Chapter 1: The White/Eskimo Experience in The Presbyterian Church in Northern Alaska
A MODEL
FOR A
CROSS-CULTURAL CHURCH
The White/Eskimo Experience
in
The Presbyterian Church in Northern Alaska
BY H. GENE STRAATMEYER
MAY, 1979
This thesis was written to fulfill the requirements of the Doctor of Ministry program of the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................iii
CHAPTER
I. THE NORTHERN ALASKAN ESKIMO AND THE PRESBYTERIAN
CHURCH............................................................................................................1
II. THE WHITE ALASKAN AND THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH........................78
III. FAIRBANKS AND THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH........................................140
IV. ETHNOGRATION-A MODEL FOR A CROSS-CULTURAL CHURCH……....207
V. AN EVALUATION OF ETHNOGRATION...........................................................240
IV. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE FUTURE......................................................300
APPENDICES
QUESTIONNAIRES SENT TO MEMBERS OF FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
LETTER SENT WITH THE QUESTIONNAIRE
RETURNED QUESTIONNAIRE WRITTEN RESPONSES
COMPUTER PROGRAM
COMPUTER PRINTOUTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This doctoral project could not have been completed without the help, encouragement, and advice of the following persons:
The members of First Presbyterian Church, Fairbanks, Alaska, who granted me a sabbatical at half salary at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado for the 1975-1975 academic year.
The Rev. Mr. James Nageak, Eskimo lay pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Fairbanks, Alaska, who helped me design the model described in this project.
My wife, Jean, who halted her education at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, to provide income during my sabbatical and helped in innumerable other ways to bring this project to its completion.
My children, Cynthia, Sandra and Michael who had to be uprooted from Fairbanks during my sabbatical.
Dr. Lola Tilly, Professor Emeritus of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and member of First Presbyterian Church, who helped finance the costs of the project through scholarship funds.
Dr. Mim Dixon, a social anthropologist and friend who helped design the questionnaire sent to the members of First Presbyterian Church.
Dr. John Krause, of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska and a member of First Presbyterian Church who helped with the interpretation of the research statistics.
Dr. Louis Bloede, my advisor at the Iliff School of Theology.
The Rev. Mr. Gordon Corbett, Associate Synod Executive of the Synod of Alaska-Northwest, for his continual encouragement and support.
First Presbyterian Church secretary, Debbie McCune, who helped with the typing of the preliminary drafts.
Mr. Edgar Philleo, architect and member of first Presbyterian Church, for the unlimited use of his copy machine.
CHAPTER 1
THE NORTHERN ALASKAN ESKIMO AND THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Eskimo Pre-History
Vine Deloria says “Americans in some manner will cling to the traditional idea that they suddenly came upon a vacant land on which they created the world’s most affluent society....”[1]
Even though it was Russians who first discovered what is now called Alaska, the land was not vacant when they arrived. Perhaps as early as 25,000 years before the white man came, Asians were pouring over the Bering land bridge. They made a relatively rapid advance southward and spread over wide areas of North and South America. Some eventually returned to the north when it became ice free.
About 10,000 - 15,000 years ago, another group of migrants crossed the land bridge. They belonged to an Arctic-Mongoloid racial group from which sprang both the Eskimo and the Aleut.[2]
One group moved south and west to the Aleutian Islands. The other moved eastward into the forest belt, only to be met by Indians who had come thousands of years before. “It may well have been under pressure from them that the Eskimo moved right out to the Arctic Coast.”[3]
It was at Point Barrow where the prominent Thule culture rose. Here the Arctic Ocean was filled with whale, walrus and seal. From there they continued eastward, depositing settlements as they went. Eventually their journey carried them 6,000 miles, along the northern coast of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. From Barrow they also spread southwest to the Bering Sea and even recrossed the Bering Strait to reoccupy a corner of the former ancestral home in Siberia.[4]
Because of their isolation from one another throughout the thousands of years, many different language dialects developed. Today, even different villages in the same general area will have a different dialect, although there is often enough similarity for them to communicate. At the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference held in Barrow in 1977, Eskimos from Greenland and the older Eskimo people of Barrow were able to understand one another.
Living in the arctic regions, two factors helped determine the nature of their culture. The first was the struggle for food and the second was protection from cold.[5] The umiak and kayak were developed to hunt the ocean mammals. The bow and the arrow were used for land animals like caribou and moose. They caught birds, ate their eggs, netted fish, dug for roots, and picked berries. They used dogs to pull sleds over the snow in winter and boats along rivers in the summer.
Houses were semi-subterranean, made of whalebone, driftwood and sod. The common myth that Eskimos lived in houses made of snow block is mostly untrue. A few Canadian Eskimos used the snow house, but only in the winter. The short, warm summers melt the snow in the Arctic regions and so tents were used during the summer. Most Eskimos, however, used the snow houses only as a home away from home, while hunting or when caught in a blizzard.
The houses were small, about 4-5 meters in rectangular shape. The floor was covered with timbers with a space in the middle for a hearth. On three sides were benches covered with caribou skins for sleeping while the door was on the other wall.[6]
They learned to utilize almost every part of the animals they killed for food. The caribou hides and seal skin was made into clothing. Fox and wolf ruffs were used to protect the face from the biting cold. Skins were sewn into mukluks for the feet and are so well insulated that even modern technology has found no warmer footwear for the Arctic.
Although the Eskimos were scattered around the Arctic rim in isolated settlements, they remained relatively uniform physically.
They are relatively small in stature, powerfully built but not fat, and
brown skinned; the face...gives the impression of being flat...; the iris
is light or dark brown in color; the course black hair is usually straight
and less often slightly curly.[7]
It needs to be clarified that Eskimos are not the same as Indians, but a distinct group of people. They have Mongolian features such as “high, broad cheekbones, small noses and often slanting eyes, and their babies are born with a blue Mongolian spot at the base of the spine.”[8] Nor are they Mongolian. They are taller and have larger skulls. “Soviet scholars at present incline to view that the Eskimos...form a particular ethnic group which is said to have originated from the Bering Sea area and is termed Arctic-Mongolian.”[9]
The Coastal Eskimos of Barrow, Barter Island, and Wainwright are not the only Eskimo people who are Presbyterians. A group of Inland Eskimos, known as Nunamiuts, also are a part of the group. They are closely related to the coastal Eskimos, but are a distinct group of people because of their way of life.
Nunamiut ethnohistory says they were created by Aiyagomahala in the region of Survey Pass at the head of the Alatna River. Aiyagomahala was a giant and a great man, who created people smaller than himself. He taught them how to hunt, trade, make clothing, tools and traveling equipment and lived with them a long time. He told them never to be angry, to love each other, to be kind, and to help each other. Before he left, he took his mitten and stuck it in the ground and the mitten turned into a mountain called Aigaruitch. He told the people to remember him whenever they saw the mountain. He left and never returned. The Nunamiut believe the Brooks Range was that land, once flat, but crushed up (like the sea ice) to form mountains.[10]
Their houses were made of caribou skin, in the form of a tent. They were circular shaped at the bottom with a dome shaped top. Willow poles were placed in the ground and bent over towards the top. The bottom was 12-15 feet in diameter. The poles were tied together at the top and the frame was covered with 20 or more caribou hides sewed together by the women. The fur was on the outside. An opening for smoke and excess heat was left at the top. Often there was a bear-gut window in the roof or wall. The door was a grizzly bear hide which hung down from the top. The floor was sometimes covered with small willows and stones in the center formed the hearth. The house was packed around the outside with snow, moss and sod.[11]
When a family decided to stay in one place, they built a sod house. Walls were one-two feet think, with the roof nearly a foot thick. It was framed with bog willows or spruce.[12] Several sod houses remain today in the village of Anaktuvak Pass, where the Nunamiut settled permanently in the 1950’s so their children could be educated.
Mostly, however, the Nunimiut followed the caribou. They formed bands, which were composed of several households, and had between 50-150 people.[13]
The large central house, called the karigi, was where all the community activity took place. As soon as the karigi was constructed, everyone came together for a communal meal, and continued to do so every day as long as the band remained together. In the afternoon, the men gathered in the karigi to work or visit, while the women prepared the food in their respective homes. At an agreed time, usually when the sun passed over a certain hill, all the women brought their wooden pots full of boiled caribou meat and any available delicacies to the karigi and set everything in the middle of the floor. After the evening meal, the men often brought out their drums and sang.[14]
At one time there were more inland Eskimos than there were Eskimos living on the coast, but as the influence of the whalers was felt in the 1800’s many of them moved to the sea.
By 1920, or shortly thereafter, the last of the Nunamiut families moved to the ocean and many of them assimilated with the coastal Eskimos in various villages which were developing. Several families, however, remained on the Arctic coast away from the “flesh pots” of civilization. In 1938, three families returned inland and were followed by others. By 1961, the inland Eskimos had increased to 100. Until 1950, they were nomadic, living much as their ancestors did for centuries.[15] Mary Darling, a Nunamiut now living in Fairbanks, came from a family of hunters. They would spend one or two years in the mountains and then spend some time by the ocean.
The Nunamiut people of recent years have experienced great change. Anna Nageak was born in the Brooks Range in the 1940’s. Her family at the time was nomadic, following the caribou and catching fish. In describing the nomadic life, she tells of both the good times and the bad, the bad times being when there was no food, when the caribou were not plentiful. Her family moved to Anaktuvuk Pass in the 1950’s, from where she was shipped off to school at Wrangell Institute in Wrangell, Alaska, a thousand miles southeast of her village. She describes the loneliness she and other children experienced, far from home and family. When finished with the eighth grade, she went back to the Pass to live.
Anna, who later married James Nageak of Barrow, eventually graduated from the University of Dubuque in 1956. Within a 35 year span of life, she moved from a very simple, nomadic, primitive culture to being a college educated teacher in a settled Nunamiut village in the Brooks Range.
Religion
The whites who first “invaded” the Eskimo culture found they already possessed a religion. The creator of all human beings was Father Raven, while the Spirit of the Universe created the universe. After having created man and his world, they no longer were involved in a direct relationship with humans. Man had to deal with the forces of nature through other lesser gods like the Great Chief of the Moon, the supernatural Dwarf People, the Sun Man, the Big Eagle, Thunderbirds, and Sedna.[16]
“These deities of the polytheistic world of the Eskimo reside apart and have their particular spheres of influence on man.”[17] Thus, the Eskimo had to deal with the gods throughout every part and phase of his life. He “could influence the supernatural forces toward a desired end...by means of ritual and magic....The power to influence these events came from the use of charms, amulets, and magical formulas, observance of taboos, and the practice of sorcery.”[18]
Taboos were necessary because of the antagonistic forces in and through which life continued and which must be kept in equilibrium. Sickness was caused by the failure to observe taboos. When sick, a divination ceremony was held during which the patient had to confess his broken taboos.[19] “According to this world-view, nothing could be worse than to disturb this equilibrium of powers.”[20]
An illustration of taboos can be taken from the birth of a child. The mother had to give birth to the child in an isolated hut. Edith Tegoseak, a long time member of First Presbyterian Church, relates how she is a “child of the snow,” having been born in a snow igloo, away from the main house. The mother had to cut the umbilical cord herself. If the mother died, everything had to be burned. If the infant died, complicated rituals were necessary. Immediately after birth, the infant received its first garment, which had to be burned after a number of days. Part of the garment was kept, however, as a protective amulet, and thus was worn on special occasions during one’s whole lifetime.[21]
Naming the child was most important. The child was named, usually before birth. The child was given the name of a deceased relative, and this was done for a reason. For the Eskimo, the person is composed of three parts. There was one shade (or soul) destined for future existence, a second shade was the life form of the body, and the third shade which lingered in the body after death.[22] This last shade waited to be incorporated again into a newborn child.[23]
The shamans were the “pastors” of the Eskimo communities during the pre-white era.
