| June 2, 2006 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth Back
Where It All Began
The slides fall from the tray with the finality of a guillotine blade, the pictures momentary, memorable and moving, even now. These are photos of a rural Alaska Native community. In nearly every picture, the subject is smiling broadly. “They all seem so happy,” my mom says. It has taken me a year to recognize the significance of my mother’s observation. The Cup’ik - perhaps characteristic of all Yup’ik Eskimo, of all Aleuts, of all Inupiaq, of all indigenous cultures - are happy people. There was an unmentioned assumption at our school that teachers are to train these people for Western life, to prepare them to leave and join the ranks of the U.S. status quo. We had the job of turning them into depressed Americans. Americans are a sad people. After a year in Chevak, I was struck by the abundance of glum, serious, frantic, or fallen faces in the different airports we passed through. A few days later, I sat on the steps of the Custom House in downtown Charleston S.C., watching a free reggae concert. Of several thousand gathered for the show, only a half dozen danced. The rest of people, White people mostly, watched the show with dour faces, the dulled expressions folks have when consuming television. The front man for the show tried desperately to encourage the crowd to dance, to sing, to move, to join him in chorus … anything. A local radio DJ tried unsuccessfully to humor the Charleston audience. Why is it that in a country that consumes a third of the world’s natural resources, that has the highest “standard of living,” that produces a third of the planet’s greenhouse gasses, people are so damn miserable? It’s warm here. The beach is nice. But I’m ready to head back to Chevak. Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist, and is the winner of the Alaska Press Club's 2006 'Best Columnist' award. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. |
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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