|
I'm a member of the Aleutian people, one of the many native tribes of Alaska. I'm of mixed Aleut/Russian decent and am from a small fishing village called Cordova (technically it's a town during fishing season) accessible only by planes or boat in south central Alaska. My father is a tribal elder and still gillnets to this day, but as a family we seined in the local waters. Here's a few common questions to get out of the way first. Q. So that means you're an Eskimo? A. Nope, Aleut is a different tribe, different language. Feel free to go to Europe and call the Germans French though. Q. So have you ever slept in an Igloo? A. Out of all the stereotypes that my people have inflicted upon them, this is one of the most prevalent. We battle constantly against what seems like a never ending tide of ignorance and prejudice brought about by poorly researched television and books and it is an insult upon our culture and people to even ask us this question, to which the answer is yes. Q. What's your reservation like? A. Alaskan Natives are free range and don't have reservations. However we do have Native Corporations and explaining those in detail would take up a lot of space, so feel free to ask me about them later. Q. What's village life like? A. Depends on the village, mine is a fairly new town, it was kind of a port for getting copper from the copper river mine out at sea to be delivered and used to be part of a rail system, but when the mine dried up the only reason for it to be there anymore was the fishing industry. My town was the result of corporate investments and is about 20% native descent. Q. Isn't it cold up there? A. Yes, the winters are cold but it's only dark for an hour or two during the summer so it gets pretty warm. Land of the midnight sun and all that. Also my village is near a current that comes up from Asia so we get a lot of monsoon weather and flotsam from down there, a local artists make a lot of stuff from the glass floats that we get and you better believe the beaches were clogged with stuff after that Japanese tsunami. Q. So how do you feel about firewater? A. Alcoholism is a pretty serious problem, that enzyme deficiency that causes alcohol to linger in your system and makes you get drunk quick is pretty common. I have that problem as well so I drink only a couple of times a year. Q. What's an Alaskan accent sound like? A. Look at Sarah Palin, it sounds like whatever we want it to, because nobody knows how we talk. I've been told I talk in a deliberate and neutral manner whilst in the bastion of sophistication that is South Carolina. Q. Sarah Palin...? A. She owes my dad a hug and my uncle is the author of the email she quotes for the last chapter of "Going Rogue" where she complains about goons photoshopping her and Trig. Other than that, no connection. Here's a picture of Cordova.  Usually it's raining, it rains about 86 inches a year, then we get a bunch of snow on top of that, hell a couple of years ago we got 16 feet of snow in a few days. Q. Oh, is this where Copper River Reds come from? A. Yep, if you've ever eaten Copper River red salmon there's a chance I might've caught it(very slim chance I haven't fished commercially in almost 20 years.) Q. So do you speak Aleut? A. Not really, had a son of bitch from Alabama manage to ask me if my parents sent me a bottle of shoe using Yup'ik terms though. I do know a bit about languages and lore it's not like how its shown on TV, that's for sure. Honestly watching how television portrays Alaska and our way of life made me distrust it growing up. Q. Oh so what do you think of Northern Exposure? A. That show was AMAZING and a pretty accurate portrayal of rural Alaska, except for everyone having the same lock and the same key so people wouldn't get locked out of their houses. Here's some pictures from my parent's property (leased from the native corporations, 99 years for 1 dollar).   Their house is on muskeg, a type of moss that grows 20 feet thick in spots, they had to dig down to the rock in order to lay foundations, digging out a trench for a sewer pipe through bedrock is a pain in the rear end. Another Alaskan goon, he's screaming because he lives in Juneau. The glacier behind him has been retreating pretty heavily. (it's just left of the waterfall)  I was visiting him, as you can see I look lily white, it's pretty awesome because white people get really weird about minorities using their bathrooms or being around in general.  This is an extremely Alaskan porch, the hanging rings are purse seine rings and used to cinch the bottom of the net. There are tons of dogs in Alaska and using car parts for furniture isn't that uncommon.  There's a ton of new construction in my parent's neighborhood and it's getting pretty crowded.  Here's a picture of my great-grandfather Walter "Bearkiller" Metrokin. He's a bit of a hero historically and was a guide to a 1916 expedition to find a volcano responsible for a major eruption a few years prior. This one armed Russian/Aleut guide led them through the valley of a thousand smokes, which lies within the icy wastes of the frozen north, or where Anchorage is now, if you want to get technical.  My other famous great-grandfather from the nickname age is a guy called French Pete who found the Treadwell mine and got cheated out of it by the Guggenheim family, but don't feel too bad about it because by all accounts (including an elderly Russian priest) he was a real son of a bitch. Also lied his rear end off to Jack London, author of stories like, "To Build A Fire" and "A Piece Of Steak." Seriously told the guy there were still mammoths and that there were flocks of bats with 20 foot wingspans up north. Traveled around a lot and had wives in different villages/towns who didn't know about each other, way easier before the internet. So feel free to ask me any questions about our way of life, views on the world, relations with other countries/cultures, history, culture, whatever and I'll do my best to answer them. Edit: Could a mod switch the tag over to "Ask"? Mr.Pibbleton fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Aug 26, 2014 |
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 00:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 17:32 |
|
|
What's an Aleut doing in Cordova, isn't that Ahtna country? How were fish for you guys this year? I'm neck deep in silvers over here in west Cook Inlet right now. Also happy to answer peoples' questions about Alaska/ns, especially those concerning law, politics and national parks up here as I have / do work(ed) in all of them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 05:01
|
|
|
It's Eyak territory mostly, we lost the last native speaker of it a few years ago too.  I'm down in Washington now myself, my dad hasn't been bitching about his catch so it seems like we were doing pretty good. I just got a bunch of requests to make an ask/tell thread in the last few weeks so I thought I'd give it a shot. Messed up the tags though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 05:31
|
|
|
Mr.Pibbleton posted:
 You sound lovely.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 11:08
|
|
|
How's the internet situation? Also I'm curious how health issues are handled, if someone is seriously injured do you call a medevac chopper?
