Wandering about AFN, Part 1: I see Alaska history, every which way I turn, the man who witnessed my plane crash, Senators and such, etc.

This is Lee Stefan, Dena'ina Athabascan, coming down the escalator in the Dena'ina Convention Center in Anchorage, where the annual convention of the Alaska Federation of Natives was held. Stefan lives in the Native Village of Eklutna, which is located within the Municipality of Anchorage.

Stefan is a past president of the NVE tribal government. He is also an avid photographer. "Come by sometime soon," he invited. "We'll eat moose soup, and we'll go crazy looking at photos."

And here is Willie Hensley of Kotzebue, who became an activist in the 60's and 70's and was one of the original founders of AFN. The Native people of Alaska had become very alarmed at the expanding pace of incursion onto their aboriginal lands, which they had never sold, bartered, or treated away to anyone - Russia, included.

Thus, Native leaders formed AFN to push for a land claims settlement and Hensley played a lead role. The movement culminated in the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, which left 44 million of Alaska's 375 million acres to them. 

The act called for the 44 million acres to be deeded to 12 Native Regional Corporations and some 230 village corporations, which were paid $1 billion for the 331 million acres removed from Native aboriginal title. Under the Statehood Act, Alaska would get 103,350,000 acres and the remaining 222 million acres would be held by the Federal Government.

Hensley went on to become one of the more important and influential Native Corporation leaders. This year, his book, Fifty Miles from Tomorrow was released to critical acclaim and has become an Alaskan best-seller.

This year's convention was dedicated to Hensley, and he and his 26 year-old daughter, Elizabeth, gave the keynote address.

This is Elizabeth Hensley, chatting with Phillip Blanchett of the musical group, Pamyua. Sadly for me, I was delayed in Wasilla on the opening morning of AFN and I missed the keynote address that Willie and Elizabeth Hensley delivered together.

After I arrived, many different people told me that the speeches were excellent and they especially praised Elizabeth, a law school graduate now serving as an aide to Alaska State Representative Reggie Joule. She likened what is happening in Rural, Native Alaska today to warfare.

"The war that engulfs us today is a war fought on the battlefield of substance abuse. Self-hatred. Suicide. Rape. Child molestation. This is a war within ourselves," she was quoted in the Anchorage Daily News. "What would happen if each of our tribes created a well-thought out, well-planned system for enforcing law and order? Could any outside force really stop us, 231 tribes, from maintaining peace and harmony within our villages?"

The Alaska Dispatch, quoted her as well: "This war is just as bloody and as damaging as any fought with guns and knives." She spoke of suicide and substance and sexual abuse. "How many of you have cried for hours without knowing why?" she asked, "and how many of you have drank or smoked weed or used meth ... because of a deep emptiness in your stomach?"

This is Etok, Charlie Edwardsen of Barrow, who was also an activist in the movement that led to the passage of ANCSA, but was very disappointed in how it turned out. When the Native leaders present were asked region by region whether they accepted ANCSA, the late Joe Upicksoun, the Arctic Slope Represenative, shouted out, "no!" 

Thus, Edwardsen has always maintained, all the land within the huge area of Alaska from the Brooks Range north to the Arctic Ocean legally still belongs to the Iñupiat, as they never agreed to cede it.

In the decades since ANCSA passed, Edwardsen has actively promoted the rights of Alaska's tribal governments. Don't ever try to argue with him, because you will never win. His brain is like an encyclopedia of Indian law and his voice... you could shout into a microphone and even without one he would still overpower you.

The PBS documentary film, For the Rights of All: Ending Jim Crow in Alaska, produced by Anchorage-based filmmaker Jeff Silverman, was previewed on opening day. It tells the stories of two Native women who played Rosa Parks-like roles in gaining civil rights for Alaska Natives: Iñupiat Alberta Schenck Adams and Tlingit Elizabeth Peratrovich. Schenck got arrested and jailed for sitting in the whites-only section of a movie theatre in Nome, only to go back and sit there again.

This inspired other Iñupiat to do the same and the theatre owner and police backed down.

Peratrovich stood up to a racist and bullying Alaska Territorial Senator to deliver the testimony that proved key to the passage of Alaska's Anti-Discrimination Bill in 1945.