Though his vocation was a private matter...his role or function was public. He led ceremonies, cured the ill or at least tried to. His trances, when he made journeys to sila or sedna, to the moon or elsewhere, were made on behalf of the community. Eskimos seemed to be aware of his public function and his black magic used for destructive forces and purposes.[24]
The shaman could be either male or female. They were either chosen to be shamans when they were young by other shamans, or at times they had their own “calling.” Once they decided upon becoming a shaman, they received training.
Mostly, the shamans had “helping spirits” who were the benevolent ghosts of dead relatives. Their helpful functions were mainly two, healing the sick and encouraging the hunter in search of the game. However, there were also shamans who used their power to bring fear into the lives of the people. Gubser, who studied the Nunamiut Eskimos, concludes that the shamans were to be credited with some very positive results “in curing psychosomatic illnesses and in persuading discouraged hunters to try again or to seek game in a new region.” But, he concludes, “From what limited observation I could manage...shamanism seemed to loom larger as a source of fear than as a source of comfort and hope.”[25]
Many of the first whites who encountered Eskimo culture did not look favorably on the shaman. In the 1880’s Charles Brower, the famous white trader living in Barrow, had the opportunity to observe a Point Hope shaman at work and wrote of the experience:
Without waiting for dim lights or any such frills, he proceeded to work himself into a trance on the spot. As I stood by watching his dark, contorted features while he writhed on the floor, it wasn’t hard to believe that the instructions issuing forth came straight from the devil in person.[26]
The influence of the shaman decreased with the coming of the white whalers and then by the arrival of the missionary.
Many of the ancient Eskimo beliefs were seen to coincide with Christianity. Edith Tegoseak recalls that her grandmother put her to bed early in the evening with the instructions to be quiet because they had to watch and listen. She repeatedly admonished the youngsters to whisper and be very attentive to the sky. The grandmother, as Edith told it, said, “We are expecting another world to touch this world. From our ancestors we’ve been told two worlds are going to hit us some day. We have to watch and listen. When two worlds hit each other, only the honest people will cross over, but the dishonest people will stay here.” The grandmother’s ancestors believed that the “new world” would be inhabited by “risen people.” Edith says, “They know spirit never dies.”[27]
Chance, the anthropologist, talks about the syncretic blending of the aboriginal and Christian religious beliefs.
The modern Eskimo conceives of the supernatural world as being composed of God, Satan, and numerous vaguely defined devils. The belief in many devils is not only an aboriginal residue, but is actually in perfect conformity with the version of Christianity now presented to these people. Several missionaries in the region preach of the physical existence of devils....This syncretism further is seen in the present day belief that some psychotic episodes are attributed to possession by devils. At Wainwright several years ago, an Eskimo minister was called to pray over an individual who had a “fit” in an attempt to exorcise his devils - a request not unlike that made of a shaman fifty years ago.[28]
The ancient belief about life after death also has some “Christian” elements. The soul of the person was believed to go up or down. “Those who went to the bright land of the living found everything in abundance, while those who went to the land below had to live by the sacrifices that were offered in a memorial feast, a ceremony held 1-3 times a year.”[29]
James Nageak tells the story of an Eskimo man who lived a similar life to the prophets of the Old Testament.
He was kind and helped those in need. His food cache never needed replenishing because he always spoke to God. His prophesy was that there was someone coming who will give us the great story. The sign of the coming of this great story was a flag of animal skins which he let his family put up. As long as the story wasn’t available, the skins on that flag stayed fresh. Every year, after the man died, the family passed by the flag and saw that the skins were still intact, until one day the message of Jesus Christ came to the Eskimos. The prophesy had been that when the great story came, the skins would fall apart and become part of the earth. When the message of Jesus Christ came, the sign was replaced by the sign of the cross.[30]
An Eskimo woman, at the end of a series of instructions in the Christian religion, exemplifies the feeling of the Eskimo people that Christianity is the fulfillment of, not a replacement of, the former religion. She said,
I have never doubted that there was a good God. Twice in the excesses of my suffering, I had cried with all my strength, “There must somehow be someone who does not do evil. Where is he? May that one hear me.” I thought of a powerful spirit, more powerful than others, but good. I loved him without knowing who he was. I seemed to see him. I had such a need of him.[31]
Culture
Pre-history, religion, and culture are hard to separate because culture involves both pre-history and religion. But there are several other important parts of the culture that need to be shared.
The Eskimo had to form a very close-knit family and community to survive the rigors of the Arctic climate. No one ever went hungry when there was food, for food was always shared with those for whom the hunt was not successful. “We always try to help each other, that is the best way. Everybody works together, but if you don’t do things right then the people won’t help you.”[32]
The very nature of his survival culture made the Eskimo industrious.
Being lazy was actively condemned for children and adults....But at the same time there is not the same pressure as there is in white society - if something else more important comes up, do that. This ,causes problems when hired by whites. They say, “Eskimos have, to learn to finish what they start,” not taking into account that the Eskimos have a clear sense of job completion. What differs is the work situation in which the concept applies....[33]
Eskimos are taught to repress aggression. “From early age, the child is taught to be friendly, open, genial, warm, and outgoing....Warm personal attachments give a kind of social and psychological security that further adds to the desire to be friendly.”[34] This can cause emotional problems, however.
This type of upbringing is little preparation for facing the many conflicts and frustrations of adult life....He must be friendly even with those people he may dislike. He should maintain a sense of pride but remain modest, be prepared for action, but have patience....The individual simply suppresses them (that is, they seldom come to his conscious awareness) except during sudden seemingly unexplainable outbursts of temper....On rare occasions today, but more frequently in the past, these outbursts resulted in murder - or when turned inward, suicide.[35]
“The image the Eskimo presents to others is one of sociability and resourcefulness. Not frequently, however, his private image of himself contains feelings of loneliness and/or inadequacy.[36]
“The core of traditional Eskimo social life centered around the individual’s nuclear and extended family, a relationship continually reinforced by patterns of mutual aid and reciprocal obligation.”[37]
Children have a special place in the Eskimo family. The child receives the warmth and affection of parents, siblings, and relatives. This provides a great deal of security. Misbehavior is because the child forgets, not because he is bad. Parents have the responsibility of telling the child over and over again. Whites praise a child for good behavior. Eskimos praise him for remembering.[38]
If a family has more children than it can care for, it may give a child to kin. The identity of the child is not hidden and the adopted child may call all four parents father and mother.[39]
A boy is considered marriageable when he is able to maintain a family. A girl is eligible for a husband after her first menstruation. Couples often passed through three or four “trial” marriages before a final marriage took place. Children conceived during a casual relationship do not carry the same stigma as in white culture.[40]
It almost seems a paradox that though children are valued highly, the Eskimos practiced infanticide. Nelson Ahavakana, a lay preacher in the Barrow Presbyterian Church explains:
The Native people here, their culture is based on survival. If they can utilize it to survive themselves, then they keep it and anything, even of much value, they don’t let them survive, then they throw it away. Now this is true in a way, what you said on babies, in olden times. When a female girl was born, if the supplies aren’t enough, if they don’t have enough food or clothing, then they just get rid of the baby.[41]
It was also possible for the elderly to take their life if they became old and useless. Sometimes they would simply fall back on the trail if they could not keep up, while others would go off by themselves to die.
This easy attitude to life may seem strange to those living in cultures with other values about human life. But for the Eskimo, living in the severe climate of the Arctic, death was a matter-of-fact-thing, not to be feared more than anything else.[42] This fatalism was not one of resignation but rather the realization that one has little control over the future.[43]
“Beyond this extended circle of kin, there existed other more voluntary associations, such as trading and joking partnerships....”[44] In the trading partnership, composed usually of two families, friendships could lead to the exchange of wives.[45] In addition to wife exchange, both polygamy and polyandry were occasionally practiced[46]when either men or women were in short supply.
Other social groups were centered around the karigi, the men’s ceremonial dance and club house. “It was through participation in these later institutions that the Eskimo developed a sense of identity with a particular settlement or village.”[47]
“A leader is usually defined as the individual who exerts the greatest amount of voluntarily accepted influence on members of a given group.”[48] As one Eskimo put it, “Nobody ever tells an Eskimo what to do. But some people are smarter than others and can give good advice. They are the leaders.”[49]
The most dominant figures in the community were usually the hunting group leaders. Men of great wealth and high social positions became powerful community leaders, a trait shared only with the religious shamans. Many hunting group leaders were shamans as well.[50] In front of whites, however, the leader appears to be the eldest male in the extended family.[51]
It was to this alien history, religion and culture to which the white man came. He did not know the history, he saw the religion as heathen, and the culture as uncivilized. In his encounter with the Eskimo, he brought dramatic change, hardship, and cruelty to the Native people of Alaska. The problems of the Eskimo today are that of a transitional people, attempting to hang on to the past, but swept forward in the strong cross current of the dominant white society. One cannot continue to speak of Eskimo history, religion and culture as in the pre-white era. With the coming of the white man, a new era for the Eskimo people began.
Russian Alaska
Although the Russians were the first whites in Alaska, having discovered Southeast Alaska in 1741, their impact on the Barrow area Eskimo was so minimal that during the land claims fight of the 1970’s, Eskimo Evan Moses Laumoff said, “They tell me the Russians sold our land to the Government. There were no Russians on our land.”[52]
The Whalers
The first white explorer known to have reached Barrow was Captain F. W. Beechy, an Englishman, sent by the British Admiralty in 1826.[53] Shortly thereafter, in 1838, the whales of the Arctic Ocean were discovered and by 1846, almost 300 ships from New England were regularly chasing the humpback, bowhead, sperm, and killer whales.
In the 1850’s baleen (plastic-like material in the whale’s mouth) sold for 32 cents a pound and was used principally for corset stays. By 1905 it was selling for $5 a pound, which meant that $8,000 worth of baleen could be found in one whale. In addition, there were other marketable products such as the whale oil. During the late 19th century there were 51 whaling vessels registered in San Francisco with their annual take being about $1 million.[54]
As in the case of the first Russians, many of the whalers were not the best kind of white representative.
Some of these American whalers were as evil a lot of pirates as ever sailed....The ships sailed from some New England town,...touched on, the coast of Africa and “black birded” for negro slaves which they sold in the South, bought Jamaica rum, and headed around Cape Horn for the Arctic, where they traded the rum for whale oil, whalebone, and the furs of the Eskimos. Some crews were as sturdy and honest seamen as, sailed from any port, but when a ship’s crew went short, they shipped whatever came to hand in Rio or in the Sandwich Islands, and the material from which to choose was the worst in the Western World.[55]
It was probably one of these ships which stopped at St. Lawrence Island in the 1870’s. Traders bartered for fur and ivory in exchange for whiskey. All summer, while the Eskimos should have been hunting, the men of the village were intoxicated. When the vessel returned the following spring, all they found were frozen, emaciated bodies near the shore.