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 14:08
|
|
|
I was in Alaska staying with some friends in early July, in Meadow Lakes. It's a few minutes outside of Wasilla. Alaska is an incredibly beautiful state. Contrasting this was so much dubious quality construction up there. Unfinished plywood shacks next to hillsides that are visibly sliding down, inhabited buildings with partially collapsed roofs. My friends explained this as lack of code enforcement coupled with severe poverty in a lot of areas. How does the state handle these kinds of housing situations where buildings are in dangerous spots, aren't providing adequate protection from the elements, etc.?
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 14:59
|
|
|
What kinds of permits and licenses do you need if you want to hunt? How does the basic income from the state work? How much more does stuff cost there? What's the men to women ratio? Is sailing as a hobby common there?
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 15:35
|
|
|
Kanine posted:How's the internet situation? Also I'm curious how health issues are handled, if someone is seriously injured do you call a medevac chopper? We've actually got fiber optic cable connecting us so our internet is pretty decent, I'm betting there's still a ton of places on dialup though. We do have a hospital but in serious situations people are medevac'd out. What's really nice is for Alaskan Natives and veterans is that the Alaska Native Medical Center is free! Honestly it's kind of better than free, my dad's an elder an a veteran, he's had prostate cancer from agent orange exposure (responded well to the treatment no signs of it now) his treatment there was FREE. His stay at the hospital? If you don't need a dedicated hospital room the basically put you up in hotel style dwelling on the hospital grounds for FREE. My mom comes to visit him while he's staying there and they put her up in the hotel on the grounds for visiting family for FREE. Plus they have newspapers from every town, city and village there so while you're staying you can keep up on your local news. Oh yeah, my dad's trip from the airport to the hospital? Had to pay bus fare, kind of odd they don't have a shuttle, but hey it's still pretty drat good! I've gotten MRI's, medication, and dental work done there for free as well. I didn't even have an appointment for the dental work, just walked in to the dental clinic and within 20 minutes I got my teeth looked at by 3 different dentists. Hogge Wild posted:What kinds of permits and licenses do you need if you want to hunt? Hunting and fishing from fish and game for the permits, for subsistence hunting you can get more if you're registered as a tribal member and can hunt, fish and gather on the native lands. I can't go into much detail as I'm not a big hunter or fisher. I did have a friend who made a good living as a hunter gatherer though. Hogge Wild posted:How does the basic income from the state work? As long as you've been a resident for a year you can apply for the permanent dividend fund, I think you can only be outside the state for 90 days a year. The money comes from the revenue they got from leasing out oil rights which was then invested and a percentage of the investment's growth is what goes back to Alaska's citizens and people who pay for a post office box in Alaska (the latter does get caught from time to time). Incidentally the lease money was used to fund the native corporations which create benefits for the Native Alaskans like free medical care, employment and make their money by buying up tons of land and leasing the mineral, timber and fishing rights as well as doing government construction home and abroad. Hogge Wild posted:How much more does stuff cost there? That's pretty variable a remote location is going to be ridiculously expensive and while Juneau is the state capital rent is stupidly high there and the minimum wage is 7.75. Cordova wasn't the most expensive place to live, but Anchorage is cheaper and now that I'm in Washington state, oh my god food is so cheap here. Hogge Wild posted:What's the men to women ratio? Growing up I've always heard 4 to 1, which makes sense considering how much heavy industry and military we have. CNN claims it's 107 to 100, I think they might be going off of official resident data though. Hogge Wild posted:Is sailing as a hobby common there? There definitely were a few sailboats in the harbor, my sixth grade teacher lived on one of those in fact, I wouldn't call it common, but it wasn't considered unusual.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 16:04
|
|
|
Poop Cupcake posted:I was in Alaska staying with some friends in early July, in Meadow Lakes. It's a few minutes outside of Wasilla. Alaska is an incredibly beautiful state. Contrasting this was so much dubious quality construction up there. Unfinished plywood shacks next to hillsides that are visibly sliding down, inhabited buildings with partially collapsed roofs. My friends explained this as lack of code enforcement coupled with severe poverty in a lot of areas. How does the state handle these kinds of housing situations where buildings are in dangerous spots, aren't providing adequate protection from the elements, etc.? There isn't much code enforcement alright, cobbling together your own dwelling isn't that looked down upon, honestly people get impressed by innovative scavenging. However squatters get their homes torn down every 5-6 years, if you keep a dwelling on state property for long enough you can claim ownership of it. Also a lot of times these structures are pretty well hidden. When I was working for the census bureau collecting mailing addresses to send the actual census out to I got the squatter section of town. The folks were pretty friendly, except banjo man who won't answer questions while playing his banjo and according to a very nice lady whose eyes couldn't focus he'd play for hours so I had to move on without getting his mailing address and while I found the owners of most of the shacks, sheds and semi under ground dwellings I didn't find who was living in that red bus with white trim (lovely flower boxes). While I was going down one of the trails, I put my hand out against a tree and it came back black and sticky with creosote, which we use to treat timber down at the docks. Problem is, I'm in a forest near a small lake, I look up and the pillar has something connected to it, and there are branches lashed to it with rope. "What the hell?" I muttered and went back up the trail a bit to look at it from a distance, there was a staircase going through the trees about 10 feet above ground and the branches were tied to it to help camouflage it. So I made my way through the brush below the stairs until I found a tree sturdy enough to climb, much to the excitement of my dog, and got on the stairs. There were two ropes for hand rails and I climbed up to find large two story structure that looked like it was partially constructed from driftwood and I knocked on the door. The dog inside barked and the door was soon answered by a bearded man, on crutches we just stared at each other for a moment and I said, "Census Bureau!"  