Diane Benson, the actress, poet and playwright who originally put-together a one-woman play on Peratrovich, reprised that role in the documentary. Afterward, Sarah Thiele, an Athabascan living in Pedro Bay on Lake Iliamna gave this ivory paddle pendant to her.

Thiele said that she has had the pendant for many years. She knew that one day she would give it to someone, but did not know who. After she saw the film, she gave it to Diane.

"It takes work to paddle," Thiele explained. "She never stopped working, she never stopped paddling."

This is Gar Caldwell with his wife Emily and their new baby, Jessica Elizabeth Atkilaq. Let's be clear about one thing - I am not a wedding photographer. I would rather do just about anything than to be a wedding photographer. When people call me up on the phone and ask me if I do weddings, I tell them "no" - even during those times when I am flat broke and desperate for cash. But everynow and then, for a good friend or relative, I will photograph a wedding.

I photographed the Caldwell's. Now I have photographed their baby, too.

When Flore Lekanoff was in his teens, the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor and captured Alaska territory in the Aleutians, including Attu, where they killed two villagers and took the remainder of the Aleut population captive. 

Shortly after the bombing, Lekanof and his family were suddenly evacuated from their home in St. George on the Pribilof Islands and sent by ship to a camp in Southeast Alaska. Aleuts from several villages in the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands were evacauted and then housed in old, dilapidated fish canneries and mining camps, where the government abandoned and left them long after the Japanese threat had been eliminating.

St. George lost 25 percent of its population to disease and hunger. Lekanof's sister and grandmother were among them. Flore, however, managed to use the experience to gain broader knowledge of the world and its workings and went on to become a prominent leader.

This is he, with his wife Mary, who I used to work with at the now defunct, Tundra Times.

When I flew my airplane into the trees at Mentasta, Charles David Jr., witnessed the crash. He came running to me and I saw the look on his face go from worry to relief. 

Many people told me that I was lucky, but it is hard to feel lucky when you have just destroyed the symbol of your identity and the foundation upon which you were building your life. Such was the case when I crashed The Running Dog.

Still, it was kind of comforting to see Charles rushing toward me after it happened because, as you can see, he is a strong man.

Charles embraces George Attla, 10 time winner of the Fur Rendezvous World Championship sprint sled dog race and eight time winner of the North American Open. As a boy, Attla suffered a crippling bout of tuberculosis as a boy.

Few believed that he could succeed when he took up dog mushing. His story was told in the film, Spirit of the Wind.

This is Robert Heinrich, commercial fisherman and President of the Native Village of Eyak in Cordova. There is a big story behind this tribal government, but I don't have time to tell it right now. 

In years past, I did some work on contract for NVE. Heinrich, better known locally as "Moose," was a fun person to hang out with. He was in Mentasta the evening that I crashed. The first thing he asked me when I saw him at AFN was, "do you have another airplane yet?"

No, I said, I don't. I have not been able to afford it.

He said that when you have to get something, you just got to do it. When he decided to buy himself a crab boat that cost $250,000 (or was it $450,000?) he didn't have any money but he bought it, anyway.

Yes, that's how I got the Running Dog in the first place - that's how I've done virtually everything that I've ever done, but it's really, really, hard right now. Hard to communicate how hard.

"But I've got to get one, somehow," I told him. "I have no idea how. But I've got things to do."

"Yes, you do!" he said. "And you can't do them without an airplane."

Among the first villages that I traveled to after I got my Alaska start-up job at the Tundra Times was Kwigillingok, a tiny Yup'ik community near the mouth of the Kuskowim.

I had not yet learned to fly and I came in on a commercial flight just as a severe September rainstorm struck the village. Nobody was there to pick me up. I walked through the rain to the post office, where the Post Master lady told me that the man who was supposed to meet me and help me out with the project that I had come to do had left the village and would not be back for a week.

I did not know what to do. The rain was coming down harder and harder and there would not be another plane for three days. I had no place to stay, no food to eat.

