“What am I expected to say?” I asked, as nonchalantly as I could.
“Whatever you feel you need to say,” she responded, matter-of-factly.
I knew that this opportunity and honor to speak to five hundred tribal chiefs was no accident. But I was still quite nervous. I’m not even a tribal chief, I thought to myself. There must be a good reason for this. They are asking me to speak, and they don’t know anything about me!
On the first day of the meeting, I could see that this was quite an important event. It was no small feat to bring so many important Indigenous leaders together from so many countries in the western hemisphere. I had never seen such a gathering in my life. We all gathered in a very large conference facility with chairs placed in concentric circles. I knew that this traditional arrangement of chairs signified that everyone sat in the circle as equals. There was no “head table,” only one central microphone strategically located at one side of the great circle of people and wireless microphones that allowed individuals to interact with the speaker if need be.
The issue at hand was how to amend the World Conservation Strategy document to reflect the needs and desires of aboriginal peoples, and how aboriginal peoples were to be treated when making environmental policies, regulations, and laws. The meeting was being held in the hope of achieving a unified position on behalf of the world’s aboriginal peoples before a meeting with United Nations officials. I listened to the speakers as they stood at the microphone, one by one. Everyone who wanted to speak was given a few minutes of time. Only a few speakers were formally scheduled. I was one of them.
I loved the dignity of the proceedings. They seemed right and honest. No one interrupted. Everyone listened intently to each speaker. And, as each speaker came forward, not one delivered arguments against anything any previous speaker had proposed. Each simply stated his or her case. I saw none of the behavior so common in proceedings in the United States in which people argue in favor of their points and against what others may have proposed.
Over the next two days, I watched, listened, and learned. I could see that all the leaders took this meeting extremely seriously given the tone, tenor, and dignity of the proceedings. Throughout those days I looked for opportunities to interact with Joe Sarcasha, thinking he would somehow offer me insight into what I was to do at this gathering. When we weren’t interacting, I watched him carefully. But he said and did nothing that struck me as significant or guiding, a fact that became ever more disconcerting the closer it came to the time I was to present.
A half hour before I was to speak before the gathering, I still had no idea what I was supposed to do. And the gathering was preparing to take some kind of action on the World Conservation Strategy issues. I watched Joe like a hawk for clues. Finally, he did something I took notice of. He was handing out flyers to everyone at the gathering. I made my way toward him and got the flyer. It pointed out how the non-Native “system,” the “powers that be,” had never served Indigenous peoples, how the greatest suffering and problems experienced by Indigenous peoples were created by Westerners. From what I had heard from many who had already spoken before this gathering, this line of thinking and feeling was pervasive. The flyer advocated withdrawal from the World Conservation Strategy process as a form of protest. On reading this, I knew immediately what I was supposed to say to the five hundred Indigenous chiefs.
When the time arrived for me to speak, I began slowly.
“Respected Elders, Honored Leaders of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island,9 it is with great humility that I come before you here today. I bring you greetings from the Indigenous nations of Alaska and their prayers for a successful gathering. I prayed that I be guided in what I say here today. Up to this moment I did not know what I was to say, and my prayers have been answered. I come here to appeal to the compassion of this great gathering, and to ask that we make these decisions with the wisdom that can come only from our hearts and not our minds.
“We know our peoples have suffered great injustices at the hands of organized governments in the Western world, injustices that continue to this day. We know that our voices have not been heard in the countless forums we go to. Our lands continue to be taken from us. Development continues to despoil our waters and fields. Our trees continue to be destroyed. Our sacred grounds continue to be violated. Our voices are ignored in government. Many of our people are in poverty because developers and governments take the most productive grounds and sometimes have forcibly removed us from our ancestral lands. We see how many of our sacred ways have been violated by those who seek to use them for profit or ego, or who use them as symbols for superficial things such as school logos and mascots. And we see the results on the spirit, hearts, and minds of our great peoples. We see how many young ones are lost, prone to violence, addictions, suicides, and murders. We see how many of our people have become sick mentally, physically, and spiritually with emotional disorders, diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, cancers. We see the continued erosion of our cultures and spiritual ways as the pressures from the outside come into our villages and families.
“We understand how this is the most subtle and insidious form of genocide because these symptoms are largely invisible to good-meaning peoples from mainstream societies. Our people die slowly, but it is death caused by the disconnection of peoples from their hearts and ignorance on a grand scale. We can choose to fight people over these things. We can choose to work in anger, rage, and maybe even hatred toward those groups, organizations, and individuals who have done these things to our peoples. We can choose to fight the governments for the injustices wrought upon our peoples. It is always a choice, and I appeal to you to think about this.
“These things have been brought to our people only because the people who do such things are asleep in spirit. It is a spiritual sickness from which they suffer, and they do not know or understand this. They cannot know any better unless they are shown another way. A way of love. A way of compassion. A way of wisdom. Our ancestors understood what it means to be a real human being and conducted themselves in this way of beauty. We must continue to honor these ways. In doing so, we honor our ancestors, and we create the only kind of energy and intent that we want to bestow on the next seven generations. If we choose to fight, then we give a legacy of disconnection, ignorance, and continued violence to those yet to come. Let us bring our hearts together in a good way to create something born of love and compassion. Only in this way can we make lasting change. The decision is up to you.”