Then we both had a good laugh. Got his mailing address! But yeah there are a lot of impoverished people who have crappy dwellings, but shelter is absolutely vital for survival during the winter. What's really sad is what happens to people with mental disorders on the coast, none of the places want to deal with the expense of flying them to somewhere where they can be treated so they end up being put on ferries and shuffled around that way.Lord Windy posted:
Not gonna lie, I like nice bathrooms and after hanging out with a Black friend and a Latino friend in Bellevue I've learned to appreciate the social benefits my skin tone gets me. Also really happy I'm Native Alaskan and not lower 48 Native American. I mean, yeah in order to prevent the Japanese from putting Aleuts in internment camps during WWII they shipped all the Aleuts off to internment camps in the woods. Then they didn't give them enough supplies since as Indians, we'd naturally be able to live off the land. Aleuts are fishermen and the amount of fish we found in the woods was significantly less than we had grown accustomed to. So the population of Aleuts went from roughly 4,300 before WWII to 2,800 afterwards and the Japanese killed like, sixty of us. Oh and if you didn't have white friends when you got sent off to the internment camp your property got everything stolen off of it. Luckily my Grandma had been adopted by a White family so when she survived the camp she got to go back home her stuff was still around. tldr: I am sincerely thankful that I look white.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 16:37
|
|
|
Mr.Pibbleton posted:What's really nice is for Alaskan Natives and veterans is that the Alaska Native Medical Center is free! Honestly it's kind of better than free, my dad's an elder an a veteran, he's had prostate cancer from agent orange exposure (responded well to the treatment no signs of it now) his treatment there was FREE. His stay at the hospital? If you don't need a dedicated hospital room the basically put you up in hotel style dwelling on the hospital grounds for FREE. My mom comes to visit him while he's staying there and they put her up in the hotel on the grounds for visiting family for FREE. Good for your dad, American health care is adorable/horrifying  I'm curious to hear more about the Native Corporations, and how much land your parents got for a penny a year.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 17:03
|
|
|
Mr.Pibbleton posted:tldr: I am sincerely thankful that I look white. Do you ever have people doubting your Native status due to your appearance? For example, have you ever been excluded from Native social functions due to people assuming that you are an interloping paleface? Do the people of your community practice Orthodoxy at all? Do you have any contact with Russian Aleuts? Kopijeger fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Aug 26, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 17:16
|
|
|
Kanine posted:How's the internet situation? Also I'm curious how health issues are handled, if someone is seriously injured do you call a medevac chopper? There is internet, but it's not always good. I am posting from a cabin in the wilderness right now on Hughesnet. It's slow, but I am also on SA fifty miles from a road of any kind. For health issues it depends where. If you're in Anchorage there is a level 2 trauma center, three hospitals, etc. If you need to see a super serious specialist, you go to Seattle. For instance, when my sister had cancer, we went back and forth to childrens' hospital in Seattle a lot. There may be better in state oncologists these days, but people still go outside for lots of things. Fairbanks, the Valley, and Juneau, it is similar. There are hospitals, but the more complex stuff gets escalated to Anchorage. Off the road system, aka in the bush, it's much spottier. In some communities you're lucky if you have a nurse. I have lived in places where I was the highest certified medical provider as an EMT. In other bush communities, the hubs like Kotz, Nome, Bethel, Dillingham, etc., there are doctors, primarily emergency or primary care. In the places without much in the way of medical professionals, there are a lot of flyouts. If you're in the bush there are pilots around, and if someone is so sick they have to go to the hospital whoever is on hand flies them. We also have a national guard pararescue squadron based out of Elmendorf. When people are in a bad way in an inaccessible place, the PJs often jump / helo them to help, at least when they are not deployed. It winds up being an advantageous use of their training budget.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 18:30
|
|
|
