After these first two weeks, I was no longer drifting into unconsciousness, only fitful sleeping bouts. Nevertheless, my days merged into nights and nights into days for another four weeks in the clinic. Sometimes I would wake up in my own urine or excrement. I seemed to be exhausted all the time, and every bone and nerve in my body hurt badly. And still no visitors and no other patients in that building. I was alone.
The night nurse would come up to “check on me” or to see if I had wet or pooped on myself. One night, after she cleaned me up, she began fondling my private parts. “Does that feel good?” she asked. I didn’t know what to say. I knew she wasn’t supposed to be doing what she was doing. Then she said she had to check my temperature and had to stick the thermometer in my rear end. I felt her finger go up me. She said this was to make it easier for the thermometer to go in. I didn’t know any better. She did this routine several times over the course of the following weeks. Every time I just lay there quietly, not saying a word. I was confused and afraid she would not bring me food or watch over me if I didn’t let her do what she wanted with me. I learned later that she had a rumored history of sexually abusing children.
Finally, the day came when I was told I could be checked out of the clinic. I don’t remember being elated. It was more like extreme relief that I would leave this place of horror. My grandfather came into the room at around noon, and my mother arrived later. My father was hard at work for the government.
“Aang laakaiyaax,” my grandfather said, greeting me in Unangan Tunuu. “Aang, Papa,” I retorted. My Papa was good and kind to his grandchildren. He would always give us special treats, and this day he reached out to me with an orange in his hand. An orange in those days was very special. Islanders were given a sack of oranges once a year during Christmas, but only white people got them anytime the supply ship arrived. It wasn’t Christmas, so this was really special.
In my little child mind, however, I blamed him and my parents for leaving me alone in this place of hell. I turned my head away abruptly, shaking my head, refusing to take the orange. My Papa, looking to the nurse, said, “what’s the matter with him?” The nurse said she didn’t know. He left, and the nurse and I were alone.
“I won’t let you leave the clinic unless you give me that orange,” she said nonchalantly. I didn’t know if she was teasing me, and I felt terror rising in me once again. I quickly handed the orange to her, and she proceeded to help me dress. I began to feel extreme relief that I finally had my “outside” clothes on—I knew I was leaving. The nurse didn’t give the orange back to me.
My mother arrived to take me home. I said nothing and didn’t look at her.
After I checked out of the clinic, I determined that this would never happen to me again. And I was beyond anger at my parents and grandfather for not protecting me and for leaving me alone, not knowing that the government doctor had prevented them from seeing me for six weeks. I closed myself off from them and adults in general. The only adults I still trusted were my aunt, Sophie, and her husband, my Aachaa. I did not even trust my own body. I felt it had abandoned me. It was years later that I understood how this experience had kept me from trusting any adult, including myself.
When I returned home, I secluded myself in the bedroom and limited my interactions with my family. When we had lunch, I would take my food into the bedroom to eat alone, every day. I became a loner and had only three friends: Nicky, Victor, and Peanuts. They were to be my only consistent friends through the ninth grade, except for two white boys I befriended over those years, Roland Doe and Craig Euneau.
The traumas I experienced in that clinic set the pattern I was to live out for decades. Every single morning, for much of my teen and adult life, I actually re-created my pneumonia symptoms and experiences in the clinic. I would wake up in abject terror, and I would sneeze five to ten times until my lungs and bronchial tubes filled with phlegm. In cold sweats, I felt like I was going to die. It was not until tens of thousands of vets started coming back from Vietnam with similar symptoms that a name was given to what I had: post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
I lived a life of not trusting anyone. I would escape into the “spirit world” to get away from what I felt was the ugliness of humankind in its violence, disconnection, and separation. The spirit world felt like my “real home.” I shielded my thoughts and feelings and became secretive. I trusted no one to touch me, and I became supremely suspicious of Western medicine’s abilities to help anyone. Subconsciously, I carried a deep sense that I could not trust my own body to keep me well. Until I got sick again, to the point that others were concerned about whether or not I was going to live, I did not fully tie this experience at six years old to patterns I carried through life. Even after losing my first and then my second wife in divorce, it was only mortal illness that made me realize that, to prove my point that others cannot be trusted, I had put my loved ones to impossible tests until they left me.
I isolated myself from others to the point that I could have been a monk or hermit. I spent much of my childhood years, beginning at six years old, seeking the comfort and bliss of nature. Daily I would connect with the island. I immersed myself in the wonder of the passing clouds, pushed by the mysterious winds. I loved to lie in the tundra by myself, listening to the bumblebees and blowflies buzzing around, the sound of the wind, the rustling of the grass, the song of the Lapland longspur that sang only when it descended in flight, the chirps of the snow bunting we simply called “snowbirds,” and the call of the rosy finches that we knew as “muskies.” I would take in the wonderful smells of grass and the fresh salt air and the feel of the life that surrounded me. It was here that I felt protected and embraced.
