The statewide event joins older generations who fought for civil rights and built today's Native institutions, with young people still struggling against social woes including high rates of suicide and sexual assault.

This year's theme is "Na Ganiyaatgm, Na Lagm." That means "Our Ancestors, Our Fire," in a Tsimshian dialect. It speaks to the flame burning inside young people to know their roots.

On Monday, Aiken sat on stage as he spoke, a cane leaning against his leg. He wore a white parka, trimmed with blue stripes.

He spoke carefully, with force.

"Our ancestors were strong," said Aiken. "They had to live on going out, find something to eat, even if it is 40, 50 below. The wind chill went down to 100 below sometimes."

His grandparents didn't have snowmachines for hunting, matches for fires. They lived in sod houses, used flint and steel to spark fires, and stored meat in permafrost cellars.

They looked out for others.

Aiken, a former reindeer herder and whaling captain from Barrow, now called Utqiagvik, helped establish AFN in 1966, the state's largest Native organization.

In the 1970s, he helped create the northernmost regional government in the U.S., the North Slope Borough, and the Arctic Slope Regional Corp., providing jobs and money for Natives from the region.

Aiken participated in the famous "duck-in" event in Barrow in 1961, to stop game wardens from arresting Native migratory bird hunters who had few other options for food. The protests, with hunters and families offering themselves for arrest, helped change a global ban that overlooked rural Alaska needs.

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Take care of the animals and land, and it will take care of you, Aiken told the young and old.

The conference emphasized the healthfulness of traditional food.

Anna Sattler, who runs an online series highlighting Native cuisine, showed the audience how to cut salmon and bowhead whale with the rocking motion of the ulu knife.

"Do you guys do any of this at home?" she asked the young people on stage with her.

"My grandparents are subsistence hunters (who showed me)," said Anya Tyrrell, a 7th-grader from Floyd Dryden Middle School in Juneau.

In workshops later, students sat beside adults learning ancient techniques, how to make fire from sticks, sew waterproof parkas from intestines, practice speaking traditional languages.

"To get a taste of my culture is a privilege," said Tatiana Storms, a senior attending a Missouri high school whose family originally hails from Kodiak.

Her mom made sure she would fly up to Alaska and attend, to connect with her history.

At an etching workshop, students were given iPhone-sized pieces of baleen, the shiny black material harvested from bowhead whales.

Students sat at circular tables as if around a campfire, listening to elders share stories as they pressed metal scriber pens into baleen.

Five teenage boys looked up often from their work, as Gladys Johnson talked about life growing up in Hooper Bay. Families dried herring and salmon and picked berries to survive. Migrating animals were like calendars that marked the seasons.

White teachers at her elementary school struck kids with yardsticks for speaking their Native language, the first time she'd seen violence. The teachers only wanted to hear English.

The teenagers created scenes on the baleen: a traditional dance drum, a church, a row of stick figures holding hands near the words "many generations."

Aiken, during his keynote speech, before two young men returned him to his wheelchair, made sure to emphasize the need for higher education.

He said people need money to hunt, gas for snowmachines, electricity for refrigerators. A good loaf of bread in Utqiagvik can cost $9.

"I would like to see you (go) for higher education," he said. "You have to think about it, and try and get a good job."