The whalers brought much tragedy with them. First, they brought the white man’s diseases, most of which had never touched the Eskimo before. Flu, measles, small pox, and tuberculosis were responsible for many deaths. Vincent Nageak, who lives in Barrow, tells of the sadness that befell many Eskimo homes. “I was born in Barrow and I lost my mother four or five months later. I lost my mother because of the flu, the sickness of that time.”[56] In 1900, more than 200 inland Eskimos trading at Point Barrow died of the influenza following the visit of a whaling ship.[57]
With the advent of the white man, the Eskimos health deteriorated. By World War II it was reported that:
half of the young Eskimo men who volunteered for military duty had to be discharged as physically unfit. Ten percent of all Eskimo children died before their first birthday. Ninety percent of Alaska’s deaths from tuberculosis occurred among the Eskimo.[58]
The second imported tragedy was liquor.
The introduction of whiskey as a trade item...disrupted and demoralized village life....Although outlawed by the United States government, whiskey was a commonly used trade item, and schooners laden with liquor frequented many coastal villages. As much as $200 worth of furs and other goods might be exchanged for one bottle of whiskey.[59]
The third havoc brought by whalers was their own greed. They were “ruthless predators.”[60] For the baleen from the whale, they killed the giant mammals and left the carcasses rot in the ocean. They killed and killed until the supplies were exhausted. Then they turned to the walrus and the seal. Their greed brought near starvation to the Eskimo whose old subsistence way of life was severely jeopardized. In fact, if Sheldon Jackson had not introduced reindeer to Alaska, the situation might have been worse.
The whalers had other effects on the Eskimo, too. Their contact changed his cultural patterns by whetting his appetite for Western goods and by inter-marriage.
It would be unfair to include all whalers and traders in one group. Among them were fine men who upon contact with the Arctic, loved it, married, and spent their life among the people. Today, their children, and grandchildren, considered Eskimo, still live on the North Slope. One of those pioneers was Charles D. Brower, who went to Barrow in 1884 and established his trading post. “He found the Eskimo people of this northern country fine, clean, upright people, independent and self-supporting.”[61] Whites who are open to the Eskimo way of life, language, dress, and food have always been accepted by the Eskimo people.
The Missionary
The second major group of whites to touch the Eskimo was the white missionary. As opposed to the whaler and trader, the missionary was idealistic. His main flaw, though seen as strength at the time, was his sanctification of the American political doctrine of “Manifest Destiny.” He not only came to Christianize the Eskimo, but also to civilize him. He saw little or no value in his native culture. He believed “the American Way of Life” was a culture handed down by God alongside the Gospel.
In studying missionary work among the Nez Perce Indians, Michael C. Coleman has articulated the mindset of the times well.
This “Christian civilization” had both spiritual and temporal aspects. It was an idealized civilization....It was characterized by its fusion of Protestantism and a very American lifestyle. “To the missionaries and to most Americans,” writes Berkhofer, “Protestantism was an inextricable component of the whole idea of civilization.” Because of this association,
American civilization in its ideal form was merged with Protestantism into the concept of “Christian civilization.” Not only Protestant religious beliefs, but the whole idealized American way of life had to be brought to the Indian. Farming, white American sex roles, clothes, government institutions, names, houses - these were merely the ways of a particular society but were God’s plan for all. Only by entering fully into this way of life in all its religious and secular aspects could the Indians be truly converted. And once converted, he was to become like his Christian white brother, a citizen both of the United States and heaven.[62]
James Nageak sees the process from the other side.
The real problem begins when a “pilgrim” comes to that environment and doesn’t know anything about the history and culture of those people he is invading. I have to try and convey God to that “pilgrim” in terms I can understand and the “pilgrim” immediately is convinced that I am not able to know the “real” God. The “pilgrim cannot understand what I am saying because he is trying to perceive through his filter.[63]
It must be said, however, in favor of the missionary, that he was motivated by a humanitarian objective, although now, in the perspective of history, the rational for saving the Native seems questionable, even strange. But then it made sense.
It was commonly held in the nineteenth century that the Indian would inevitably disappear before the superior white civilization. It is to the credit of the missionaries that, rather than sit at home and callously accept that “inevitability,” they attempted to do something to prevent it. Neither Sue McBeth nor her colleagues went to pray over their graves, but to save them for this life too. And the only way they could be saved, these missionaries believed, was by forsaking their old ways, and taking up the new - only by ceasing to be an Indian culturally could the Indian survive....(This) was of course completely consistent with the missionaries’ own spiritual objectives. By forsaking the past, the Indian lost nothing of value anyway, only that which retarded and repressed him....In a very real sense, the Indian was not losing. Though there was always a danger of his picking up such white vices as alcohol, the advantage of white civilization was ultimately a gain for him - if he could only adapt in time. The loss of hunting grounds and concomitant wandering ways - these were a small price to pay for membership in the “Christian civilization.”[64]
Sheldon Jackson and S. Hall Young were the two Presbyterian missionaries who had a great effect on the Eskimo. Neither of them ever served as a missionary among the Eskimo, not in the pastoral sense of the word at least, but they are important because they were the “policy setters.” Their decisions affected the life of the church in Northern Alaska for years.
Sheldon Jackson was elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church in 1897, defeating former President Benjamin Harrison. A seconding speech acclaimed him as “the greatest missionary the world has ever seen since the Apostle Paul went far hence unto the Gentiles and died upon the scaffold....”[65] Before becoming a missionary, he served a parish in Rochester, Minnesota. One member of that church paid him this tribute: “He approached nearer the character of St. Paul than any man I ever knew....”[66]
Although the early years of his career were spent west of the Mississippi founding churches, he was the first American missionary to head toward Alaska.
From a personal diary, we catch something of his deep Christian commitment. On the page marked “New Year’s Day” there was three quotations. The first was, “I must work the works of Him Who sent me while it is yet day. The night cometh when no man can work.” Sheldon Jackson always had urgency to his mission. The second was “whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.” The third was “Nothing in myself, all things in Christ.”[67]
Hudson Struck, an early Episcopal missionary to Alaska described Jackson as:
a man possessed with the momentum of a restless energy that, debarred one avenue to the attainment of a purpose, instantly found an alternative, and the immediate purpose achieved, flung itself promptly, with unchanging vigor upon one another; a man that would not be denied.[68]
Jackson spent very little time as an actual missionary in Alaska. He hadn’t been in the territory long before he was appointed United States Commissioner of Education for Alaska. Although a public official, he was, in another sense, still a minister of the Gospel. Another early Presbyterian missionary, John Brady, was appointed governor of the territory. Together with Brady, Jackson became a strong force in Alaska that in time the territory was accused of being run by the Presbyterian Church.[69]
It was in the field of education that Jackson made his greatest contribution to the Eskimo. As Commissioner of Education, Jackson set about getting schools for the scattered population of the territory, and this was no small job. Jackson’s plan was to prepare the Native for the enactment of territorial law to help shield the Native within the cloak of an ordered white society.[70]
To get the task done, Jackson recruited missionaries to open schools in isolated areas of the territory. Whenever he went back to the eastern part of the United States, he talked about the “hundreds of immortal souls, who have never so much as heard there was a Savior....”[71]
Jackson had areas of the territory assigned to various churches. American Baptists were to begin in the Cook Inlet area and Kodiak Island. Episcopalians were to continue the work already begun by the Canadian Anglicans along the Yukon River and also along the Arctic Coast. The Methodists were given the Aleutian Islands. The Moravians had the responsibility of the Kuskokwin region. The Congregationalists were to work at the Prince of Wales. The Quakers were assigned the Kotzebue area. Lutherans and the Covenant Church were sent to the Nome area. The Presbyterians kept Southeast Alaska where they first began their work and added St. Lawrence Island and the northern Arctic Coast.[72]
The missionaries who moved northward were described by Major General A.W. Greely, a U.S. Army officer, as “devoted, self-sacrificing men and women, who labor faithfully and strenuously for the welfare of the natives, often under the most discouraging and trying circumstances.”[73]
Under Jackson’s system, separation of church and state vanished in Alaska for a considerable period of time. Missionaries were paid from government educational funds to run their schools, while the goal of their teaching was not only to educate but evangelize. It was here that Jackson ran into his greatest difficulties. However, the criticism of the whites was not entirely justifiable since they resented the amount of money which was being directed toward the education of the Natives. “White Alaskans were interested in preferred treatment, rather than relatively equal treatment.”[74]
In a report on his activities to the government in 1886, Jackson wrote about the Eskimos: “They are savages...(who) have not had civilizing, educational or religious advantages.” But, he added, “Among those best known, their highest ambition is to build American homes, possess American furniture, dress in American clothes, adopt the American style of living and be American citizens.”[75]
He reported how education worked.
One by one they saw out an opening in the windowless walls of their houses and insert sash and glass. One after another purchases a cook stove. No longer content to eat off the floor out of a common iron pot, tables and dishes, knives and forks are procured. Then comes the bedstead and the bedding taken from the floor. Warm, comfortable, store clothes take the place of the inconvenient, uncomfortable blanket. Thus slowly and gradually through the influence of the schools, the population is raised to the scale of civilization.[76]
S. Hall Young was recruited by Sheldon Jackson and spent a great deal of his life in the work of the church in Alaska. He became the “Father of Alaska Missions,” and more than any other Presbyterian missionary, influenced the decision to teach the Native people the English language.[77]
One of his seminary professors gave him this charge as he left for the vast northwestern territory.
Now, my boy...we are depending on you to do the most important work of a pioneer missionary in a strange land. We depend on you to translate the Bible into those heathen tongues and make a dictionary and a grammar of their languages. Your business is to preach the Gospel to those heathen in furs and live in underground houses. If those Indians scalp you, we will canonize you as a martyr, but don’t let them do it if you can help it.[78]
In his biography, S. Hall Young wrote:
One strong stand, which so far as I know I was the first to take, was the determination to do no translating into the Thlingit language or any other of the native dialects of that region. When I learned of the inadequacy of those languages to express Christian thought, and when I realized that the whites were coming; that the schools would come; that the task of making an English speaking race of these natives was much easier than the task of making a civilized and Christian language out of the Thlingit, Haida, the Tsimshian; I wrote the Mission Board that the duty to which they assigned me of translating the Bible into Thlingit and of making a dictionary and grammar of that tongue was a useless and even harmful task; that we should let the old tongues with their superstition and sin die - the sooner the better - and replace these languages with that of Christian civilization and compel the natives in all our schools to talk English only. Thus we would soon have an intelligent people who would be qualified Christian citizens.[79]
He continued, “The Board moved, at first slowly and afterwards strongly, in the direction of this recommendation.”[80]
Perhaps Young’s thought might have been different could he have heard an Eskimo woman respond to Roy Ahmoagak’s translation of the New Testament. “When I read the English New Testament, I can say words, but don’t understand what it says. When I read the Eskimo New Testament, it’s like giving sight to the blind, God speaks to may heart.”[81]
It is a credit to the Presbyterian Church that it encouraged and helped Eskimo pastor, Roy Ahmoagak, translate the New Testament into the Inupiaq dialect beginning in 1946. The church should also encourage newly ordained James Nageak, the first seminary educated Presbyterian Eskimo minister, in his goal of translating the Old Testament into his language. Roy Ahmoagak was given time off from his parish duties at Wainwright to work with linguists of the American Bible Society. It would be wise to allow James Nageak the opportunity and help to accomplish his goal.
