And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 23:30:02 -0500 To: Ishgooda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Tribe losing ground to tube Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Belynda Gilbert did her homework as she watched TV at her uncle's home in Arctic Village. All 67 cabins in the village have at least one TV. The Associated Press ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tribe losing ground to tube By TODD LEWAN The Associated Press ARCTIC VILLAGE, Alaska -- This was a gift from the Creator, like the caribou or the snow: A plane from Fairbanks was bringing the Gwich'in tribe a strange black box with aluminum antlers -- a thing, they had heard, that never stopped talking. So the Indians stood in the snow and waited until the twin-propellered bird dropped out of the sky and met the Earth. A white man hopped out, threw open a cargo door and pulled out the thing everybody was so curious to see. More precisely, a 12-inch, black-and-white Zenith. A milestone in 1,000 generations of Gwich'in history, a leap out of the then and into the now. The proud owner was Gideon James, a member of the tribal Council. He rushed his talking box straight home, where a throng had squeezed into his log cabin. James fiddled with the rabbit ears, and within moments they saw Johnny Carson, grainy but live from some place called Burbank, Calif., uttering jokes no Gwich'in quite grasped. Still, no one left until Channel 9, the only station available 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle, went off the air at 2 a.m. Four hours later, when the box started talking again, the crowd returned. They watched and watched and watched. Twenty straight hours. Six straight days. It was January 1980. <Picture: photo: news> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arctic Village, Alaska, has seen a dramatic change in lifestyle since the first television came to the Gwich'in tribal village in 1980. The Gwich'in are losing their ancient ways in favor of modern convenience. The Associated Press ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Today, all 67 cabins in the northernmost Indian village in North America, population 96, have at least one television. Gwich'in young are so drawn by television that they have no time to learn ancient hunting methods, their parents' language, their oral history. They dream of becoming professional football players, though none has ever touched a pigskin. Most of the elders, meanwhile, are learning what has been missing in their lives: Denim wear. Farberware. Tupperware. Four-wheelers. Touch-tone phones. Can openers. Canned soup. Canned peaches. Cabinets (for all the cans). Ancient ways Before the coming of the tube, the Gwich'in lived much the way their ancestors did for hundreds of years. They were a people toughened by immense sweeps of tundra where the cold chased even the hares underground. They ate raw caribou, roast caribou, caribou stew, caribou-hoof broth. They wore caribou skins, slept in caribou-hide tents, paddled caribou-skin kayaks. They fashioned utensils from caribou antlers, weapons from caribou bone. They told caribou tales, prayed caribou prayers, sang caribou songs, danced caribou dances. They were the Gwich'in, the People of the Caribou. Over time, they were touched by the coming difference: Sugar, metal fishhooks, tobacco, alcohol, gunpowder. None of these things, however, altered their subsistence outlook, their fundamental character. Even when every other aboriginal group in Alaska agreed in 1971 to give up their land claims in return for $1 billion and a tenth of state territory, the Gwich'in wanted no part of the deal. The 7,000-member tribe held on to 1.8 million acres of ancestral land and, for a time, kept outsiders away from their highwayless, fenceless, wireless universe. Until Zenith came to town. As the boxes multiplied, mothers stopped making ice cream from caribou-bone powder and river slush, in deference to Ben & Jerry's. They stopped preparing "tundra tea" with alpine spruce needles in favor of Folger's instant coffee. Soon, beaded moccasins were outmoded by Nike sneakers, the sled dog by the gas-powered Ski-Doo Alpine, the wood stove by the microwave oven. The well-to-do came to be envied for their home entertainment centers. The average Gwich'in -- living on unemployment, welfare, Social Security, food stamps, Alaska dividend checks or handouts from the Bureau of Indian Affairs -- made do with 