I breathed a sigh of deep relief that I was done. I was perspiring and shaking out of sheer nervousness and surprised at what had come out of my mouth. I didn’t know if what I said would make any difference until several of the most revered Elders and chiefs stood up, each in turn, to voice their support for the thoughts I presented.
In the end, the delegates unanimously agreed to proceed with the process and to do so in the way of the real human being. I and two others were chosen to draft language reflecting the desires of the delegations to include language in the World Conservation Strategy that acknowledged and affirmed that Indigenous peoples were part and parcel of environment, and that Indigenous people must be meaningfully involved in the decision-making processes of signatory governments. As drafters, we were also charged with negotiating the language with UN officials. As the drafting and negotiating team, we had no difficulty reaching consensus on language. The only difficult issue for our team was to find a word to refer to the peoples we represented. I learned, for example, that there are groups in Africa that illegitimately call themselves “Indigenous” in order to receive government and foundation support. One person offered that the word “aboriginal” has been used derogatorily in Australia and may have those connotations. We agreed to use “First Peoples.”
Four years later, the language recognizing First Peoples in the World Conservation Strategy was accepted and made part of the document adopted by 125 nation-states in a plenary session of the United Nations.
When it was all done, I gave many prayers of gratitude and thanks to the Creator and the ancestors for all their help. I recognized that I could not take credit for any of it, only that I was given a humble vision of a necklace, and that I came with an open heart asking for guidance. And it was there.
Chapter 25
As the Island Turns, Part I
After serving in the governor’s cabinet as the head of the Alaska Department of Commerce and Economic Development, as it was known at the time, under Governor Steve Cowper in the late 1980s, I was hired to be the city manager by the city council in my home town. It was 1990, and I did not yet know the dramas I would witness and be part of in the ensuing four years.
On my first day as the city manager, driving through town, I was shocked at the number of outside commercial fishermen who were staggering in the streets drunk. On that first day, I saw a fisherman sitting on the ground adjacent to the bar, openly drinking beer. Yet another was carrying a case on his shoulders as he chugged down a can of beer. When I arrived at the city hall, I toured the premises. The city hall was home to the city administration, the local police force, the magistrate’s court, and a radio and TV station. The upstairs used to be the community gathering hall where I recalled our Christmas plays and the twenty-foot tree, richly decorated with colored bulbs, tinsel, fake snow, candy canes, and a giant star at the top. I also remembered how, each year immediately after the Russian Orthodox Christmas, the community would gather to watch ingenious and incredibly funny or scary performances by local people.
It was tradition, during these performances, for some men to dress up as women, and some women to dress up as men. The costumes were worn in a way that exaggerated the physical features of the gender they pretended to be—the men would attach gigantic water-filled balloons to their upper body and overstuffed pillows to their behinds; the women, not to be undone, used cucumbers in one particular location.
I always loved this skit: One “woman” would be in her ninth month of pregnancy and in labor. This “woman” would be placed on a gurney, with “men” doctors performing the delivery.
“Ow, ow, ow,” screamed the pregnant woman, “that really, really hurts!”
“Let me fix that pain for you,” the lead doctor said as he proceeded to massage the woman’s chest and then pop one of the balloons. “There, now doesn’t that feel better?”
“Ow, ow, oooooooooooh,” the woman crooned.
“That’s better. Now let’s get back to work, doctors. Her water bag has broken!” the doctor proclaimed.
“Chainsaw!” the lead doctor commanded with his palm out.
“Doctor, watch out for my bloomers! Don’t cut my bloomers!” the woman screamed.
“Chisel!”
“What are you going to do with that?” cried the woman.
“Oh, I don’t know, I just like to feel a good man’s tool,” the doctor replied. “Hammer. Quickly, I’m going to nail this sucker!”
“Oh, Doctor, this isn’t supposed to feel good, is it?” the woman moaned.
“It’s a side effect, just don’t urinate as I push on your stomach.” A focused stream of yellow water squirted at least four feet in the air as the doctor pushed on her abdomen. “Now you’ve done it! I told you not to do that! Now I feel the urge to go! Bucket!” the doctor commanded. Sounds of liquid hitting the bucket were heard, and the doctor grinned, full and silly.
The doctor then removed a can of pop from the woman’s “womb,” then a box of cereal, a box of Cracker Jacks, some bedsheets, an apple, a shoe, a bra, a pair of shorts, and finally out came the baby—a Raggedy Ann doll!
“Oh, she’s got red hair!” a nurse proclaimed. “What is an Unangan doing with a red-haired baby? And look how flexible she is!” throwing the doll ten feet into the air.