So I sat down on a wooden bench to think about it and, as I did, an elderly woman walked into the post office. She looked at me, then began to speak in Yup'ik to the Post Master. They spoke for awhile and several times, the woman looked at me. I knew that I was the subject of the conversation and I imagined that it was not friendly, that she was saying something like, "look at that stupid white man stuck in our village! We don't need him here! What's he doing here, anyway?"

After a few minutes, the Post Master came over to me. "She wants to know if you would like to go to her house and eat dinner with her," she asked me.

So, yes, I went and had dinner - soup, with eyeballs floating in it and it was hot and good.

For the next three days, that Elder woman's home was my home and she was wonderful to me. My trip proved successful.

This woman, master basket weaver Lena Ath, is also from Kwiq.

As you can see, her work is very beautiful - as is the Native spirit of her village. May that spirit never die.

The man in the white shirt is US Senator Mark Begich, Democrat, dancing in an invitational with the Kuugmiut Dancers of Wainwright.

US Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican, follows the lead of Kuugmiut dancer Iqaluk Nayakik. Long-time readers will remember Jason Ahmaogak. He drums behind Senator Murkowski and Iqaluk is his special lady.

Now I do not know what to do. I have enough material like this from this year's AFN convention to make daily posts of this nature for a week - but I can't afford the time to do it.

But I will make a least a couple of more posts, but will make the text even more brief.

I take a short break to post five pictures of Melanie and her cats, from today; I will get back to the AFN images tomorrow

Here is what happened: both Melanie and Lisa filed a complaint that Grahamn Kracker had not put up a new post on the No Cats Allowed blog for far too long. So, today, while I was in Anchorage on what was the final day of the AFN convention, we all had a late lunch together and then I swung by Melanie's where I photographed Slick and Diamond - this being Slick, or Bear Meech, as Melanie usually calls him.

We then went to coffee with Rex and Lisa, and then to Lisa's, where I photographed her new kitten, Zed, as well as the young adult, Juniper.

I then prepared these five images, as well as six others of Lisa's cats, for Grahamn Kracker to post on his silly blog.

But I am so tired and so desperate to go to bed and sleep, that I decided to allow Grahamn Kracker to only post the Lisa cat pictures and I would post Bear Meach and Diamond here.

Tomorrow, I will get back to the pictures I took at AFN and will put up a few posts - because I can't cover it in one.

Melanie, Slick and Diamond.

Diamond leaps over Bear Meach.

Diamond, Melanie and Slick.

Diamond.

That's it. I'm going to bed.

Goodnight!

She dances, then speaks of the cancer her doctor said would kill her six months ago - now she has the support and prayers of the Native community

Mildred Martinez, Tsimshian from Metlakatla, (left) had been dancing strong at AFN's Quyana Alaska Friday night, but then the dancing stopped and she told the crowd about her fight with cancer. What started out as breast cancer had migrated to her spine, into which a metal rod was inserted, and then two tumors went to her brain.

In February, her doctor told her that her situation was hopeless, that it would be futile for him to treat her further and that she should just go home and prepare to die, because she would not make it past April.

Yet, here she was, six months past the deadline her doctor had given her, dancing with a group of Tlingit and Haida dancers from Juneau.

She spoke of how she had not given up just because her doctor said she was done, but had fought on and had found a physician in the Lower 48 who believed she could still make a fight of it. He began to treat her and so she is still here.

"Everyone has the right to fight for their life," she said.

Her fight is not over. Although she still lives, the cancer is still with her and she will soon travel Outside for chemo treatments.

Martinez expressed her faith in God, and stated her belief that He will help her through this.

Out in the crowd, hands lifted up in prayerful support.

Her fellow dancers gathered around her and sang, "How Great Thou Art."

When the song ended, the box drummer returned to his drum. The booming sound that he created was one of power and strength.

After she danced down from the stage and moved in traditional style toward the exit, a hand reached out to her. It would not be the only one.

She danced toward the exit.

Before stepping through the exit into the hall, she received a hug.

She joined in (back row, far right) with her fellow dancers as they waved through the TV cameras to their relatives and friends down in Southeast Alaska, and to well-wishers in every part of Alaska.

So many people who this morning did not know who she was now pray for her. In the Alaska Native community, that means a great deal.