In the whole matter of language, however, one cannot overlook a paradox. S. Hall Young’s words, “When I realized the whites were coming” were prophetic.[82] The whites are still coming. At the 1977 Inuit Circumpolar Conference, a North Slope Borough official noted that the advance persons for the dominant culture were no longer the trader and the missionary, but the scientist. The tundra is suddenly important because of its “black gold.” In this continuing encounter with the white society, the language and knowledge of the white man may stand the Eskimo in good stead.
Mary Berry wrote,
The Land Claims Settlement has ended once and for all the possibility of their continuing to live as their ancestors lived. To succeed under the settlement, the villagers must begin to think like white men. Thus the settlement is probably the death knell for the Native culture, despite the careful attempts to preserve it, and this is indeed a high price to pay for assimilation into the white man’s world of land deeds and development.[83]
As this new wave of the dominant culture sweeps into the North Slope, the church should stand with the Eskimo people against this new dehumanizing process. Probably there is no way an energy hungry world is going to respect the wishes of a small group of people near the top of the world, and perhaps it is the wish of the Eskimo leadership to move their people more into the mainstream of American life. However, if and when the Natives resist this new invasion, this time the church needs to be on the right side and stand with them in opposing such aggression against their wishes. We should let the Native people themselves decide what part of the dominant culture they want, and what part they don’t.
Christian History on the North Slope
What does the Eskimo think of the white missionary? Certainly there is not one view which represents all Eskimo thinking on the matter, but there are two views that are important. When John Chambers, the white pastor in Barrow, asked Roy Ahmoagak what he thought of the missionary, he said:
If it had not been for the Christian missionary and his work, there would not be a single Eskimo alive on the Arctic Coast....The white man came our way to exploit our whaling. They taught our fathers how to make “hootch and they were drinking themselves to death. They came with the white man’s diseases. If the missionary doctor had not come, all of us would have died.[84]
In 1972, I posed the same question to Samuel Simmonds. His answer was the same.
Norman A. Chance, who studied the Eskimo of Northern Alaska probably more than any other modern anthropologist, claims that the Christian missionary was “among the first contact with whites.”[85] He believes:
The early apostles of directed change...set out to convert the native to the superior ways of the white world and bring the blessings of Western civilization. These efforts included attempts to destroy the language, culture, and religion, instill guilt over native sexual practices and similar “barbarous customs,” and promote new forms of behavior and thought acceptable to Western patterns.[86]
I think Chance represents a view about the Christian missionary that is all too prevalent today. There is some truth in what he says. However, in Alaska, it is untrue that the Christian missionary was the first to contact the Native people. The whites came first and most exploited both the resources and the people. The Christian missionary has a history in Alaska of coming in and picking up the pieces. A secular historian says, “The Christian teacher courageously reproved their fellow whites for their racism and
exploitation of the natives.”[87] He adds that the missionaries cushioned the Natives’ acculturation shock[88] and kept them from being annihilated.[89]
Bryan Cooper says,
In recent times missionaries have been criticized by some for brainwashingand confusing native peoples and changing their way of life which might have been primitive but which had its own justice and standards - more so indeed than many of those professing Christianity....But the fact is that without the endeavors of the missionaries, the 15,000 Eskimos living in Alaska at that time would have died out....[90]
It think it is also significant that for the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference held in Barrow in 1977, with representatives from Greenland, Canada, and the United States, the church was asked to send official observers. To me, this says something about the attitude which the Eskimos of Northern Alaska have toward the church. The church is now a vital part of their culture and they see its ability to help them in their struggle for self-development.
By the time Jackson was ready to deposit his first teacher-missionaries on the North Slope, tensions were running rather high. At Point Hope, “whalers had committed so many outrages in the area that the Eskimo had sworn to kill any white man sent among them.”[91]
It all began in 1878 when the brig, William H. Allen, captained by George Gilly, passed near Prince of Wales. Several canoe loads of Prince of Wales Natives came alongside indicating they wanted to trade. The Natives had been drinking and asked for rum. The captain attempted to convince them that they had no rum but the Natives insisted that any ship that had two masts contained rum. Fighting broke out, but when the Eskimos’ ammunition was gone, they crawled to safety near the ship. Captain Gilly testified,
Seeing no other alternative, I posted men above them, and when a native showed his head, he was clubbed and thrown overboard. Toward the last we hauled them out with gaff hooks. Three canoes containedabout twenty warriors but not one of them escaped.[92]
Probably on the same voyage that brought the first teacher-missionary to Barrow, Jackson placed Congregationalists Harrison R. Thornton and William T. Lopp at Cape Prince of Wales in 1898
Thornton is the only one known American missionary who died at the hands of the Eskimo. Thornton, had problems with the Eskimo culture. He didn’t like the Eskimos walking into his home without knocking. When he joined the Eskimos hunting seal and made his first kill, he was upset when the hunters offered him a choice of young girls to complete his mock puberty rites. He consented to rub noses with the seal and smear blood on his cheeks, but he intended to remain loyal to the women of his own country. After spending two years among the people and not seeing a single case of conversion and being upset with their slow process in becoming civilized, Thornton responded by becoming querulous. He grew weary of the Eskimo’s pestering, their endless requests for matches, nails and other trade items, and their insistence upon interrupting him with their demands and conversation. He was very upset with two young boys who kept breaking into the school and stealing things. He told them he would shoot them if he caught them. He began carrying a pistol. The boys found a loaded whaling gun on the beach, knocked on Thornton’s door, and blew a hole in his chest. The men of Wales, fearing retaliation by the U.S. revenue cutter, Bear, executed the two young murderers.[93]
Leander Stevenson landed at Point Barrow in 1890. At the age of 45, he had contracted to stay only a year, but he ended up staying seven, even though he had a wife and children in the lower 48.
His first school was in the Rescue Station, built to house shipwrecked sailors for the winter. His first class consisted of eight students who couldn’t talk English. He couldn’t talk Eskimo.[94] Four years later he got lumber from the Presbyterian Mission Board and built the first school.
He began to speak about the Christian faith through an interpreter who came from Western Alaska, but when he left Barrow, not one Eskimo had professed faith in Christ and received Christian baptism.[95]
Dr. & Mrs. Horatio Marsh replaced him in 1897. They had just married and he had graduated from medical school. It was during his stay at Barrow that the caribou herds diminished and when 300 seamen became stranded in the village, food supplies ran low. Sheldon Jackson sent 400 reindeer from Teller. Dr. Marsh, once everyone was fed, took over the supervision of the remaining herd and trained local Eskimos to take care of them.[96]
By 1920 almost all of the adults in Barrow were Christians. A new hospital was being built and Dr. and Mrs. Henry Griest took charge of the new facility. He was not only a doctor, but also an ordained Presbyterian pastor.[97]
Upon his arrival on the field he was upset because “a former missionary, evidently disliking English names, gave no Christian names to those he baptized and accepted into the church. And many of the church elders had no Christian names either.” He said, “It is difficult to persuade the northern Eskimo to see the need....We hope to have these people adopt the modern way, and they will, given time.[98]
The hardships of a pastorate at Barrow were expressed in a letter by Dr. Griest to Yukon Presbytery in 1925. He said that they were looking for a furlough and were all packed but no replacement showed up so they had to stay for another year. He shared that he needed the furlough. He had no one to talk with and was hungry for inspiration from others. It was taking nine months to reply to a letter.[99]
By this time, the work at Barrow was expanding to Wainwright, west of Barrow, and Barter Island, east of Barrow near the Canadian border. The Olgonik Presbyterian Church was organized in Wainwright on Sunday, June 24, 1923, with 84 members.[100] Andrew Akoochook was ordained an elder on July 8, 1924, and took over the work in his village of Barter Island.[101]
Apparently there was an informal plan to begin the training of indigenous church leaders. By 1923, four young men were listed as being under care of Presbytery as students preparing for the Gospel ministry.[102]
Percy Ipalook was the first to be ordained. He studied at Sheldon Jackson School and was then placed at Prince of Wales. Although Percy was licensed to preach the Gospel September 2, 1934, apparently there were some who felt he was not ready to assume the responsibility of a work like Barrow. The minutes of the Presbytery in 1935 say, “Should Dr. Griest be recalled from Barrow, that Percy Ipalook not be sent there, but another missionary be sent for a term of years.” Percy Ipalook must be given time to prove himself in ministry.”[103] Later, Percy was sent to Dubuque Theological Seminary for further training and was ordained to the Gospel Ministry by the Presbytery of Dubuque. The date of his ordination is not listed in Presbytery minutes, but he apparently went back to Wales from where he was elected in 1948, as the first Eskimo to serve in the Territorial Legislature. In 1950, due to ill health, he moved to Kotzebue and has not been active in the ministry since that time.
Roy Ahmoagak studied under Dr. Griest and Rev. Klerekoper before he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery in 1944. From there he was sent to care for the church in Wainwright. It was Roy’s goal to translate the New Testament into the Inupiaq dialect. In 1946, he was sent to Bloomfield Theological Seminary in Bloomfield, New Jersey where he worked with the American Bible Society and attended classes. During his stay in Bloomfield, he translated the Gospel of Mark and Paul’s letter to the Romans, in addition to preparing a short primer on how to teach the people to read.[104]
Returning to Alaska in 1947, he was ordained on June 30 of the same year. He returned to Wainwright but by 1957, with all the duties of a pastor, he had only translated the first seventeen chapters of John. Don Webster, from the Wycliff Translators, came to assist him in 1958. By 1966, the Eskimo hymnal was printed,[105] followed by the entire New Testament in 1968. For this contribution, Rev. Ahmoagak was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity by Whitworth College. He passed away the year the Bibles he helped translate were printed and distributed.
Andrew Akootchook had been serving as an elder at Kaktovik (Barter Island) until he was license to preach the Gospel by the Presbytery in 1934. Upon the recommendation of the Reverends Koschmann, Jackman, and Armstrong, Andrew was suggested for ordination to the Presbytery ministry in 1950. But shortly before his ordination, he died in an accident. Muktuk Marston, who organized the Alaska Territorial Guard during World War II, was in Barter Island when Andrew died and wrote,
Andrew Akootchook...the chief man of Barter Island (was) a believer in the law and Christianity. I spent a good part of a week with him while organizing the ATG. I broke my leg in pressure ice with a dog team, and Andrew was killed the next morning in an accident on the ice....I hobbled up to the grave with a crutch. He was buried in six feet of blue ice, and will be there a thousand years from now - just as good as the day we put him in. He was a great leader and is missed by the people of Barter Island.[106]
Samuel Simmonds, was a reindeer herder, a cat train driver, and a bookkeeper before he began his formal training for the ministry in 1953. Shortly after his decision, he spent two months at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Returning to Barrow, he served under the white minister, William Wartes before his ordination on April 11, 1961. He served as assistant pastor under John Chambers, and associate pastor with Victor Clark. When Clark left Barrow, Samuel became the pastor of the six hundred member Presbyterian congregation . He served the Barrow church until 1972 when he moved to the Olgonik Church at Wainwright.