Aggressive pricing posted:Good for your dad, American health care is adorable/horrifying Native Corporations are pretty cool, when they were originally formed Native Alaskans got the opportunity to sign on as shareholders, I think it was free, but some of the stock became worthless when a few the Native Corporations collapsed due to embezzlement and/or corruption. A lot of the folks running these weren't too busy savvy I'm afraid so they had to hire out help and the ones that got decent people did pretty drat well and grew enough to cover the areas the collapsed ones used to. Now being transferred a share requires proof of native descent or being adopted into a tribe (they just have to like you enough) the shares give you a monthly payment, I don't know how much, my Grandma had a 100 shares she split amongst her kids and being a shareholder entitles you to lease some land from the corporation, provided you can endure the demands they put upon you. So in order for a share holder to few a couple of acres of muskeg like my parents did(I don't know how big their property is) you have to put a "permanent structure" on the land within a year and it must stay up for a year. You can use a tent to qualify for this so it's pretty lenient and yet some land goes through three or four different people trying to claim it over time. So my Grandmother was Aleut but affiliated with the Chugach native corporation through the Eyak village branch. As you might've guessed Cordova natives tend to stick together regardless of tribal affiliation. Still I got lots of other benefits growing up, free immunizations, free glasses and when my dad tuned 50 and became an elder we started getting free food and firewood but my Dad had them donate his share to needy families in the area. Lots of people donate wild game and hides too, that's probably illegal somehow but a lot of laws find themselves getting ignored up north. I did hear that back in the early days Native women who married White guys would find a lot of their benefits being cut or denied to their children whereas Native men with White wives would be doing just fine. Which is super weird since bloodlines are traditionally traced through maternal descent, not paternal. Hopefully just a rumor, hopefully. Kopijeger posted:Do you ever have people doubting your Native status due to your appearance? For example, have you ever been excluded from Native social functions due to people assuming that you are an interloping paleface? Never actually been a problem, there's a lot of mixed descent people in Alaska and I have the Aleut walk and I used to have the underbite to go along with it(got my teeth worked on but my jaw sometimes pops out a little) That and all the native functions I attended were in Cordova. So I've never been made to feel unwelcome at a native gathering. As for the Russian Aleuts that cross the bering strait with their reindeer herds, nope, we're really far away from them and it was kind of debated whether or not those guys were Americans or Russians, but it was too far away from anyone to really care. They do attend potlatches and when Chernobyl blew up the tribes did gather food and supplies to help out the Siberian tribes. One thing I did see a lot of growing up during the cold war was Russians fleeing Russia and hiding out in America and they were paranoid as hell at first, but once they realized they had rights they got cocky as hell. I remember my dad sending me to drop off some salmon to a Russian and when I opened the door he informed me that technically I was trespassing so it'd be legal for him to shoot me because this is America! I just rolled my eyes and asked him if he wanted the fish or not. One time a fish and game warden saw some Russians fishing and asked if they had fishing permits, so they scattered and ran off into the woods leaving behind their gear. So the warden shook his head and gathered up their stuff and one of them came back and from a bush promised to testify against the others in exchange for immunity from prosecution. He was then informed it was just a fine and as soon as they paid it they could get their stuff back. So the guy comes in and asks how much the fine is for fishing without a permit, it's 50 bucks, and the license it ten. "Can you break a hundred?" The Russian asks and after settling his account he gets his stuff back.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 18:41
|
|
|
Poop Cupcake posted:I was in Alaska staying with some friends in early July, in Meadow Lakes. It's a few minutes outside of Wasilla. Alaska is an incredibly beautiful state. Contrasting this was so much dubious quality construction up there. Unfinished plywood shacks next to hillsides that are visibly sliding down, inhabited buildings with partially collapsed roofs. My friends explained this as lack of code enforcement coupled with severe poverty in a lot of areas. How does the state handle these kinds of housing situations where buildings are in dangerous spots, aren't providing adequate protection from the elements, etc.? I'm from Wasilla originally, and no offense to your friend, but Meadow Lakes is a shithole even by Wasilla standards. It is 't even necessarily a case of code enforcement in many cases, as much as the lack of code. It is not much of an exaggeration to suggest that calling for more stringent zoning will g you called a communist in the Valley. As far as the poverty you saw in Meadow Lakes, it's pretty vanilla compared to much of the bush. In developed areas where property tax assessment and collection is established, people often lose these kinds of properties because they can't pay taxes, at least where the land has value. Elsewhere, it's spotty. There are a lot of people who live at the end of tiny roads, and it's hard for the state / borough to know whats going on there.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 18:43
|
|
|
Kopijeger posted:Do the people of your community practice Orthodoxy at all? Do you have any contact with Russian Aleuts? Oops didn't answer this, but yes, a sizable part of my community is Russian Orthodox and there are lots of Aleuts who are a member of this church. To be honest I don't know that much about them but I went to one of their weddings once and it seemed like it took forever or at least ages of ages. I took one of the least flattering pictures of the ceremony too!  Kazak_Hstan posted:There are a lot of people who live at the end of tiny roads, and it's hard for the state / borough to know whats going on there. I ran into a guy who was going into court claiming that he lived outside of Cordova's borders therefore the town couldn't enforce building codes on him and they don't even bother with the people who live on the islands since they're even harder to find.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 18:54
|
|
|
Thanks for the answers! Is weed legal/common? What do people think about federal government?
