TUNUNAK, AK {ESKIMO VILLAGE}

Part 1:

In March of 2011, I decided that the freezing cold winter was the perfect time to travel farther NORTH all the way up to a little alcove along the Bering Sea to an Eskimo Village known as Tununak. This was truly a once in a lifetime adventure being that the general public could never be able to enter these villages without a specific reason or invitation. My invitation was to come and photograph the village. I have a friend from college who was a teacher in the village and without this connection such an opportunity would never have been possible. So, how do you get to a secluded village located in the tundras? Well that alone was a trip of a lifetime.  By a little 4 seater bush plane. I flew from Minneapolis to Anchorage and then from Anchorage to Bethal. From Bethal I took this bush plane where the entire trip all you see is tundra for miles and miles. The day I flew in the weather was terrible and I was the last flight to arrive in the village for 4 entire days! That means no food, supplies, medial equipment or emergencies for that entire time can be attended to until the weather is flyable again. It is so dangerous that the have a TV show on cable about it called Fly Wild Alaska. Yup, that's who I few with, and the village I went to have been featured on the show.

This is me in front of a larger 6 seater bush plane I took going home.

The first few days of my stay there, the neighboring village was having a cultural festival so most of Tununak hopped on snow machines and drove miles through the open windy tundras to go watch the other village dance their traditional Yup'ik dance which is called Yuraq (pronounced: u-huck). I even learned some of their dancing while I was there. Yuraq is a very important part of their culture and is practiced by the adults and children many times a week. Each song they dance to tells a story about their culture. Their dance moves are very strategic, each one representing a word- sort of like sign language. Traditionally, the women stand up and dance, young boys sit on the floor in the front and dance, and the men sit in the back on chairs beating on drums while singing or chanting the words. The drums are made from the intestines of whales and  use sticks made out of the bone of a whale.The women wear fancy headdresses and use dance fans. Family members wear matching Qaspeq's (pronounced: gus-bucks) which is what they call their traditional Yup'ik clothing. The songs are very catchy and even though I don't speak Yup'ik I find myself humming the songs around the house quite often. Here is a photo of one of the elders dancing at the festival. The festival is held in the school gymnasium which is the only modern building in the village. It was build by the government. Most of the villagers live in shacks or huts.

As I mentioned, many of the villagers still live in old huts and shacks. This village is very undeveloped and if it wasn't for the government recently coming in and building them a school they would have very little knowledge of the outside world. They still dress traditionally, however you will see some students who are starting to conform to popular styles of clothing if they can find a way to own it. Most of their diet revolves around what they find on the land and in the ocean. Whale, seal, muskox, fish, salmon berries; they only have a few months a year where there is not snow on the ground so not much grows there for vegetation. There is a small grocery store in town about the size of my bedroom that supplies some packaged goods but only 10% of the villagers hold a job so money is a huge problem for these people. I have traveled to many places around the world. Many poor places. Here in the United States is where I found one of the poorest places I have ever been.

Tununak baby in traditional clothing

Pauline Pitka, Tundra grass weaver