Samuel helped in the translation and proof reading of the Inupiaq New Testament. He also translated numerous songs and hymns into his Native tongue and composed several hymns.
Samuel was instrumental in getting James Nageak interested in the ministry. James, a graduate of Sheldon Jackson College, a two-year college of the United Presbyterian Church, was working for Barrow Utilities when Samuel asked him to consider working with the youth of the Barrow Church. James agreed, and soon afterward went to prepare himself at Cook Christian Training School in Tempe, Arizona.
Many believed James would follow the pattern of other Eskimo men who had been ordained, getting some professional training and then serving a period of years as an “apprentice minister.” But once James became involved he decided to get his college degree and go on for seminary training. His main motivation was that the lesser trained Eskimo ministers seemed to be “second rated” clergy in the eyes of their white brethren.
James assumed the position of lay preacher at First Presbyterian Church in Fairbanks while finishing his B.A. degree at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks in 1973. He graduated from the University of Dubuque Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, and was ordained at Barrow on November 14, 1976. He has the distinction of being the first fully seminary trained Eskimo in all of Alaska.
While James served at First Presbyterian Church in Fairbanks, he recruited Rex Okakok, at student at the University of Alaska, to prepare for the ministry. Rex immediately went to Cook Christian Training School to prepare himself to serve at First Presbyterian Church while finishing his college education. In the fall of 1977, he left for seminary training at San Francisco Theological Seminary, where his father-in-law, Samuel Simmonds, had received some training nearly a quarter of a century before.
At present, there are no other candidates for the ministry among the Eskimo people of the North Slope. Two young men, Nelson Ahvakana and Phillip Masouleak presently serve the church as commissioned lay preachers. With the decision of James Nageak to get seminary training the day when an Eskimo can become ordained with little formal training appears to be over. I think it is an unwise choice for the church to make. Certainly there is an argument to be made for a seminary educated Eskimo clergy. More and more Eskimo young people are going to college, graduating and coming back to the village. But the need is for indigenous leadership and a college and seminary education is a long process.
One way to get indigenous leadership, I believe, is to upgrade the office of lay preacher so that they can administer the sacraments and care for the ordinary pastoral ministry in the village. The lay preachers might receive practical “apprenticeship” training at either Barrow or Fairbanks. There should be a program for their continuing education, and a salary scale developed so that their position can enable them to devote their full time to the work of the church. If a lay pastor functioned faithfully over a period of ten years, the Presbytery should consider his/her ordination, taking his/her practical experience into account. All the while, college and seminary training should be suggested for the younger recruits.
The Nunamiut in the Brooks Range received the attention of the church much later than the coastal Eskimo. In the 1950’s, the church at Barrow had a plane, which it used to coordinate the work at Wainwright, Barrow, and Barter Island.
One day in 1953, missionary pilot Wm. Wartes was flying through Anaktuvuk Pass when he noticed some tents below. Turning to Eddie Hopson, his passenger, he said, “Who is that down there?” Eddie replied, “They are Inland Eskimo people.” Pastor Wartes landed the plane and spoke to Homer Mekiana. “He mentioned how he had seen their homes and wondered if they had a Christian pastor or anyone to teach them the way to eternal life?” He volunteered to be that person if they wanted him, and they did.[107]
With the help of the mission airplane, elders from Barrow began serving the Pass for two weeks to a month at a time. Eventually a church was built. Logs were hauled by dog team from forty miles south of the village and erected into a church. It was named Chapel in the Mountains. The congregation was officially organized on May 18, 1965.
Homer Mekiana describes some of the early days of the church in the village. At times they had an 11 o’clock service, and a 7 o’clock service. But then again he says, “There is no set time for the service. Sometimes it was in the morning, sometimes it was in the evening.” Homer says the village was “hoping and praying for a white man minister or Eskimo minister to run our chapel in the near future.”[108] At present, the village is served by the Rev. James Nageak, who first came to Anaktuvuk Pass from Barrow in the 1960’s to teach Bible School. The following winter, he married one of the local girls, Anna Hugo. Now Anna is a school teacher at the Pass, while James is the fulfillment of the village’s wish expressed when the church first located to the village.
During the years when the church was gaining strength in the villages, they “took over” many of the old practices. Where the shaman previous conducted a “ceremony” prior to a whale hunt, the church held a special Sunday when the congregation prayed for God’s help. Pastor John Chambers tells about a sermon on that special Sunday. Instead of speaking about “the cattle on a thousand hills,” he spoke of “the whales of a thousand leads.”[109] When a whale was caught, a prayer of thanks to God was given.
Until the 1950’s, each village had only one church, the Presbyterian. This was an exceptionally good time because, although it negated past religious practices, it replaced the old value system with a new one to which most people in the village adhered. Chance says,
There is little question that the homogeneity of religious belief...helped create a sense of common community identity and spirit. Regular services brought together most village residents to share a common ceremony; the establishment of local church offices provided opportunities for the emergence of new leaders; and a common doctrine set a standard by which individuals could measure their own religious and moral behavior.[110]
In the 1950’s however, the Assembly of God Church located in Barrow, Wainwright, and Barter Island. They proudly proclaimed that the Gospel was reaching these villages for the first time. They brought a much more strict set of laws relating to personal behavior. An elder in the Wainwright Presbyterian Congregation commented:
We used to have good parties until the other church came. We played Eskimo games, danced, played guitars, and sang....They have a lo-o-ot of commandments over there...just like the Pharisees, yes?”[111]
The Assembly of God Church brought a competitive spirit to the Arctic that never existed before. They put churches in villages that could not support one church. An example of this is the village of Nuiqsut when it was new. The community was established just prior to the Land Claims Settlement Act. About 25 families moved to the Coleville River southeast of Barrow. All but three of the families were Presbyterian, but the Assembly of God Church immediately raised a new church in the village. Because the Presbyterians did not change their membership, the Presbyterians began their church in the local school and then constructed their own new church.
When the new church at Barter Island was constructed, it was suggested that the village have just one building and that the Assembly of God and Presbyterians use it jointly. The Assembly members rejected the offer out of hand, and then the small village had two churches until several years ago when the Assembly Church burned down.
Chance, however, sees something good coming from the religious diversification in the villages - it prepared the Eskimo for life in the urban areas where a different church on every corner is a way of life.[112]
Perhaps it is true. Beginning in the mid-1940’s Eskimos started moving to the cities of Alaska, mostly Fairbanks and Anchorage. But Tay Thomas, the church historian of the 1960’s and 1970’s made this statement which needs to be heard by all church groups wishing to intrude into small Native villages.
The Christian cause in Alaska can never become truly strong until all these groups are brought into communication with each other and eliminate the duplication of efforts and funds which gradually weaken their ministry and lessen the impact upon the people.[113]
In addition, it is my personal observation that the new, more fundamental churches are 50-75 years behind the traditional churches in concepts dealing with Native people. They bring all of the paternalism and cultural imperialism which the Presbyterians brought to the Eskimos and are just beginning to discard.
The Modern Era
In the mid-1970’s, I sat by an elderly tourist as we flew out of Barrow. She leaned over, breathed a sigh of relief and said, “I’m thankful to get out of this God-forsaken place. I prayed this morning that the plane would arrive so I could leave.” I reminded her that if she had prayed, Barrow must not be God-forsaken. Bud Helmericks, a long time white resident of the Arctic Coast says, “As for being the most desolate place, the Eskimos didn’t think so, and neither did the ducks and the geese and the caribou.”[114]
The tourist from Tucson, Arizona, with a swimming pool in her back yard, not only considered the landscape desolate, she was also shocked by the village of Barrow itself. Instead of neat, white homes with manicured lawns, she found housing that compared with the worst in the nation. Scattered outside the homes in mid-June was junk, water, animal skins, and dormant skidoos.
She didn’t like the drunks she saw and she didn’t appreciate the prices. Her hotel room cost her $70 for a night and a dinner at a local cafe amounted to another $15. All of her myths about the Eskimo were destroyed, and what she saw, judging from her Tucson viewpoint, she didn’t like.
The point is this: the invasion of the dominant society has altered the Eskimo society in a dramatic way, and it depends on your social philosophy as to whether it is for the better or for the worse. They are a people involved in a cultural transition and “their problems are those of a transitional people everywhere.”[115]
When the United States Senate was debating the Alaska Native Land Claims Bill, it learned that many Natives still lived wholly or partially on subsistence hunting and fishing. Many Natives were unemployed or only seasonally employed. “The bulk of them live in dire poverty, the poorest of America’s poor.”[116]
Many people are astounded at the high salaries on the Arctic Coast. Ebon Hopson, the Borough mayor, makes an annual income of $60,000, but the cost of living on the North Slope is three times higher than Seattle. The Eskimos have coined a new phrase, abbreviated HIP, meaning high income poverty.
“Largely because they lack cash income and because the costs of purchased goods and services are high, most natives live in small, dilapidated or substandard housing under unsanitary conditions.”[117] Thus, they are often the victims of disease. The average life span of Natives is only 35 years, about half that of other Americans.
There is also a sharp contrast which exists between the economic opportunities available to whites and Natives. Natives “are...living where adequate education or training cannot easily be obtained. Seven out of ten Natives have less than an elementary education, and only one in ten has graduated from high school. Because of their isolation, an adequate education is hard to receive, there are few jobs, and little or no economic growth is taking place.”[118]
After the whaling industry ended and “having acquired a desire for Western goods and services, most Eskimos did not want to return to their traditional subsistence way of life....They needed cash income to purchase things.”[119]
After 1920, the fox furs increased in value, and until the market dropped, trapping provided money. By the late 1930’s, another cash income was Old Age Pensions, general relief, aid for dependent children, and other government subsidies. Salaried positions in a village were the postmaster, school janitor, Native store employees, and mission helpers.[120]
At the end of World War II, the Navy started drilling for oil. Later the Dew Line was built and the Eskimos were used in construction and later as maintenance and repair men. At Barrow, jobs became available at NARL (Navy Arctic Research Lab), the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), the airport and the Weather Bureau. With the settlement of the land claims, new jobs are opening in government and regional corporations. The Prudhoe oil fields and the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline offered other employment.
When the Eskimos discovered that the white man liked his art, they started making masks, carving ivory, and sketching on baleen (from the whale’s mouth). This is a source of income still being utilized today.
As more cash comes into the community, so do the other trappings of Western culture, like motion pictures, cafes, pool halls, and new stores, along with automobiles.
Thus, there has been a dramatic change – from full time search for
food to the purchase of food. With jobs, there is no time to hunt….