Other times I would go to the shoreline to wander through the intertidal zone, exploring the myriad of living things I came across—the green spindly sea urchins that we called “aagonin,” kelp, snails we called “chimkaiyoon,” starfish, tiny rockfish we called “kundoolin,” sea anemones, the occasional octopus, and sand fleas we called “kootmies.” Unangan had words for every creature around.
I walked inland over grass-covered basalt boulders to sit atop the highest hills on the island. From this vantage point I could see most of the island and surrounding Bering Sea. The island is only twelve miles long and five miles wide at its widest point. Occasionally, hundreds of reindeer would pass below, grunting as they moved with incredible ease over the rocky hummocks. In the early evening I noted how the clouds descended, first only over two hills that later I came to know as the masculine and feminine aspects of this ethereal island, then later the rest of the hills. The masculine aspect is known as Bogoslov. This Russian name means “the voice of God.” Bogoslov is a dormant volcano that prominently extends its rocky form upward in the center of the island. The feminine aspect is called Polovina, which means “halfway” in Russian. Its emerald-colored grassy profile appears like a pregnant woman with rounded breasts.
Beginning at age six, I began walking the three miles outside the village at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning to get to the many seabird nesting sites on cliffs sprinkled around the island shoreline. I wanted to get to these cliffs before sunrise when, by the thousands, the seabirds would stir and begin their circular flight in front of the cliffs.
I came to love the soup of smells along the island shoreline and the wonder and mystery of all this life that, intuitively, I knew was somehow beautifully and seamlessly intertwined. I floated with it, losing all sense of separation to the point that I could not tell where I began and where it ended. This experience was so profoundly familiar, like the place I found when I was sick and unconscious with pneumonia.
The deep connection to nature I had discovered would sustain me through the many trials and tribulations that lay ahead.
Chapter 10
A Personal View of Internal and External Oppression
Later in my life I thought about what oppression does to people. I can only imagine what horrors my people faced, which then developed i
nto a legacy of spiritual sickness and internalized oppression. We still have some stories of those times.
In the early 1990s, as part of a Discovery Channel–sponsored sea expedition to explore old Unangan settlements, I visited the island of the Unangan “Masada,” the place of the last stand between the Unangan and the Russian fur traders led by Soliev as described in Chapter Two. I was probably the first Unangan who dared go back to this place since that atrocity happened. On our team, we had a forensic anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institute (Bruno Frohlich), a geologist who had been specializing in Aleutian geology for twenty years, and a museum curator. We found that the island had settlements just about everywhere we looked. I sang an old Unangan song as we approached the site of the massacre and asked the film crew not to film the island from a distance, only close up. I didn’t want treasure hunters to know its location.
I separated from the group and followed two eagles, my “guides,” to one end of the island while the group went to where the atrocities took place. I knew these two eagles. Every island we went to these two eagles would be there. And I knew there was some reason for this, so I followed the direction of their flight until I was at the cliff next to the sea. I felt strongly that I should sing an Unangan song in this place, and I drummed and cried. Inexplicably, a voice of one of my ancestors came into my head saying, “We are still here waiting. We are here to remind our people that they have not grieved the pain, suffering, and death that happened here and everywhere on these islands because they have forgotten.” I was stunned to actually hear my ancestor. I had heard of people who experienced such things, but I had not paid that much attention to such stories. Now I experienced it. It struck me right in my heart. I knew that this message was absolutely right.
When people experience trauma, it is important to grieve in order to let go. Since that horrific day the Russian fur traders arrived to this place, however, my people have not grieved. I knew why. The survivors forced into slavery took on behaviors that led to depression, addictions, suicides, domestic violence, and murders—behaviors that deepened the traumas. They became parents and passed along these behaviors to their children, and these children became adults and had their own children. This intergenerational trauma compounds the sickness resulting from living with a colonial oppressor at the hands of the Russian fur traders and then the U.S. government. We suffer from this today not because the oppressor is physically present with us but because we internalized the oppressor so that we think we are no longer real human beings. I can’t learn, I am stupid, I am less than a white person. Everything that the original oppressors used to say about us we now say to ourselves; we have become our worst enemies.
To reverse the internal dialogue and related external actions, we must first grieve. Grieving is an individual process and may take a long time. Fortunately, grief counselors and the Alaska Native Medical Center are available to help, and we must take advantage of such support.
Once we have managed to grieve, we must become aware of how our losses resulted in the decisions we made in our lifetime. Once that is done, we must be big enough to forgive ourselves. Unless and until we forgive ourselves, we cannot forgive anyone else. It is only then that we begin to understand forgiveness of and compassion for others: our parents, our ancestors, the Russian fur traders, the U.S. government.
Without grieving, we will continue to carry anger and rage toward ourselves first, then others. When we carry anger or rage, we contribute to destroying our people and ourselves. It is the cause of violence toward ourselves and others. It is the cause of wars between peoples.
Once we separate from our hearts, it is easy to separate from others, including Mother Earth. The Elders say that “nothing is created outside until it is created inside first.”