As for me, I am in the same situation I was last night, but it is even later, I am more tired, my headache is worse and there is simply no way I can even look at the bulk of the day's take.

It seems a small matter. It will all hold. The pictures of all these people that I have been meeting and photographing will be there for me to run another day.

My plans for tonight are derailed by a thundering headache, but here, at least, is a bit of Cup'ik beauty, grace and power from the AFN Convention

I had big plans for this blog tonight, but it is late, I am too tired and I have a thundering headache. I cannot even begin to edit and process the bulk of today's take. I arrived at the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention a little before noon and then spent the rest of the day until about 9:00 PM either there or at related functions.

I did interview a handful of people, but mostly I just walked around and bumped into old friends and chatted. And I never had to walk very far. In fact, it was kind of impossible to walk far, because if you have wandered around Alaska for as long as I have and you go to AFN, then you just run into friend upon friend upon friend and each time you stop and chat.

So, besides the interviews, that's pretty much what I did. And I took a number of photos of some of these folks and so I was going to run a series of such pictures, but man, I've got to take some aspirin and go to bed!

So instead, I am doing it easy tonight. The last event that I attended was the first part of the performance of the Chevak Dancers, by which time my counter said I only had 36 frames left in my camera. You always get two or three more pictures than the counter says you will, plus I threw about dozen away so I could shoot just a few more, but still I wound up with only about 30 frames in my editor. It is easy to grab six of 30 frames, whereas it would be quite hard and time-consuming for me to try to sort through all these other shots and process them.

So here is one of the three: a beautiful dancer, whose name I do not know, waiting for her drummers to sing.

Her drummers sing.

She dances.

He dances, as well.

View from the front.

John Pingayak, leader of the Chevak Dance group, speaks to the crowd.

I have some more interviews to do tomorrow and I will also spend more time wandering about the convention, which means that I will have even that many more photos of friends to try to make some kind of presentation out of. I will also explain more about what the AFN convention is.

But I will do it. I sure hope that I can get rid of this headache, first. It is really a terrible headache. I don't know how a person can even think when he has a headache like this.

Chevak, by the way, is a Cup'ik village in Southwest Alaska, about ten miles inland from Hooper Bay on the Bering Sea coast. I have landed there a couple of times when I was doing work in Hooper Bay, but I have done no work in Chevak. Maybe one day I yet will.

There singers are strong. Their dances beautiful, graceful and powerful. So I think the village must be all these things as well.

I take four outings today and see many spectacular sights

Outing #1: I Face the Morning

Mornings are difficult for me. There are two ways that I can tolerate them - I can fix myself some oatmeal and eat it in silence with a cup of coffee and a banana. Silence. No TV. The sounds of a TV are virtually intolerable to me in the morning. So if I can get my breakfast ready and take a seat on the couch where I can look through the window into the small patch of woods that is our backyard before anyone else comes in and sits down, I am fine.

In this quiet, I find a certain peace and my mind comes to terms with the fact that it has another day that it must cope with.

But I am the only one in the house who feels that way concerning TV and breakfast. If anyone is already out there when I come staggering out, I am lost, because the TV is on. I do not feel like imposing my will on anyone, so I just bear it. It isn't easy, but I'm a tough and compassionate man.

Today, I got up and all was silent. Jacob, Lavina and Kalib had already left for Anchorage, Margie was asleep and Caleb had not yet returned home from his all-night shift. So I thought maybe I would have oatmeal in quiet and peace. But then, as I was getting dressed, I heard Caleb's car pull into the driveway and I knew the TV was about to come on.

I punched the auto-start to the Escape so that it could begin to warm up.

I still await that check that I wrote about last week and so severely lack cash, but I do have a credit card. So I headed over to Family Restaurant. That's the other way that I can tolerate the morning - if I can sit in a restaurant and be served a good breakfast.

There is no TV at Family although there is noise there, but it is the indistinct sounds of conversations taking place between people who I do not know, usually with only a word or two, perhaps a phrase, that actually reaches my ears at a volume loud enough to pierce through my own thoughts. Of course, it is backed up by the chimes of plates banging against each other, and being tapped by knives and forks. So I can just sit there and let my mind come to terms.