The community would then burst into a series of laughter and applause as the New Year’s baby arrived. The man who thought he was the most macho in the village would be picked to play the role of the baby. He would be dressed in diapers, with a baby’s bonnet, and a “suskaax,” or baby’s bottle, filled with milk in his mouth. The man had to cry and act like an infant throughout that night. I thought to myself, how wise this is—making overly macho men think twice about demonstrating their macho too much, and the idea of using humor in a good way to make an example of the over-macho.
“Well, our work is done here,” the doctor said. “Now let’s get back to our real work fixing plugged toilets!”
The rest of the night the men dressed as women had to continue to act like women, and the women dressed as men had to continue to act like men. This was always hilarious as many of the “women” were looked up to as “men’s men,” and a “man’s man” doesn’t have the hang-ups about behaving in a feminine way. The live band of locals would play homespun guitar and piano music as the “women” and “men” went out into the audience to select partners of the “opposite sex” to engage in slow dance. The local Russian Orthodox priest, always a man, could only dance with his wife or other men, never other women because of the laws of priesthood.
Our people love to laugh. That night was no exception, even though we might have watched a similar skit the year before, and the children were always very happily mesmerized when adults did silly things. Later in life I reflected that such traditional performances were a wonderful way to playfully poke fun at the opposite sex. It was also to remind ourselves that we all have innate aspects of the opposite gender in each of us, and that was not only okay, but celebrated. I am grateful that these ways continue.
My thoughts came back to the present. As I walked into what used to be this wonderful place of community celebration, I was shocked to see large video-gaming units that took up two-thirds of the hall. What had been a large dance floor was now relegated to an area one-fourth its original size. I checked out these gaming units, all violence oriented, with programs that awarded points for gunning down or hitting and kicking one’s opponents before killing or knocking them out. I was horrified that this precious hall that had nurtured togetherness and a sense of community was now being used for games of destruction. As my first official act as the city manager, I immediately ordered all the gaming units and partitions removed and destroyed and the community hall restored to the way I remembered it as a child and teenager. Most of the children and teenagers who played these games were vocal in their protest within the community, however. Several parents were very upset.
“Why did you do this?” one woman shouted at me. “Now our kids don’t have anything to do, and that means trouble!”
I replied, with as much sensitivity and diplomacy as I could muster, in a somewhat pleading voice: “Look, Molly, these kids are playing games that are only about hitting and killing one another. It’s not good for them. I will help the community find other, better things to do, and I ask for your help to do this, please! And besides, don’t you remember how we used to have the Christmas programs, community basket socials, dances, and muskahraatax skits here? Don’t you think it would be nice to bring all that back?”
“Well, I guess, but what do we do for kid activities?”
“I will meet with the young people at the school and see what they would be willing to work with me to do something,” I replied. She was satisfied. Subsequently, I did meet with the students who decided to make the environment their central focus. They decided to build rat traps (because the ships that came to Saint Paul’s harbor carried the risk of rats, which were known to devastate bird colonies), clean up debris from the beaches, and lobby for cleanup of the seven fishing vessels that ran aground on fur seal rookeries or adjacent to bird colonies on the island.
The Elders and older adults were elated that the community hall had been restored. We celebrated this when the community Christmas program was held in the hall for the first time in four years. All the Elders voiced their approval and joy at the restoration. That was the best affirmation I could have received.
I then asked the police chief to resign and hired
a new police chief, Scott Stender, who was a member of the existing police force. Scott is a soft-spoken, large-framed guy who had served in the military police and then joined a police force in Washington State. Scott had experience with working on Indian reservations when he applied for police work on Saint Paul Island. I gave him orders to enforce the city ordinance against drunk driving, public consumption of alcohol, and illegal bootlegging of hard liquor.
My mother said, “I’m not afraid of the drunk fishermen, but I’m afraid of the teenagers who drink and drive.” I understood her concern because fishermen would blow off steam when their vessel came to the harbor, and that usually meant drinking alcohol. I had witnessed fishermen lugging six-packs of beer around and sitting outside while they drank themselves to a stupor. They had no care for how the town viewed them. They acted as if they owned the town.
That first month of local enforcement, we had thirty DWI arrests. The following month we had two, and no more fishermen or anyone else continued drinking beer in public.
To ultimately stop outside commercial crab fishermen from “running” our town, it took an incident that seemed to have come directly from a movie script to get out the message that this is one town the fishermen needed to respect.
One of the line officers, Jeff, called the police chief on the police radio: “Uh . . . Chief, we have a problem at the ballfield. There are somewhere between twenty and thirty guys here ready to kill each other and they have lethal weapons!”
“Roger. I am on my way!” Scott grabbed two stun or “flash” grenades and a shotgun and relayed his plan to Jeff and then me. “Boss, we got a situation here and I need your direction,” Scott said to me calmly over the radio phone as he explained what was going on. “I have a plan, but I need you to back me up on this.” He quickly explained, and I told him I’d back him up. “Thanks, boss. Would you come down as an eyewitness?”
Wisdom Keeper Page 15