This brought a great variety of food consumed – their traditional
diet is supplemented with fruits, meats, and canned vegetables.[121]
Not as many Eskimos are now trained in making skin boats or kayaks as there once was. Fewer young women know how to sew the animal skins. More Western clothing is used.”[122]
Houses are no longer sod. Some are built out of plywood, while some of the newer ones look like the homes in any modest suburb of an American city. “Few homes are painted…due to the high cost of paint and the deterioration of wood in this climate.”[123]
With the coming of jobs, the lifestyle is changing. On Sundays, the families attend Sunday school and church. On other days they visit, play cards or attend other activities and meetings. “There are so many community-wide events taking place each week that some Eskimos complain their social life is over-organized, a view not unlike that expressed by southern suburbanites.[124]
The need for money and jobs draws many of them to urban centers, which in turn contributes to the decline in the extended family.[125]
Schooling for the children, until recently, has been a major contributor to the deterioration of family life. Often children were sent outside the village, at times as far away as Oregon and Oklahoma, to receive a high school education. This alienated the children from their culture and brought them back to the village prepared for jobs which were not available. Unable to function in the old culture because their education had been in the white culture, there was boredom, and unrest, which led to drinking, and even suicide. “Alcohol (is) fast becoming the major cause of death and suicide….It is the result of poverty and the loss of pride, not the cause.”[126] The jails are unproportionately full of Eskimo young people.
The school problem is beginning to change with the organization of the North Slope Borough. Schools from K-12 are now provided in every village, and the Eskimo language is being taught to the children once again, along with the Native dances and art forms.
It is evident that the Eskimos have undergone phenomenal change in the last century. Jet aircraft have come to a people who less than a millennium ago had no contact with other people than their own kind. The nuclear age has burst into a culture not too far removed from the Stone Age. The cash economy has changed a whole way of life in a few years. “The result: The Alaskan Native is now enmeshed in social, political, and economic problems of such severity as to jeopardize his own future.”[127]
There are some who do not believe this change has had a big impact on the Eskimos. Wendell Oswalt, who studied the Moravian missionaries, theorized that rapid change does not always lead to cultural breakdown with the accompanying disorganization. He claims that what has been found in the Bethel area, is socio-cultural change with minimal conflict and without significant individual maladjustment.[128]
I believe Oswalt is wrong. He has not plumbed the depths of Native feelings, nor observed Native life long enough. I think, if he would revisit Bethel today, he might change his mind. The Eskimos of the Bethel area have entered the 1970’s with the problems common to the Eskimos of the Arctic Slope.
A better grasp of what has happened and why it is happened is put forth the by Bryan Cooper.
The Alaskan natives suffer from the curious paradox that while the United States has always been a colonial power in every sense of entering and dominating lands occupied by other races, she has preferred to pretend that she is not, often condemning other colonial nations for just that reason. This meant that the United States never had a colonial policy to cope with subjugated people such as the Eskimos and Indians of Alaska other than the myth of equal opportunity as American citizens. The system offered no chance for other races except to assimilate the American culture, which meant giving up their own. Where the consciences of other colonial nations were awakened to the point of returning lands to their original inhabitants, or of being compelled to do so by the weight of U.S. and world opinion or the force of national aspirations, the most that the American conscience could do was to relieve poverty by welfare handouts, serving only to reduce nativepride and culture even further.[129]
Vine Deloria adds,
In almost every generation trade and conversion for religious purposes have gone hand in hand…Where the cross goes, there is never life more abundantly – only death, destruction, and ultimately betrayal….It is very questionable whether the present state of decay, corruption, and exploitation is better than what had existed before the coming of the Western Christian to the nations of the world.[130]
Norman Chance poses the right question.
A fundamental question facing the United States and the rest of the modern world is how to increase the opportunities and choices of its under-developed population. When this sector includes members of different cultural groups who wish to maintain their cultural distinctiveness, as in the case of Alaska, the original question becomes even more complex: How can economic and social opportunities be increased for these groups without destroying their
wish to be culturally different?[131]
Americans who have it “made” in the present society usually don’t judge the social impact of imposing “a way of life” on another culture. We view life almost totally in a materialistic sense. Beef is better than whale meat. A blanket is better cover than a caribou hide. A plywood house is an improvement over a sod one. A supermarket is a better source of food supply than subsistence hunting. A snow machine is superior to a dog team. And so because we believe all of the above statements are true, we conclude that the Eskimos are better off than ever before because they have more Western goods. Most Americans never bother to think of the price Native Americans have had to pay to make those advances, a price not paid in dollars and cents, but in emotional upheaval that comes from rapid social change. Too many of us see the problem as a Texan now living in Alaska. “Eskimo culture? Hell, the Eskimo never had any culture, except one of survival. He is a vanishing race and the sooner he goes the better….Take a look around the bars – you’ll see what I mean.”[132]
In addition to the Eskimo’s drinking problem, others see him too lazy to work and ungrateful for the government’s welfare handouts on which he lives. “Just a few might feel a twinge of guilt at the fate of these once proud hunters who roamed the Arctic wilderness and speared the mighty whale from the frail seal-skin canoes.”[133]
To the credit of the Eskimo, he is trying to adapt today as he has always done in the past. Yesterday is gone and the reality of the Western culture is upon him. However the Land Claims Settlement Act gave him the possibility of having more control over his future.
The Land Claims Settlement
The settlement was more than just a real estate transaction. “It was also a belated attempt to come to grips with a moral issue – the obligation of white Americans to the descendants of the people their own ancestors dealt with so brutally in the past….”[134]
In the past, many of the Eskimos were not too alarmed about their lands because of geographical isolation. But other factors began entering the picture. For the Eskimo, it was the discovery of oil on the North Slope and the impending invasion of a new army of whites. What the Eskimos were coming to realize in the early 1960’s was “that they did not have the most essential part of this land – the white man’s deed.”[135]
When the issue of statehood was argued late in the 1950’s, there was silence about the Native land claims. Most felt that it was the Federal Government who had to settle with the Natives, and so they said it should not be an issue. No one wanted to open the subject up for national discussion since it would put real feelings out where it might appear to the decision makers that Alaska had some problems that needed solving before statehood.
In 1959 Alaska became the 49th State of the Union. Alaska was given 103 million acres of land. It was the trigger which set the explosion that led to the final settlement.
Very soon the State started picking its lands. But in 1961, the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) filed protests to the State selections on behalf of four Native villages. These villages claimed about 5.8 million acres near Fairbanks. The state had already filed for patents to 1.7 million of them.”[136]
A confrontation came when the State decided build a road into the Minto Flats area so it could be used for recreation by Fairbanks’ residents. The villagers of Minto objected. They needed the land for subsistence hunting and fishing.
White anger flared. The manager of the Fairbanks’ BLM (Bureau of Land Management) office remarked that the Natives were “damn lucky to get five acres, let alone 160.”[137] Alaska Congressman Rivers said, “What would they do with the land if they had it? They wouldn’t use it. It would just lie there.”[138]
Howard Rock, Eskimo editor of the Tundra Times responded,
We Natives should realize that we will not be able to compete full with Big Business for a long time yet. Since we cannot do that now, we should try and hold on to our lands because that is the greatest insurance we have….Without land, we can become the poorest people in the world. [139]
Suddenly, the Natives realized what was at stake. They started organizing. “By June 1968 approximately 340 million acres of Alaska’s 375 million acres were covered by claims from the regional Native groups.”[140]
This had a stunning effect. When the Natives made their claims on the land
Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall halted all further disposal of public lands in the state which were subject to aboriginal claims until the United States Congress defined the rights and created settlement machinery. Whether they wished it or not, the future developers or exploiters of Alaska now had to take the Alaska Native into account.[141]
During this time another amazing event occurred. In 1966 the Alaska Federation of Natives was formed. John Borbridge, an Indian leader from Southeast Alaska, says this was “exciting because so many different ethnic and geographic areas have come together and laid aside their differences because they recognized unification of effort was required if justice was to be achieved.”[142] This organization gave the Alaska Natives a unified front as they began pushing their claims before the Congress of the United States
To the surprise of the white population, once organized, the Natives went political and showed amazing strength. “They had graduated from their long apprenticeship in politics during which they had developed a new generation of educated leaders….”[143]
The Arctic Slope Native Association, one of the most vocal and militant groups, was led by men like Ebon Hobson, Charlie Edwardson, and Joe Upicksoun.
Edwardson, whose Eskimo name was Etok, became a nuisance, showing up at every public meeting. He embarrassed the conservationist groups who wanted Alaska saved but didn’t trust the Natives to save it. He picketed the North Slope Lease Sale in Anchorage with signs accusing the state of “economic genocide.” He called oil people “pigs” in public and often at Washington receptions. On one occasion when Etok thought the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) was succumbing to white pressure to settle for far less than the Natives originally decided, he pulled the Arctic Slope Native Association out of the AFN. He said, “The AFN has lost sight of the fundamental principles upon which the entire settlement is premised. That is, this is a land settlement, not a federal welfare program or another piece of anti-poverty legislation.”[144]
The Natives began to gain momentum. Because of the land freeze placed by the Secretary of Interior, no further development of Alaska could take place. In 1970, Ed Patton, head of Alyeska, took a new stance for the oil companies. He said there would be no pipeline until the land claims were settled and he appointed a lobbyist to intervene on behalf of the Natives before Congress.[145]
In 1970, President Nixon declared a new Indian policy. He said, “The time has come to break decisively with the past and to create conditions for a new era in which the Indian acts and decides.”[146] Thus, if the Alaskan Natives received a pittance settlement, Nixon’s words would have been nothing more than a hollow slogan. And so the Natives gained the Administration’s ear.
The third factor in the Native’s favor was the North Slope oil discovery.
Without the presence of the huge Prudhoe Bay oil field and the industries’ anxiety over the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the Native claims would never have been settled as they were. The claims were settled …because they stood in the way of the white man’s progress. The need for Prudhoe Bay oil, real or imagined, made the claims a national issue rather than an Alaskan one, and because of this the Natives got better treatment from Congress than they could have expected had their case rested solely on its merits.[147]
The battle for the settlement waxed hot and the feelings ran high on both sides. Emil Notti, an Indian Native leader said,
If Congress cannot pass a bill that we think is fair, then I will recommend a course of action to our statewide board of directors that we petition Congress and the United States that we set up a separate Indian nation in the western half of Alaska. That area is ninety percent Native anyway, and will not get any non-Native settlers until there is something discovered that can be exploited.[148]
Fairbanks’ banker G.W. Stroeker said,
If the Natives get all this land, there won’t be any acreage left to homestead or t & m (trade and manufacture) sites or other types of land acquisition by the individual (sic). So what I am concerned with is that the future of the individual Alaskan, his children, and for the individuals who will be coming to Alaska in the future.[149]
It is rather ironic that more concern is expressed by Mr. Stroeker for future Alaskans than for those who have been here thousands of years. This subtle-not-so-subtle racism is still part of Alaskan society today.
George Moerlien, representing Alaskan Miner’s Association commented, “Gentlemen, I submit to you that neither the U.S., the State of Alaska, nor any of us here gathered as individuals owes the Natives one acre of ground or one cent of money.”[150] He further argued that there was no moral obligation to the Native people since the BIA and the Public Health Service had spent enough money on the Natives’ welfare “to the specific exclusion of the Negro, Oriental, and Caucasian residents of Alaska” to more than compensate for the lands taken from them.[151]
However, the times were right and the Natives were not to be denied. A settlement was agreed upon December 18, 1971. These are the major provisions:
Forty million acres of land, including mineral rights; grants totaling $462.5 million from the federal treasury, payable over an eleven year period, and some $500 million derived from overriding two percent on the annual revenues from mineral leasing activity on state and federal lands. Twelve regional corporations (to which a thirteenth was added later, representing Alaska natives living out-of-state) and an estimated 220 village corporations to control the lands and monies granted to the natives under the act. The regional corporations are established under state law as business corporations, while village corporations have the option of operating on a profit or non-profit basis.[152]
With the settlement, the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation set up its offices in the Christian Education Building of the Barrow Presbyterian Church, and began to function. The land claims settled, it was now time to face the change which the settlement brought about. Native leader John Borbridge posed the new problem.