So here I am, at Family, where I ordered a Denver Omelette, hash browns and wheat toast with jam, plus coffee. 

When I came in, they tried to sit me against the wall 90 degrees to where I actually sat, but I wanted to be by this window, just in case the train came by. 

I did not see a train, but I did see the reflections of people inside the restaurant as I looked outside, at a blue Ford Escape and the Chugach Mountains.

As anybody who reads this blog knows, I love my G10 pocket camera despite its many deficiencies when compared to my DSLR's. I can carry it in my pocket, that's why. But sometimes those deficiencies cost me the picture. This is what happened here. I looked out the window and saw this elderly couple embrace, kiss - and hold the kiss - just like newly-weds on their honeymoon, or smitten teenagers who will who soon be surprised to have a baby come along. I don't believe there was any danger of that, in this case.

But, if they wanted to try, what the heck - go for it, I say!

I quickly raised the camera, got the scene framed just right and pushed the shutter button. Nothing happened. NOTHING! I kept pushing. Too late, it shot - but did not focus first! I don't know why. Sometimes, it responds quickly and accurately. Sometimes, it doesn't.

Oh well. The couple got to enjoy a good kiss and that is what really matters.

And I have told you about it and offered you blurry evidence that, indeed, it did happen, so let that knowledge bring hope and courage to your heart and soul.

Some would criticize me for posting this, just as they would that polar bear that I missed last week. They would say, "If you missed the picture, you missed it. Don't post a crummy picture."

But I don't just take pictures. I write, too. Now, I write about missing the picture.

Outing #2: A Bike Ride in the Wind and Snow

Here I am, pedaling my bike down Church Road. Even though I was going downhill, I had to work to pedal, due to the wind. And then I began to hear the sound of precipitation hitting my jacket. I felt the sting of it as it struck my face. Yet, I could not see it. It looked just like it would have looked if it hadn't precipitated at all.

I wondered if it was rain or snow. Snow, I figured, tiny flakes, heavy with ice. I reasoned this due to the volume of the noise and the sharpness of the stings upon my face.

Sure enough, finally, I was able to spot out a few of the larger flakes.

This invisible blizzard lasted for about three minutes, maybe four.

I didn't time it.

Outing # 3: I Get Margie Out of the House

Having used the credit card at breakfast, I had no justification whatsoever to use it again at lunch. But I saw Margie sitting on the couch, her crutches beside her, and I knew that was where she was going to be all day and I could not bear the thought of it.

So I asked her if she wanted to get out of the house for a bit. "We can stop at the post office and see if the check is there," I encouraged.

"Yes," she said. "I would like to get out."

The check was not there.

I left the choice of dining to her. She chose KFC.

As we waited in the drive-through line, this is what we saw. In some ways, it is getting annoying that everytime I go to a cash register, be it in the grocery store, the fast-food line, or whatever, I am asked to donate to something.

Yet, you look at this and you think, surely, if I can donate one dollar and feed four hungry children, then I should. You also wonder what will actually happen to that dollar.

As it happened, by the time we got to the window, I had forgotten about the sign. And the lady at the cash register didn't ask, the way they usually do, so I did not donate.

Now I have to worry about those four children who will not be fed because of me.

On the way home, we saw a caravan of school buses coming down the hill.

And more buses behind them!

And even more! Some people have the idea that Wasilla is a boring place to live, but, I tell you, there is always something exciting happening here.

Outing #4: Coffee Break at the Metro Cafe

Certainly, having been out three times already, I did not need to go out again - except for this: I always take a coffee break at 4:00 o'clock so that I can sit in the car, sip coffee and listen to at least a little bit of NPR's All Things Considered on KSKA.

I justify this by the fact that I tend to spend the rest of the day, usually until about 2:00 AM, sitting at my desk in my office, struggling to get some kind of work done.

So, as I waited in line, I saw this lady in my outside rear view mirror. As the wind ruffled her skirt, she smiled at someone who I could not see.

It was the driver of this car who she had smiled at.

She got in and then they drove away. Carmen, the owner of Metro Cafe, told me that they were real nice people.