Chapter 11
A Young Rebel Is Born
“The doctor is going to operate on all the boys who are nine years old!” Buxaa exclaimed, in a state of high anxiety.
“What do you mean?” I replied.
“My daddy told me that the doctor is going to cut all the nine-year-old boys! You know, down there!”
“What does that mean?” I asked, not knowing anything about circumcision at the time.
“My daddy said that the doctor will have to cut our skin around our poonies (Unangan Tunuu for penis) so we can stay clean, and we all have to go—you, me, Junior—everybody that is nine years old!”
“I don’t want to go!” I said, scared and defiant. I didn’t trust the doctor. Not after what I went through with the double pneumonia when I was six. And the thought of being cut horrified me as I knew that the doctor wouldn’t use any painkillers. I only found out later that such patients were put to sleep with ether, a primitive “knock-out” gas applied with medical gauze to the nose and mouth. The dosage and duration a patient received depended on the doctor’s experience and personal judgment, however. Too much and we could die; too little and we would regain consciousness during the operation.
In those days, the doctor’s orders carried the same weight as orders from the government agent. Everybody followed those orders, lest they suffer the repercussions—demerits reflected in the already meager pay the men received, assignment to a lower-paying or less “prestigious” job (such as working on the garbage truck or “road gang”), jail, loss of home, or deportation (for the greatest offenders). But I had the inspiration of people like my uncle, Eddie (aka Iliodor), challenger of the federal government when he was the tribal chairman and launched the 1951 claim accusing the U.S. government of failure to treat Unangan fairly and honorably. I was adamant that the doctor would not touch me, no matter what!
When I arrived home, my parents already had the order from the government doctor to take me to the hospital for the surgery. “I am not going!” I screamed, half crying and half angry. “I don’t care what you do; I’m not going! I’ll run away if you try to make me go, and I will never come back!” I proclaimed in a hysterical voice.
“Okay, okay,” my father said, in a voice of real concern. “We won’t make you go, but the doctor will have to come and get you if you don’t go,” he said.
“Let him; I don’t care!” I cried out, tears streaming from my face, realizing that my parents were not going to protect me from this horror. I knew they were forced to obey the government, just like everyone else in the village, lest our entire family suffer the consequences.
My mother and father talked in Unangan Tunuu. My father was telling my mother to go to the clinic to tell the doctor that I refused to have the surgery. My mother dressed in her finest.
For whatever reason, whenever Unangan people went to talk with one of the white overseers, they dressed up. In retrospect, I think our people were shamed by government agents and other white people terming us as “filthy” people, and dressing in Sunday’s finest was intended to show the agent that we were not filthy at all. Most of the women in my mother’s generation still keep their homes immaculately clean as a matter of habit due to all the years that the government doctor, wearing a white smock and carrying a clipboard, would inspect our homes weekly for cleanliness and sanitation. If something did not meet the doctor’s standards, the “man of the house” was given demerits that would affect food rations or his job performance rating and ultimately pay. I remember how my mother would wash and wax the floors until they were spotless, wash the windows, clean all the cupboards, carefully fold and put clothes away, and wash every pot, pan, and cup in the house before the government doctor would come.
The government agent, likewise, ran the community like a military camp, insisting on “order and cleanliness” in everything. The government-owned concrete houses, sitting in neat rows, were repainted every year white with green trim. The roads, built from red volcanic material called scoria, were frequently graded; the “road gang” would walk behind the grader, picking up loose rocks and pitching them off the road until it was relatively smooth. There was no junk machinery anywhere in the village; the government owned
all the vehicles and machines in what was essentially a government-run company town. Unangan men maintained the machinery; women were expected to stay at the house, cook, take care of the family, and keep the house clean. We never used the word “home”; it was always “house.” Every spring, the family would “spring clean” the house, washing and painting the walls, and cleaning the windows.
I waited by the open door for my mother to return. Our house was at the end of the first row of houses, at the top of the hill on the south side of the village. The clinic where the doctor worked was on the lower part of the north side. I saw my mother coming around Apaloon’s house in the second row, on her way back from the clinic. She was clearly distraught and, in tears, spoke to my father in Unangan Tunuu. She explained that the government doctor was so angry that his face got red and he hollered at her, saying that he would come up and get me right away, calling her an unfit mother because she couldn’t get me to obey. I was sorry that I had created this situation for my parents, but it was not enough to make me change my mind. I was not going to be tortured by this man, no matter what the consequences.
My father, thinking I would acquiesce when the doctor arrived, told me, “Get ready, the doctor is coming for you!”
I stood at the doorway watching the area around Apaloon’s house. Soon I saw someone in a long white coat walk up the road past Apaloon’s and the Russian Orthodox Church school, until he was on the straight road that led to my house. I screwed up my courage and determination, staring at the doctor as he walked quickly down the road toward me. Our eyes locked when he was just two houses away. In his eyes I could see nothing but sheer, almost crazy rage. No Unangan had ever dared challenge his authority. He was going to make an example of me.
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