20-inch Sonys. "For these natives, like anyone else, television is a cultural nerve gas," explains Dr. Michael Krauss, director of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. "It's odorless, painless and tasteless. And deadly." Sarah James, a Gwich'in artist who runs a committee that works to preserve tribal customs, believes the tube has done what no invader could: kill the Gwich'in's primal soul. "The TV teaches greed. It shows our people a world that is not ours," James says. "It makes us wish we were something else." Generation gap Davy Peter, a 9-year-old Gwich'in in an oversized Chicago Bulls jacket, is excited. After school, he raced to the store and nabbed three "Teen-age Mutant Ninja Turtles" videos, and he can't wait to watch them. Rocky John, a pudgy 12-year-old with a wad of Snickers bar in his cheek, and Walter Nollner, 9, are going along. Rocky wants to be a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers when he grows up. Davy wants to be Michael Jordan. Walter, a hunter. Check that. Scottie Pippen. James John watches the youths scatter like waterfowl. "Kids," he mutters. "All they do now is play board games, watch TV, act like they've done it all." John is 37. He has that wiry look, like a scarecrow made of cables. He wears camouflage pants, black army boots. A white eagle's feather dangles from his mane. One of 14 children, he considers himself trapped between two generations, those of his forefathers and the "MTV wimps." In the summer, John cuts wood and repairs TV sets. When he accumulates $350, he orders ammunition, then goes into the Brooks Range for weeks at a time to hunt and trap caribou, moose, lynx, wolf, fox, beaver. "Before the TV, we were a tough people," he says. "Not anymore. Now people only go hunting if they have a four-wheeler." Once, Gwich'in tracked caribou hundreds of miles into the Canadian Yukon. Today, Erick says, they follow the herds via satellite. Outside the Gwich'in Council office hang eight satellite photos of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "10 cow caribou have been fitted with satellite collars," the announcement continues. "Locations for these caribou are received each week." When the caribou come within a few miles of town, the Gwich'in fire up their four-wheelers or snowmobiles and rumble off for a shootfest. "The satellite pictures help save gas," says Gideon James, the council member. He owns a Dodge pickup. "Gas costs $5 a gallon up here." Swimming in excess Arctic Village has a landing strip. It has a tower filled with chlorinated river water. It has a bulldozer. It has a 1906 Russian Orthodox steeple. It has a school with 58 students. It has a youth center with a pool table. It has a 25-foot satellite dish. It has no garbage plant. No plans for one. So when a GMC pickup lost its muffler a year ago and the owner couldn't afford to order a new part from Fairbanks, the truck was abandoned on the side of Mountain Road. Outside the Washeteria, a laundry center, 12 Maytags sit in the mud. They look new. But they need new gaskets, new lint trays, maybe a loose wire tightened. Kids play on them. Either no one knows how to fix these things or no one has the tools or patience to do it. There are no televisions lying about, though. "They get fixed," says Leonard John, 21, who then gives a Mountain Dew can a drop kick into a mountain creek. A window of Isaac Ross' cabin frames a postcard view of the typical Arctic Village yard: empty Chef Boyardee tins, bales of Fiberglas insulation, Hills Bros. coffee cans, shotgun casings, plastic Pepsi bottles, oil drums, dry-rotted tires, grease guns, a gas range, Pennzoil jugs, propane tanks, plastic forks and spoons, two discarded chain saws, a sink, two stripped bicycle frames and two snow machines in different stages of dismantlement. "All of that junk comes from the city, from down below," Ross grouses. Down below is Fort Yukon, 150 miles south, the outpost where he was born 45 years ago. He lights a Marlboro, adjusts the red headband that confines his bear-black hair. "The white man should come here and collect all this junk and take it away," he says. "Hey. Wait a minute." Ross clicks up the volume on his 13-inch Symphonic TV and stares bug-eyed at a 30-second ad for the new Honda all-terrain vehicle, which retails for about $6,500. "Not a bad price," he says. "Who knows? Maybe next year." Copyright 1999 The Topeka Capital-Journal Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