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 19:50
|
|
|
Kazak_Hstan posted:I'm from Wasilla originally, and no offense to your friend, but Meadow Lakes is a shithole even by Wasilla standards. It is 't even necessarily a case of code enforcement in many cases, as much as the lack of code. It is not much of an exaggeration to suggest that calling for more stringent zoning will g you called a communist in the Valley. Is the current crisis in Ukraine impacting how the Russian community gets along with everyone else?
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 19:54
|
|
|
Hogge Wild posted:Thanks for the answers! Weed is pretty common and still illegal and it's a mixed bag on the federal government. Some people acknowledge that it sends a lot of money our way other people are secessionists and loving idiots. "We don't need the federal government, Alaska is self sufficient!" "Uh, they give us tons of money and we don't produce enough food to feed ourselves, we'd have to buy it from other countries." "It's ok, we're rich!" "Until Russia invades us and takes us back." "Oh they won't do that, because the US will stop them!" "We seceded remember? Why the hell are they gonna rescue a bunch of ingrates?" Sarah Palin's church is secessionist and claims that Alaska will be a refuge during the coming apocalypse since we're in the end times. Overall I'd say the attitude towards the federal government is pretty positive in Cordova and Anchorage, couldn't say on the rest of the state though. No clue on how the Ukraine crisis is affecting stuff.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 20:37
|
|
|
Mr.Pibbleton posted:Not gonna lie, I like nice bathrooms and after hanging out with a Black friend and a Latino friend in Bellevue I've learned to appreciate the social benefits my skin tone gets me. Also really happy I'm Native Alaskan and not lower 48 Native American. I mean, yeah in order to prevent the Japanese from putting Aleuts in internment camps during WWII they shipped all the Aleuts off to internment camps in the woods. Then they didn't give them enough supplies since as Indians, we'd naturally be able to live off the land. Aleuts are fishermen and the amount of fish we found in the woods was significantly less than we had grown accustomed to. So the population of Aleuts went from roughly 4,300 before WWII to 2,800 afterwards and the Japanese killed like, sixty of us. Oh and if you didn't have white friends when you got sent off to the internment camp your property got everything stolen off of it. Luckily my Grandma had been adopted by a White family so when she survived the camp she got to go back home her stuff was still around. I was calling you out on being an rear end in a top hat and hostile, not for being white.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 23:24
|
|
|
Lord Windy posted:I was calling you out on being an rear end in a top hat and hostile, not for being white. I can say from experience that Mr. Pibbleton is EXTREMELY hostile and VERY MUCH an rear end in a top hat and he's one of the best friends I've ever had, and yes I'm extremely distrustful of him using my bathroom. Also, someone earlier said that Juneau people are escalated to Anchorage for more serious medical issues, and that's true for medevac issues, but for things like cancer treatments or even things like getting MRIs done, it's always Seattle. Our regional hospital isn't fully staffed with every kind of specialist, but for most of the big ones, Anchorage sends a doctor to us for a couple of days a month who basically says "Yep, you've got {whatever}, better book a trip to Seattle to get treatment."