/
Only history will answer that question.
The North Slope Borough
In June, 1972, the people of Barrow and four other North Slope villages voted to form a local government which contained 56.5 million acres and included the Prudhoe Bay oil fields.
The oil companies were disturbed. Prudhoe Bay had no permanent residents and so the oil companies could not be represented on the Borough Assembly. They feared the Natives would over tax them although the Natives asserted their main reason for self-government was to finance regional high schools. Ever since the days of Sheldon Jackson, Eskimo young people wishing more than a grade school education traveled a thousand miles or more to school. It greatly disturbed family life and caused problems with the youth who were educated outside their culture.
The oil companies went to court and pressured the banking institutions. The Alaska Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Eskimo government but since the new Borough had to wait a year to collect taxes levied as it began, it had to borrow money. The oil companies threatened to take their money out of any bank which lent the Eskimo Borough money. Their strategy was to kill the infant government by economic starvation. The United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. was one of the groups that came to the Borough’s aid.
Although the church had made many mistakes in conquering the Native people of Alaska for Christ, yet the bonds between the Eskimo and their church have remained strong. In the 1970’s, the church started a new concept of mission called the Self-Development of People. The concept was far different than the old “mission barrel.” The purpose was to invest funds which would help the Native people (or any other minority group) control their own futures and destiny.
During the land claims battle, the Presbyterian Church had given the Arctic Slope Native Association $95,000 to help in the struggle for justice. In one of the darkest hours of the North Slope Eskimos’ fight with the oil companies, they lent the borough $150,000. It was a loan that permitted the government to survive. In 1974, leaders of the North Slope Borough and the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation appeared before the Presbyterian Church’s General Assembly and returned $245,000 to the church. John Upicksoun, speaking for both groups told fellow Presbyterians,
The long and expensive struggle to win the right and dignity of making our own decisions, and gaining title to our aboriginal lands, was helped immeasurably by a gift from the Fund. The yield of our land, under our own management, has made it possible for us to place this money back into circulation – hopefully to accomplish for others what it has for us.[153]
New Problems and Changes
With all that has happened to the Eskimo on the North Slope, the problems have not diminished. For every victory, there seems to be a new battle.
At present, there is concern over the accelerated oil and gas exploration in the Navy Petroleum Reserve # 4, more commonly called Pet-4. In 1923 President Harding established the reserve by executive order and by one stroke of the pen the Eskimos lost their rights to the riches below the ground forever. They did not receive title to Pet-4 during the land claims settlement. The 37,000 acre square mile reserve surrounds Barrow on three sides. The other side of Barrow faces the Arctic Ocean.
The question is if Barrow can survive the additional impact of the oil boom. The Joint State-Federal Land Use Planning Commission says the question is not if there is a major strike, but when. They estimate there may be as much oil in Pet-4 as in Prudhoe Bay. The Borough, realizing the inevitable, is trying to get the reserve transferred to the Interior Department. They have had difficulty with the Navy who tends to ignore them. They believe the Interior Department will let private developers get the oil whereas they feel the Navy will try and get it all for themselves. They can’t tax government oil rigs, but the Borough can tax private drillers. At least they will get tax revenue if the Department of Interior gets Pet-4.
They are also worried about the effect of the oil upon the fish and game of the area. Ebon Hopson, the Borough mayor says “Outsiders seldom understand the complex but vital relationships between the people of the North Slope and the land from which they live.”[154]
The tension is high enough that a suggestion has been made to have the Borough establish a Defense Department, to begin protecting the Eskimo against the exploiters. One militant said, “The Eskimo nation is facing the international oil companies under the guise of the Defense Department. These companies have no interest whatsoever in the well-being of the Eskimo people.”[155]
The Navy apparently feels some of the tension. Lt. Cdr. Terrence Woods, the naval officer in charge of Pet-4 says, “I think the Natives feel this is their land and the white man is the intruder.”[156]
One Eskimo who feels strongly about what the future of oil development might bring, angrily says, “If all our fish camps, all our hunting areas are going to get run over by oil people, some of our people are going to get violent enough to start war. We’ll either hunt white people or the game to survive.”[157]
There are other changes since the land claims settlement and the establishment of the land claims settlement and the establishment of local government.
The Regional Corporation has invested in a $1.6 million hotel and a $10 million shopping center. The hotel has caused some problems. It was supposed to be run by Natives but it is now run by a white hotel chain. For $70 a night, one can have all the comforts of Miami Beach in Barrow, except the waves on the beach are a bit colder. Mostly white people stay in the hotel. Some of the Natives refer to it as the “Honky Hotel.”
The Regional Corporation is working with the oil companies on the lands they were given in the claims settlement. They are using the oil companies’ expertise to find oil, and in return, the oil companies will get lease rights to the land. This means future revenue for the Eskimos from both property tax and oil revenues.
The Borough is involved in local government, with one of its major concerns being education. Since they won the battle for self-government, they now control their own school system and changes are being made. The Eskimo language is being taught and there is a strong interest in Eskimo culture, history, geography, science relating to the North Slope, survival skills, and local government. The Native youth who have been taken by the game of basketball boast two of the strongest high school quintets in the state.
The Borough has also pioneered with a two-year college program offered in Barrow with the help of Sheldon Jackson College.
How has the church reacted to all this change? The Presbyterian Church seems to be in a period of decline, or possibly re-adjustment. The number of people who attend Sunday services is down noticeably in the last five years. This is probably due to a number of reasons.
At Barrow, the church went from a Eskimo minister to a white minister. The church in Wainwright, where the Eskimo minister was transferred, is now doing exceptionally well. A hopeful sign for the future is the two young Eskimos who will be seminary trained clergymen and will be coming back to their people to provide leadership.
A second reason for the decline is probably a natural response to a white-dominated institution in a time when there is a renewal of cultural gifts. Even though the local lay leaders are Eskimo, there is a natural built-in hostility to white leadership because of other social, cultural and economic problems associated with the white, dominant society.
A third reason for the church’s decline may be confusion about the nature of the church’s mission. The early Presbyterian missionaries were very evangelical and consequently the purpose of the church was the salvation of individual souls. Presbyterians, now, though not omitting that emphasis, have stressed community involvement during the past few years. A white Presbyterian minister was very involved in enabling Eskimo leaders to form a Borough government. I feel the direction of the church in recent years has made many people wonder what the church is supposed to be doing. Some Presbyterian Eskimos think the church ought to get back to basic spiritual concerns while the new direction of the Presbyterian Church has had enough impact to make many Eskimos wonder if “saving souls” is the only function of the church. There seems to be no consensus that saving souls and ministry relating to justice issues are two parts of one ministry.
I feel it will take a long time and some new struggles within individual persons and within the community to work out the conflict. Until there is some clarification of the role of the church (maybe not just saving souls or social action, but some of both), I feel the church will have at the same time a new vitality and an apparent weakness. If it can find new direction out of the present confusion, the period of readjustment will be a strengthening factor.
The fourth reason for the church’s decline is a natural phenomenon that has happened to the church throughout America. Once, in the Native communities, it was the center of all village life. Today it is being replaced by schools and other community activities. With live satellite television in some villages and cable T.V. in others, the magic box is changing social patterns and Eskimos are staying home to watch their favorite programs.
One of the most recent, important events occurred in June of 1977. The first Inuit Circumpolar Conference was held in Barrow. Ebon Hopson, North Slope Borough Mayor, had wanted the conference for several years in order to deal with issues surrounding the drilling of offshore oil. The Canadians are already drilling in the Beaufort Sea and Hopson says this may lead to drilling off the Alaskan Coast. There is fear that a gigantic spill could gravely endanger wildlife. Since ice covers the Arctic Ocean almost continually, a spill would nearly be impossible to clean up.
Two hundred delegates from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland attended. Siberian Eskimos were not permitted to come by their Russian government.
The conference dwelt on “home rule government,” believing that strong local governments will be the only way to guard against the abuse of the fragile Arctic environment. Together, the Eskimos hope to establish common policy in the development of the Arctic. Hopson says, “Trying to deal with the oil companies alone is an impossible task.”[158]
At present, the North Slope Borough is the only local government in the three countries totally controlled by Eskimos. The Eskimos of Greenland who number 40,000, almost one half of all the Eskimos on the circumpolar rim, are presently attempting to get home rule for Greenland from Denmark but they “don’t know enough about land claims yet.”[159]
The Canadian Eskimos are presently struggling to have their land claims settled.
The Conference decided to appoint a group of twelve, four from each country, to draft a charter which would lead to a permanent international organization. In addition, the organization will work at getting a single written language, education, and circumpolar communications. As the decision to organize was made by a unanimous vote, the delegates broke into applause and the Greenland Eskimos sang a song praising their homeland.
Church observers came from the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the Mennonite Church of Canada, and the Lutheran Church of Greenland. The 189th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, meeting in Philadelphia, adopted the following resolution concerning the Circumpolar Conference:
Whereas the Inuit (Eskimo) of Greenland, Alaska, and Canada are one indivisible people with a common language, culture, environment, and with common concerns; and
Whereas, the Inuit of the circumpolar region declares the oneness of its culture, environment, and land and the wholeness of their homeland and that it is only the boundaries of certain nation states that separate them; and
Whereas, the Inuit reaffirm their right to self-determination, and
Whereas, the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. has historically supported this concept and the Alaska Inuit through the Alaska Native Land Claims Act through the support and development of the North Slope Borough; and
Whereas, the Synod of Alaska-Northwest has affirmed and supported the Inuit in the resolution entitled, “Rights of Aboriginal People in the Arctic Region,” therefore be it resolved:
that the 189th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America support the International Circumpolar Inuit in their efforts at self determination, in protecting the Arctic Ecology, and the protection of their aboriginal rights.[160]
The churchmen at the Circumpolar Conference also talked about pastoral exchanges among Eskimo clergymen of the three countries, hoping this kind of exchange can be helpful to Eskimo Christians in the various countries. Although there was no information on the number of Eskimo clergy in Canada, it was noted that there are 19 ordained Eskimo pastors in Greenland, with only three white Danes serving the church. No definite count of the ordained Eskimo clergy available for Alaska since the United Presbyterian Church was the only Alaskan church represented. The Presbyterians have only two at the present time.
Where will history take the Eskimo people? Only time will tell. I believe one thing is clear. The church is among them to stay. It is now a part of their culture. One of the goals of the newly ordained James Nageak is to strip the cultural trappings away from the Gospel as the “pilgrims” brought it. However, the Good News of Jesus Christ will not be discarded for James believes
“the God of today is shown to us through His Son Jesus. He is the good news proclaimed in the New Testament….God so loved mankind that He was willing to sacrifice His only Son. God showed himself as a man so that our relationship to Him can be restored, and this reconciliation can lead to our restored relationship with other men.”[161]
Here is our hope – that the Gospel can reconcile differences and enable mutual respect for one another’s lands and culture.
