The challenge
ahead
Finding jobs on the
tundra
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"Always bring
warm clothes when flying in winter," suggests Myron Naneng,
looking over the seemingly endless expanse of tundra that is
the subarctic. "You never know when you're going to have to
walk."
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The
Association of Village Council Presidents, a regional social
services group that helps natives in the Yukon-Kuskokwim
Delta, may end up administering the new welfare law for the
region. Myron Naneng, the association's president &emdash;
the job Napoleon once held &emdash; welcomes the
challenge.
Naneng said some natives
do need welfare, including people who are older and have no
education, like Berlin and Wessillie.
But he said the young
are some of the biggest beneficiaries, and their lives are
worse for it.
Welfare has destroyed native Alaskans' traditional work
ethic and sense of responsibility, Naneng said.
"People continually rely
on other organizations or people to make things happen for
them," he said. "I think people are going to have to take a
lot more responsibility individually to find ways to help
themselves."
He acknowledged that
giving up welfare will be hard. "The communities are going
to have to do some brainstorming," Naneng said in his quiet,
impassive way. "They will have to learn how to make ends
meet."
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organizations
or people to make things happen for them," he said. "I think
people are going to have to take a lot more
responsibility
Walter Riley, another
Nunapitchuk resident, doesn't see how this is possible.
There are about 20
permanent jobs in his village, including at the general
store, gas station, and school and village offices. Earl
Chase, the village manager, said 50 people sign up when even
a temporary job is posted.
Riley is always one of
them. In his early 40s, he is part of the younger generation
caught between cultures. Like many his age, Riley depends on
odd jobs to scrape by because he has no skills. And although
he hunts a little, he never truly learned the subsistence
way of life.
He was working as a
laborer at the village school, but after several months the
temporary job was coming to an end. He depends on food
stamps and at times welfare to feed his four children.
"I don't know how I will
support my family" if there is no aid and no steady work, he
said.
Riley said he would be
willing to take a job in Bethel, but jobs are scarce there,
too. And even if he could find one, Riley said, the pay most
certainly would not cover the high costs of living in town,
where the rent, light and heat bills can easily top $1,000 a
month.
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DESIRE FOR OLD WAYS
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Ivan Wessellie's
mother, Anna E. Wessillie, 79, learned from her mother how
to survive off the land.
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The
women of Nunapitchuk also were alarmed by news of the
welfare law. They moved to a separate room to share their
feelings because of a custom that requires them to keep
quiet out of respect in the presence of men.
The women said it is not
part of their culture to want anything but what life gives
them, so it would be wrong to harbor hopes, even for their
own lives.
But 79-year-old Anna E.
Wessillie sounded as if she wanted a return to many of the
old ways.
The mother of 15,
including Ivan Wessillie, said that in her time children
were taught everything they needed to know to live off the
land; girls were taught how married life would be, and how
to raise their children properly. But today, children are
very hard to talk to; they don't want to listen to their
elders, she said.
Rebecca Andrew still
listens to her elders. The 32-year-old mother of five looked
down as she spoke in a barely audible voice and consulted
with her mother before answering questions.
Her husband fishes and
hunts a little, but neither of them know much about
subsistence living, Andrew said. Her husband finds work now
and then, most recently making culverts for the village, but
the family depends on food stamps and welfare.
Andrew said she had no
idea what the future would hold under the welfare reforms,
but one thing was certain: She would not encourage her
children to move away for jobs when they grew up. Other than
to go to Bethel for medical checkups, the children &emdash;
the oldest of whom is 13 &emdash; have never been out of
Nunapitchuk, Andrew said.
In fact, none of the
women would think of moving away, even though poverty runs
deep and their culture in many ways has become a shadow of
its former self.
The average home in the
villages of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta has two or three rooms
and seven to eight residents who sleep three to four to a
bed. In most villages, there is no water, so people melt ice
or haul water inside from wells for cooking and washing up.
There also is no sewerage, so people haul waste to
containers that are emptied on the tundra, or in open sewage
pits.
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The women of
Nunapitchuk, from left: Anna E. Wessillie, Rebecca Andrew,
Anna Sallison, and Katie Jenkins
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Chase
said he did not know how many people in Nunapitchuk were on
welfare, "but there are a lot." Given the number of
recipients in the delta overall, in most villages about 25
percent of the residents depend on the government.
The village's economy,
Chase said, depends on welfare &emdash; in October alone,
the general store cashed $14,000 worth of checks for Aid to
Families with Dependent Children.
That figure did not
include food stamps, which don't go far at the village
store, where
apples are $1.85 a
pound, pasta $1.95 a pound and potatoes &emdash; one of the
few vegetables &emdash; a dollar apiece. The store doesn't
even bother to sell milk &emdash; it would cost about $5 per
gallon.
Chase said the welfare
reforms will add to the village's problems. In the past
year, there have been six domestic abuse cases, and,
although alcohol is banned in the village, it was blamed for
three deaths, including two people whose frozen bodies were
found in nearby lakes.
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ANGST AND IDLE TIMES
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Samantha Alexie
2, has an ear infection. Dr. Don Kruse listens while
Samantha's mother, Maggie, explains her daughter's symptoms.
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Dr.
Donn Kruse said it is a familiar story.
Kruse is director of the
Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Regional Hospital, a long, snaking
tubular structure that sits on stilts above the frozen
tundra. From morning to night, the lobby is filled with
walk-in patients, many elderly and nearly everyone with
children in tow. Many know Kruse, a slight man casually
dressed in a cotton plaid shirt, green pants, a belt adorned
with a bear claw and caribou antler, and Birkenstocks.
Kruse moved to Bethel in
1983 to learn more about the culture of two adopted native
Alaskan siblings. He found a people rich in traditions but
deep in poverty.
The region's health
problems are serious, Kruse said, and they will only worsen
when the welfare reforms go into effect and Medicaid
benefits are curtailed.
Tuberculosis is still
common in the delta and pneumonia reaches up to 50 times the
national average at times, Kruse said. Constant exposure to
raw sewage contributes to high rates of bacterial diseases
such as hepatitis.
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But
alcoholism is regarded as the region's No. 1 health problem,
and suicide is the second-leading cause of death and four
times the national rate. Kruse believes the poor job market,
the resulting idle time in the villages and angst about
trying to straddle two cultures all contribute to these
epidemics.
Fetal alcohol syndrome
among native Alaskans is four times the national rate, and
posters on hospital walls plead with pregnant women not to
drink. A poster placed in the privacy of a bathroom tells
women that it's not their fault when a drunken husband beats
them.
"We know unequivocally
that when cash hits the region, the alcohol consumption goes
up," Kruse said. "That's just the way it is."
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PAIN BEFORE PROGRESS
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Naneng
said there will be much more pain before things get better
for his people. And he said that for them to have a fighting
chance, the government must improve education, change state
fishing regulations so natives can earn a decent living and
require out-of-town contractors to hire locally instead of
importing workers when they come to town for construction
projects.
But without welfare,
Naneng predicted, natives would be forced to pursue
education and learn skills, and that a slow evolution would
begin from alcoholism to busier, more satisfying lives.
"It will not be easy,
but we must do this to survive," he said.
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