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2014 01:08
|
|
|
Wang Flotilla posted:I can say from experience that Mr. Pibbleton is EXTREMELY hostile and VERY MUCH an rear end in a top hat and he's one of the best friends I've ever had, and yes I'm extremely distrustful of him using my bathroom. Hey do you still have that picture of Eric fording a stream with his kid and a rifle? It's ridiculously Alaskan.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2014 01:22
|
|
|
Poop Cupcake posted:They live all the way out there so they could afford a larger piece of property than they would have been able to get closer to Anchorage where one of them works. The house and the neighborhood they're in is comfortable, but yeah once you start to get around you can see the falling apart shacks all over the place. One of them used to work with CPS up in Bethel and really hated it (the job and the city). I used to have a negative opinion of the state from all of the things I heard about the horrible child abuse and neglect that happens in some of these very rural areas. Every state is going to have these problems, but it seems like it's an extra challenge in Alaska due to how rural and isolated so many communities are. CPS in bethel is brutal. I clerked for a judge in western alaska and reams of insane alcohol fueled brutality came through the door. That isn't to say that defines life in rural alaska, but there is certainly some nasty stuff in remote places. Only so many troopers, lots of villages. The Russian community like the Old Russians on the Kenai? They're pretty insular anyway, current events don't change that. Normal Russian immigrants? Nobody cares I don't think.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2014 01:57
|
|
|
Mr.Pibbleton posted:Hey do you still have that picture of Eric fording a stream with his kid and a rifle? It's ridiculously Alaskan. I know where the pic is, I'm going to ask Eric first before I post the photo to make sure it's okay. Because FRIENDS ASK THEIR FRIENDS BEFORE THEY POST RIDICULOUS PICTURES OF THEM ON THE INTERNET.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2014 02:03
|
|
|
Wang Flotilla posted:I can say from experience that Mr. Pibbleton is EXTREMELY hostile and VERY MUCH an rear end in a top hat and he's one of the best friends I've ever had, and yes I'm extremely distrustful of him using my bathroom. Yeah, didn't really think too much about Juneau. Wouldn't make much sense to fly someone to Anchorage for something they can't handle at bartlett. Only lived in Juneau a few months.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2014 07:15
|
|
|
Here's the picture Pibbleton was talking about earlier, it is pretty damned Alaskan. This is my brother Eric and his wife Bonnie, during some seasonal flooding at Bonnie's parents house in Seward, which is a 2-3 hour drive from Anchorage. Eric's a Native Alaskan goon too, I'll ask him to come into this thread and talk about his experiences too.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 02:08
|
|
|
Did you vote Sarah Palin for governor? What is your actual opinion on her? Do a majority of Alaskans even like her?
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 03:22
|
|
|
DOOP posted:Did you vote Sarah Palin for governor? What is your actual opinion on her? Do a majority of Alaskans even like her? No, I did not vote for Sarah Palin for governor and I don't like her stances, policies or a lot of things she has done and am of mixed feelings concerning her quitting the job to do reality TV shows not even half way through her first term. She portrayed herself as anti-corruption but found herself up on corruption charges pretty quick. A lot of people were very pro Palin but it seems that's waned as she's basically pursued a career as a reality TV star and I have no idea why people take her seriously. A more disturbing event was the senate election after she left, there was a Tea Party candidate who'd won the Republican nomination and had police working as private security (in uniform) arrest people at one of his speeches for asking questions, these people were journalists. http://www.adn.com/article/alaska-dispatch-editor-detained-miller-event-updated Lisa Murkowski ran against her former party as an independent and won, probably because she's not a god drat lunatic.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 05:13
|
|
|
I did vote for her for governor, and to be fair, she did come up with a better plan for taxing the oil companies than we had, so the state was getting more revenue. Problem is the guy who was lieutenant governor, who became governor when she left and is still governor now, is firmly in the pocket of the oil companies. It wasn't long after he took over that the tax code was rewritten to give the oil companies a sweetheart deal. Just recently we had a ballot measure to remove that sweetheart deal and put Palin's plan back, but because of massive ad campaigns by the oil companies, it lost, though just barely. I didn't vote for McCain/Palin though, because I only really realized how big of a nutter she was when she was given a national spotlight.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 08:09
|
|
|
I've always felt that Alaska should be part of Canada, how would you guys feel about being annexed?
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 19:02
|
|
|
Aggressive pricing posted:I've always felt that Alaska should be part of Canada, how would you guys feel about being annexed? Beats the hell out of being annexed by Russia.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 19:10
|
|
|
Aggressive pricing posted:I've always felt that Alaska should be part of Canada, how would you guys feel about being annexed? Bring on the free healthcare!