END NOTES
[1] Vine Deloria, Jr., God Is Red, (New York: Grosset & Dunlop), 1973, pp. 274-275.
[2] Hans-Georg Bandi, Eskimo Prehistory, (College: The University of Alaska Press), Trans. by Ann e. Keep, 1964, p. 176.
[3] Dagmar Freuchen, Ed., Peter Freuche’s Book of the Eskimos, (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company), 1957, p. 29.
[4] Ibid., pp. 29-30.
[5] Bandi, Eskimo Prehistory, p. 9.
[6] Ibid., p. 5.
[7] Ibid., p. 5.
[8] Freuchen, Peter Freuchen’s Book of the Eskimos, pp. 12-23.
[9] Bandi, Eskimo Prehistory, p. 5.
[10] Nicholas J. Grubser, The Nunamiut Eskimos: Hunters of Caribou, (New Haven: Yale University Press), 1965, pp. 29-33.
[11] Ibid., pp. 69-70.
[12] Ibid., p. 71.
[13] Ibid., pp. 165-167.
[14] Ibid., p. 168-169.
[15] Ibid., p. 20.
[16] John H. Cummings, “Metaphysical Implications of the Folktales of the Eskimos of Alaska,” Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, Vm. 3, No. 1, December, 1954.
[17] Ibid., p. 60.
[18] Norman A. Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, (Nw York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston), 1966, p. 58.
[19] Wilhelm Dupre, Religion in Primitive Cultures, (Parish: Mouton), 1975, pp. 194-196.
[20] Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 194.9
[21] Dupre, Religion in Primitive Cultures, p. 197.
[22] Cummings, Metaphysical Implications of the Folktales of the Eskimos of Alaska, p. 61.
[23] Dupre, Religion in Primitive Cultures, p. 195.
[24] Ibid., pp. 204-205.
[25] Gubser, The Nunamiut Eskimo, p. 202.
[26] Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 59.
[27] Jean E. Straatmeyer, Heritage and Christianity, (A paper written for the “Heritage of Alaskan Natives” class at the University of Alaska), 1974, pp. 2-3.
[28] Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 60.
[29] Dupre, Religion in Primitive Cultures, p. 127.
[30] James Nageak, A Statement of Faith, (Written for Yukon Presbytery), 1976.
[31] Dupre, Religion in Primitive Cultures, p. 200.
[32] Norman Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 73.
[33] Ibid., pp. 72-73.
[34] Ibid., p. 77.
[35] Ibid., p. 78.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 52.
[38] Ibid., pp. 22-24.
[39] Ibid., pp. 19-20.
[40] Dupre, Religion in Primitive Cultures, p. 196.
[41] Stacy B. Day, Tulak and Amaulik, (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Printing Department), 1973, p. 4.
[42] Dupre, Religion in Primitive Cultures, p. 197.
[43] Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 171.
[44] Ibid., p. 52.
[45] Ibid.
[46] Dupre, Religion in Primitive Cultures, p. 196.
[47] Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 52.
[48] Ibid., p. 62.
[49] Ibid., p. 73.
[50] Ibid., pp. 52-53.
[51] Ibid., p. 62.
[52] Ted C. Hinckley, The Americanization of Alaska, 1867-1897, (Palo Alto: Pacific Books Publishers), 1972, p. 100.
[53] Ernest Gruening, The State of Alaska, (New York: Random House), 1968, p. 3.
[54] Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 14.
[55] C. L. Andrews, The Story of Alaska, (Seattle: Lowman & Hanford Co), 1931, pp. 103-104.
[56] Day, Tuluak and Amaulik, p. 161.
[57] Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 15.
[58] Ibid., p. 17.
[59] Ibid., pp. 14-15.
[60] Hinckley, The Americanization of Alaska, 1867-1897, pp. 79-80.
[61] C. L. Andrews, The Story of Alaska, p. 148.
[62] Michael C. Coleman, “Christianizing and Americanizing the Nez Perce: Sue L. McBeth and Her Attitudes to the Indians,” Journal of Presbyterian History, James H. Smylie Ed., (V. 53, No 4, Winter 1975, pp. 339-361), p. 343.
[63] Nageak, Statement of Faith.
[64] Coleman, “Christianizing and Americanizing the Nez Perce: Sue L. McBeth and Her Attitudes to the Indians,” Journal of Presbyterian History, pp. 350-351.
[65] J. Arthur Lazell, Alaskan Apostle, (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers), 1960, p. 157.
[66] Willard E. Rice, “America’s Modern St. Paul,” Union Worthies, No. 15, Union College, Schenectady, New York, 1960, p. 8.
[67] Ibid., p. 11.
[68] Hudson Struck, The Alaska Missions of the Episcopal Church, (Seattle: Facsimile Reproduction), 1968, pp. 11-12.
[69] Lazell, Alaskan Apostle, p. 190.
[70] Hinckley, The Americanization of Alaska, 1867-1897, p. 153.
[71] Sheldon Jackson, Alaska Missions on the North Pacific Coast, (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company), 1880, p. 129.
[72] Tay Thomas, Cry in the Wilderness, (Anchorage: Color Art Printing Co., Inc.), 1967, p. 35.
[73] Lazell, Alaskan Apostle, p. 181.
[74] Ibid., p. 198.
[75] Sheldon Jackson, Report on Education in Alaska, Government Printing Office), 1886, pp. 11-12.
[76] Ibid., p. 30.
[77] S. Hall Young, Hall Young of Alaska, (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company), 1927, p. 69.
[78] Ibid., p. 66.
[79] Ibid., p. 259.
[80] Ibid., p. 260.
[81] John R. Chambers, Arctic Bush Mission, (Seattle: Superior Publishing Company), 1970, p. 141.
[82] Young, Hall Young of Alaska, p. 259.
[83] Mary Clay Berry, The Alaska Pipeline, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 1975, p. 10.
[84] Chambers, Arctic Bush Mission, p. 174.
[85] Norman A. Chance, “Directed Change and Northern People,” Change in Alaska, George W. Rogers, Ed., (College: University of Alaska Press), 1970, p 184.
[86] Ibid.
[87] Hinckley, The Americanization of Alaska, 1867-1897, p. 245.
[88] Ibid., p. 196.
[89] Ibid., p. 245.
[90] Bryan Cooper, Alaska, The Last Frontier, (New York: William Morrow & company, Inc.), 1973, p. 57.
[91] Hinckley, The Americanization of Alaska, 1867-1897, p. 205.
[92] Ibid., p. 83.
[93] Wm. R. Hunt, Alaska, A Bicentennial History, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.), 1976, pp. 46-48.
[94] Chambers, Arctic Bush Mission, p. 17.
[95] Ibid.
[96] Thomas, History of the Church in Alaska, pp. 65-67.
[97] Mable P. Bingle, compiler, Presbytery of Yukon, 1899-1929, (From the minutes of Yukon Presbytery loaned by the Historical Association of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.), p. 7.
[98] Home Missions Monthly, October 1922, Vm. 36, No. 12, (Published by the Women’s Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.), p. 269.
[99] Bingle, Presbytery of Yukon, 1899-1929, p. 28.
[100] Ibid., p. 26.
[101] Ibid., p. 28.
[102] Ibid., p. 27.
[103] Mable P. Bingle, compiler, History of the Presbytery of Yukon, 1929-1950, (From the Minutes of Yukon Presbytery), p. 7.
[104] Chambers, Arctic Bush Mission, pp. 139-140.
[105] Ibid., pp. 136-141.
[106] Muktuk Marston, Men of the Tundra, (New York: October House, Inc.), 1969, pp. 40-41.
[107] Chambers, Arctic Bush Mission, p. 45.
[108] Homer Mediana, This is the Story About Anaktuvuk Pass Village, (Barrow: A Special Report of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory), 1972, p. 60.
[109] Chambers, Arctic Bush Mission, p. 97.
[110] Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 61.
[111] Ibid., p. 51.
[112] Ibid., p. 61.
[113] Thomas, Cry in the Wilderness, p. 121.
[114] Cooper, Alaska, The Last Frontier, p. 215.
[115] Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 18.
[116] Hunt, Alaska, A Bicentennial History, p. 162.
[117] Ibid.
[118] Ibid.
[119] Chance, The Eskimo of North Alaska, p. 16.
[120] Ibid., pp. 16-17.
[121] Ibid., pp. 43-44.
[122] Ibid., p. 44.
[123] Ibid., p. 46.
[124] Ibid., p. 48.
[125] Ibid., p. 49.
[126] Cooper, Alaska, The Last Frontier, p. 190.
[127] Richard Austin Smith, The Frontier States, (New York: Time-Life Books), 1968, p. 33.
[128] Wendell H. Oswalt, Mission of Change in Alaska, (San Marino: The Huntington Library), 1963, p. 158.
[129] Cooper, Alaska, The Last Frontier, p. 232.
[130] Deloria, God Is Red, pp. 281-284.
[131] Chance, “Directed Change and Northern Peoples,” in Change in Alaska, p. 181.
[132] Cooper, Alaska, The Last Frontier, p. 185.
[133] Ibid.
[134] Berry, The Alaska Pipeline, p. 248.
[135] Ibid., p. 38.
[136] Ibid., p. 33.
[137] Ibid., pp. 36, 47.
[138] Ibid.
[139] Ibid., p. 38.
[140] John Borbridge, Jr., “Native Organization and Land Rights as Vehicles for Change,” in Change in Alaska, George W. Rogers, Ed., (College: The University of Alaska Press), 1970, p. 198.
[141] George W. Rogers, “Change in Alaska: The 1960’s and After,” Change in Alaska, George W. Rogers, Ed., (College: University Press), 1970, p. 5.
[142] Borbridge, “Native Organization and Land Rights as Vehicles for Change,” in Change in Alaska, p. 196.
[143] Rogers, “Change in Alaska: The 1960’s and After,” in Change in Alaska, p. 5.
[144] Berry, The Alaska Pipeline, pp. 38 and 138-139.
[145] Ibid., p. 132.
[146] Ibid., p. 140.
[147] Ibid., p. 247.
[148] Ibid., p. 82.
[149] Ibid., p. 172.
[150] Ibid., p. 57.
[151] Ibid.
[152] Hunt, Alaska, A Bicentennial History, pp. 163-164.
[153] James A. Gittings, “Presbyterians Mass in Louisville,” A.D., (The United Presbyterian Edition), August 1974, p. 45.
[154] Richard A. Fineberg, “Barrow on the Eve,” Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, February 16, 1976.
[155] Ibid., February 18, 1976.
[156] Ibid.
[157] Ibid.
[158] Mark Panitch, “Circumpolar Talks End,” Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, June 18, 1977.
[159] Mark Panitch, “Eskimos Turn to Barrow,” Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, June 16, 1977.
[160] Resolution Draft of the United Presbyterian Church, Submitted by Rex Okakok, Lay Preacher, First Presbyterian Church, Fairbanks, Alaska, 189th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, June 21-28, 1977.
[161] Nageak, A Statement of Faith, p. 2.
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