this book, life on a reservation and life in a remote Alaska Native village are comparable: both are isolated, impoverished, and heavily subsidized by government. It’s also important to note that Alaska Native surnames are not stereotypic Indian names, such as “Red Hawk” or “Dances With Wolves.” Indeed, due to culturally insensitive practices in the past, many Alaska Natives have first names for last names, such as John George, George Johns, Walter Charley, Charley Peters, Frank Isaac, Isaac Frank, and so forth. Naturally, this isn’t always the case. Many Alaska Natives have Russian surnames for obvious historical reasons. Examples include Evanoff, Totemoff, Petrovich, and Demientieff. Early on, Western European traders callously listed in their record books the names of Alaska Natives with whom they traded by where it was they were from. For instance, an Indian from Gulkana might be called Gulkana Charley. My own surname derives from my father’s father, a German American who came to Alaska some time after the Gold Rush and eventually married my very young, full-blood Indian grandmother, Mary Joe. Her father, my great, great grandfather, was Tazlina Joe, so named because he came from Tazlina Village, where I built a rustic cabin on land given to me by my grandmother. His father, my great-great grandfather, was Old Man Lake.
All my life, I have known only the Alaska Native side of my family. I know almost nothing of my mother’s side, having only visited them once or twice for a holiday. For almost three years, I was the tribally appointed executive director of the Ahtna Heritage Foundation, a tribal nonprofit created to document and help preserve our customs, practices, and, most importantly, our language, which, with only about a dozen living speakers, is among the most endangered on earth. On a frigid day in 1999, Chief Harry Johns held a special ceremony in Copper Center to designate me a Traditional Ahtna Culture Bearer. In my lifetime, and from my travels to villages around Alaska, I have witnessed the slow erosion of Alaska Native traditional ways. Too much has been lost in this collision of cultures. The price is steep. Diabetes, obesity, domestic violence, rape, alcoholism, fetal alcohol syndrome, and suicide are among the highest rates in the United States. Part of the reason, I believe, lies in a lack of identity, in not knowing one’s place in the world or how to fit in.
And while some of the stories are beautiful celebrations of life in the North, many bear on this subject of disillusion. They are not meant to point out ugliness, failures, or fault. They are meant only as cautionary tales, as a window into our world as a wolf-fur-trimmed mirror in which we Alaskans may better see ourselves as those we have become. The scene beyond the window, as well as the reflection, can change.
Sunday Drive
“You stay inside with the kids,” Bassili George told his wife. “This shouldn’t take too long.”
Before opening the car door and climbing out, the old man smiled at his two grandchildren sitting in the back seat, and then he glanced at the gas gauge. The needle pointed at the quarter-tank mark, more than enough fuel to make it the twenty-or-so miles back to the gas station at the junction where the road joined the highway.
He stepped out of the car and closed the door quickly to keep winter from entering.
The old man paused to look at the white world that lay before him, a world indifferent to the living. Winter clutched the world in its fists, held it close to its boney chest. The sun was already dipping behind the mountains. It had been up for only a little more than two hours, several minutes longer than just the day before. In the slant northern light, everything appeared the same—white and treeless, clear to the jagged peaks marking the edge of the seeable world. The heavy blanket of snow buried everything and softened harsh edges, making the world smooth and without definition or shadows. Road and tundra blended into sameness. Only occasional markers distinguished the winding road from the tundra. Judging by the sun’s position on the teeth of the world, Bassili knew it would be dark within fifteen minutes. If he was to labor in light, he would have to do it now.
A slight breeze dragged ribbons of snow across the road. Where the sliding ribbons caught against edges, drifts formed, like the one the car was stuck in. The old man hadn’t seen the dune-like drift until it was too late. Now the car was high-centered a dozen feet or more into the hard-packed snow, which was waist-deep in places.
The front tires didn’t even touch the road.
It was around fifty or sixty degrees below zero. The green jacket the old man was wearing offered little protection against the cold. It was one of those promotional jackets that the tribe handed out to elders with the tribe’s name embroidered in gold thread on the front, thin-lined, good for spring or fall but not for the unforgiving cold of January. He hadn’t brought his parka, figuring it was just a Sunday drive after church, something he and his wife did occasionally to spend time with the grandchildren. He hadn’t planned to be outside much, just long enough to buy some gas and a cup of coffee for him and his wife and hot chocolate for the kids. His gloves were equally useless. He should have brought the thick mittens he wore when he rode his snowmobile on his trap line. He should have thought to keep a small shovel in the car, just in case.
He knew better.
Like most Alaskans, he usually kept a large black, plastic garbage bag stuffed full of old blankets and gloves and hats in the trunk. But he had taken it out earlier in the week to make room for groceries. He had forgotten to put it back. Now the bag sat uselessly on the floor of his heated garage.
Bassili kicked away snow from around the tires and from behind the car, trying to clear a path to back up. He had no tools, no proper gear of any kind, but he had no choice. Fortunately, there was only a slight wind; otherwise the temperature might easily plummet to minus seventy or eighty degrees.
The hard work temporarily warmed him.
While their grandfather labored outside, the grandchildren sat in the back seat of the warm, idling car drawing and coloring with the new box of crayons their grandparents had bought them for the trip. The boy named Jimmy drew a picture of himself and his grandfather in their boat in the summer on a blue river surrounded by green hills with green trees and a high yellow sun smiling down at them. His sister, Nelly, almost two years younger at four, drew stick-like figures of the four of them all holding hands around a campfire roasting marshmallows. The figure representing her grandfather was enormous in comparison to the others. A happy giant. Her picture featured the same smiling, yellow sun as her brother’s drawing, except that her coloring fell outside the lines.
Nelly’s parents had named her after the black bear, which in their language is nel’ii, pronounced a lot like the English name. Almost no one had names the way they did in the old days. Nelly was special that way. Even her grandfather’s name was a remnant of the period when Russia owned the land, although Russians had never been this far into the interior, had never set foot on this blanketed valley. More than a hundred words had come from Russian into their language, mostly the names of goods that would have been traded for furs—goods like tea and tea kettles, cooking pots and pans, and western clothes.
Bassili stopped working for a moment, rubbed his hands together, trying to warm his fingers. His ears hurt. He hadn’t brought a hat, either. While he clasped his thin-gloved hands to his ears, he saw his wife looking at him through the frosted window. He motioned for her to roll down her window, just a crack.
“It’s pretty cold out here,” he said bending close, still cupping his ears.
“Want my gloves?” his wife asked, holding them up. They weren’t any better than those Bassili was wearing.
“No. I’m alright,” he replied. “Just a few more minutes.”
The couple had been married forty-two years and had only one child, a son. The grandchildren were his, from his second marriage. Bassili and his wife had lived in the region all their lives, and the old man knew this country well. He had hunted caribou in these mountains