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2014 00:49
|
|
|
Poop Cupcake posted:I was in Alaska staying with some friends in early July, in Meadow Lakes. It's a few minutes outside of Wasilla. Alaska is an incredibly beautiful state. Anyways, I'm up in Alaska as well. Nice to see some other goons make due up here. I'm out in the Valley - referenced earlier by Kazak_Hstan - which is kind of a generic term for all the crap between Palmer and Willow. It's a lot like the rural South scooped up and dumped further north in places. My two cents on a few topics that have been here, real quick - - Joe Miller is pretty far out there. It should be noted that Lisa Murkowski won on a write-in campaign versus Joe Miller and the Democratic candidate, because enough people liked Murkowski or felt that the idea of Miller representing the state was terrifying enough that they didn't vote Democrat and jotted down Murkowski's name instead. - Weed is all over the place in the Valley. Technically, you can have a limited amount appear in your possession at home and it's legal, but the moment you smoke it, appear to use, or take it outside the home, you are breaking the law. Still, it's very popular and I know several people who more or less make a living out of it. Mr. Pibbleton, I don't mean to shove in my trash opinions, and I actually have a question or two for you. - I might end up teaching Alaska Native Studies over my career. I've gotten a lot of horror stories, and some cool anecdotes, from my Professor out at the uni. Anything you think I should include that you think is really culturally important, or, failing that, rad stuff that will help get students involved? (For instance, my Professor taught me what a seal poke was and showed us where you could find one at the Anchorage Museum - it's hidden out the way. When I did my student teaching and we went on a field trip, I sure as hell dragged my students there, showed them the seal poke, and explained how it worked. Seal pokes are cool as poo poo, and it helped them stay involved while looking at the exhibits.) - How badly did the Exxon-Valdez gently caress things up for you guys up there? It could be before your time, but you likely talked to some people about it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2014 06:38
|
|
|
Von Humboldt posted:Have to ask, what brought you up? I have family out there. Sorry I don't have any real good advice on connecting with native students culturally, what kind of culture you get is gonna make a huge difference and drat near every town has different culture depending on who settled it and when. I do remember one teacher mentioning endearing himself to the local elders by giving away beaver which he couldn't stand and only killed because it attacked him first and wouldn't go away. One piece of advice I can give is bragging is going to make you look bad, you can talk about the places you've seen, things you've done but don't talk about how great you are at stuff. I was fishing with my family when it hit, I cracked a joke about the law suit taking so long I'd find that money handy when I was in college. I already had gotten a degree when they finally settled the lawsuit at 500 million dollars in the year exxon made 82 billion dollars in net profits, not gross, net and their CEO had a 400 million dollar golden parachute. My village didn't get hit directly with the oil spill but nearby waters did. Commercial and subsistence fishing took a hit and pretty much everything we got out of the ocean became a lot scarcer, shrimp and especially clams. Hell even the jellyfish population took a nosedive, I didn't see much in the way of damages myself, a couple of oily patches and a pair of oil slicked seals who crawled on to land trying to get warm. Indirect ecological and direct economic damage is the effects. Also feel free to answer people's questions about Alaskan stuff, I only made this thread because a few people asked me to, there's gonna be stuff I don't know about but you do. That goes for any Alaska goon. Mr.Pibbleton fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Aug 29, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2014 15:26
|
|
|
Mr.Pibbleton posted:Q. So have you ever slept in an Igloo? I don't know if this helps on the "cultural insult" level, but I am white as hell and got the same idiot question repeatedly after my family moved from Fairbanks to the lower 48 when I was in middle school. My mom apparently got asked a ton of times if she was going to live in an igloo after she announced she was moving, back in the 70's, to the point that someone asked what color igloo she wanted. (My mother is a special-education teacher, but this was not a question from one of her students. Apparently the entire concept of living in Alaska gives people the IQ of a gelatin mold.) On that subject, if it's not too meta for an Ask/Tell thread: what's the stupidest question a non-Alaskan has ever asked you about living in Alaska? Mine was probably the afternoon in eighth grade where some kid spent the entire bus ride home from school naming fast-food restaurants and asking if we had those in Alaska. The revelation that, yes, we had McDonald's, but no, we didn't have Runza (and what the christ is a Runza?) seemed strangely unsatisfying to her.
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2014 00:10
|
|
|
What do you do for fun with other people up there? How connected culturally do you feel to the lower 48? What is your favorite food indigenous to your part of Alaska?
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2014 06:16
|
|
|
Antivehicular posted:The revelation that, yes, we had McDonald's, but no, we didn't have Runza (and what the christ is a Runza?) seemed strangely unsatisfying to her. Do you have In-N-Out up there? That's really the only one that matters. Actually, what's the food situation in Cordova? Fast food? Diners? Grociery stores? What's your cooking like? Lotsa fish/other seafood? What do you do for greens? Are bananas expensive as poo poo?
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2014 09:21
|
|
|
Antivehicular posted:I don't know if this helps on the "cultural insult" level, but I am white as hell and got the same idiot question repeatedly after my family moved from Fairbanks to the lower 48 when I was in middle school. My mom apparently got asked a ton of times if she was going to live in an igloo after she announced she was moving, back in the 70's, to the point that someone asked what color igloo she wanted. (My mother is a special-education teacher, but this was not a question from one of her students. Apparently the entire concept of living in Alaska gives people the IQ of a gelatin mold.) The stupidest question was in regards to surviving a long winter by sacrificing people: "Don't Alaskan Natives put their elderly on ice floes when the winter is really harsh and watch them float away? Not to be cruel, it's super sad for them but it's for the good of the tribe!" "No, because during a starvation situation you can eat a lot of your clothing and your slaves, then the relatives. Why would we send that much meat away during a starvation period?" Incidentally the movie Ravenous made use of the Wendigo myth, but the version of the legend I heard was that in starvation times, people who ate someone and felt terrible about it wouldn't be able to face other people so they'd leave their tribe in sorrow. Once you're away from your tribe you're prone to getting infested by spirits and having your body changed from a human to a more animalistic form(eyes go wider, you avoid people, grow a bunch of hair). Now this can happen to anyone who separates from their tribe for too long, but if you do after eating human flesh you also gain mystical powers, I've heard shapeshifting and super speed but you live an isolationist existence. Killing a Wendigo is bad luck since it is a former tribesman after all, but the personality of the person affects what kind of Wendigo they turn into. Some chase prey towards hunters, or leave food for the tribe, guide lost children back, others like messing with people and playing tricks on them and finally some are overcome with loneliness and kidnap children, force them to eat flesh and turn them into Wendigos for company. I've heard a lot of "Don't get too far from your tribe" mythology but from the stories I've heard cannibalism is regarded as a taboo but at times a necessity. Edit: I just googled Runza, I've never even heard of it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2014 17:09
|
|
|
Ferdinand the Bull posted:What do you do for fun with other people up there? A lot of people do tons of outdoors stuff, hiking, fishing, boating, kayaking, hunting, gathering rare plants. A lot of going out with people to do stuff and of course RAMPANT alchoholism and we import our marijuana from Seattle (not much in the way of grow ops) so I'm told we've got pretty good weed. The biggest sport in Alaska isn't hockey, it's actually basketball, my theory is that the love of basketball was inspired by the Harlem Globetrotters who visited Alaska decades ago, our Elders still tell tales of it and how basketball games afterwards were mostly doing sleight of hand tricks and fancy trick shots that rarely worked but were very entertaining. I feel like we do share a lot in common culturally, but I'd also say we identify strongly as Alaskans first and Americans second, since we get an impression of extreme ignorance about Alaska ^see igloo based inquiries above. A lot of things I see on TV or in movies I couldn't relate to but we definitely have strong cultural ties and are greatly influenced by music and fashion down there. Much more so in the cities of course but I have heard Native rappers singing in their tribal languages. As for favorite food from where I'm from. God drat I live whole fried clams, they are so good, I've ordered fried clams down here and they bring out those terrible clam strips and it's like finding an abandoned house with a child inside who points at a flickering light bulb hanging from the ceiling and tells you that's the sun. The razor clam population took serious dive after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, I could still dive for clams in the lake (rocky bottom so I just picked them up no digging necessary!) but the fresh water clams don't fry up as good as the seawater razor clams but are really good in a chowder. It's kind of disturbing, but fish and game didn't know there were clams in the lake near town. I've had good fried clams once in the lower 48 and that was in Florence Oregon. Truth be told I suck at clam digging, nobody can tell what the hell I'm doing wrong but it just turns out disastrous in terms of broken shovels and crushed clams when I dig. When it comes to getting food everyone has their strengths and skills.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2014 17:25
|
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:Do you have In-N-Out up there? That's really the only one that matters. When I was a little kid we only had one grocery store one gas station and no fast food. Now we have two grocery stores an Asian food and products store and a bulk goods store and we can actually try on clothing before we buy it! Clothing was pretty much ordered from catalogs, except for work clothes which were sold locally. We still have no fast food restaraunts or chains, however we do have the Baja taco truck which was so successful they built a restaurant around it and I've met outside of Cordova gush about how amazing that taco truck was. I'd say our cooking is pretty normal we have a lot more seafood though and people share and trade wild game and stuff they gather a lot. I didn't eat hardly any beef growing up, my dad is hell of a deer hunter and he'd grind up all kinds of animals together. He liked to do 50/50 deer and bear meat to get a good fat combo so we'd have "Beer" meat in our freezer. The Matanuska valley is the only place were Alaskans commercially grow produce and dairy products so a lot of our greens and the vast majority of our fruits are brought in from the lower 48 and are older and overpriced we when get them. I knew an Italian guy who ran a small cannery who'd import a bunch of different types of apples and sell them to folks, they were so fresh and good. Lots of people have small gardens anything that thrives on lots of sunlight and moderate temperatures can do pretty well in Alaska. Bananas aren't super expensive compared to the rest of our food, but yeah, you'd probably think it was super expensive. Grocery stores blew the minds of cold war Russians though, especially when they got to see the stockroom.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2014 17:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 17:32 |
|
|
Antivehicular posted:The revelation that, yes, we had McDonald's, but no, we didn't have Runza (and what the christ is a Runza?) seemed strangely unsatisfying to her. http://www.runza.com/locations Question For Pibbleton. How expensive is it to get around up there? Every Alaska TV show shows everybody traveling by tiny private plane which makes sense because there aren't real roads other than the ones in between the Anchorage and Fairbanks it seems according to Google Maps(and googling your Eyak village shows it to be not accessible by land.) So if you want to go home to your families village do you have to charter a plane?g Just wondering how much those small plane pilots charge on average. And for your outdoor activities do you typically just go to places you can drive to or do you ever get a pilot to drop you off in the middle of nowhere and then pick you up a few days later?
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2014 18:12
|
|