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Yelena Popova performs a traditional Koryak dance for Yupik students in a Yupik language school in Bethel, AK. |
Ice cream made with fish oil might sound a little funny to most Alaska visitors who are offered this Native treat, but for Open World delegate and government reindeer expert Leonid Sharypov, a Chuvansi from the far northeastern corner of Siberia, it was a familiar taste of home. "Eskimo ice cream" was just one of the commonalities that Sharypov and his group discovered in Alaska this fall while on the first Open World exchange to bring indigenous leaders from both sides of the Bering Sea together to work on environmental challenges.
Sharypov and his three fellow delegates — all members of Russia's fledgling indigenous environmental movement — began their Oct. 26-Nov. 4 visit in Anchorage, meeting with key Native organizations promoting sustainable natural resource use. While there, the Russians also experienced democracy in action, Native Alaskan style, by observing lively debates at the Alaska Federation of Natives Annual Convention, the state's largest gathering of indigenous peoples.
A side trip to the small Ahtna Athabascan community of Chickaloon Village, nestled in the mountains above Anchorage, introduced the Russians to model Native environmental and educational programs. Village leaders explained how, in partnership with the University of Alaska and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they will restore a salmon run destroyed by 20th-century mining and railroad construction. The project was of special interest to the two delegates of part-Itelman descent: Oksana Moiseyeva, whose organization, the Kamchatka League of Independent Experts, is working to preserve the Kamchatka Peninsula's wild salmon population, and Yulia Vasilyeva, deputy chair of the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky branch of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), a primary advocate for species preservation and indigenous fishing rights, among many other issues.
All the delegates were inspired by their visit to Chickaloon's award-winning, tribally run Ya Ne Dah Ah School, whose curriculum, according to Harvard University, "effectively melds traditional teachings with modern non-Native subjects." For delegate Yelena Popova, a native Koryak from the Bering Sea village of Ossora who teaches the Koryak language as part of her work for Ossora's Lach Ethnic-Environmental Resource Center, this stop provided an especially welcome opportunity to share ideas on how to maintain ancestral languages — a discussion continued over a lunch of traditional moose stew.
A flight across the western tundra brought the Russians from Anchorage to the remote Yupik Eskimo community of Bethel (population 5,500), the trading and governmental hub of a region with one of the largest concentrations of indigenous Alaskans who are still practicing subsistence lifestyles. In between meetings at tribal facilities and the local Fish and Wildlife Agency, the Russians learned about the Yupiks' age-old customs and shared some of their own.
Popova took part in an impromptu "dance-off" with young students at the Ayaprun Elitnaurvik Yupik Immersion School, with each side delightedly demonstrating and explaining their traditional dance movements to the other. Myron Naneng, who heads the Bethel-based Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP), treated the delegates to salmon that he had cured in his own smokehouse. Naneng accompanied the delegates during their entire two-day stay in Bethel, giving them an insider's guide to the social services, advocacy work, and community development undertaken by AVCP, Alaska's largest regional Native nonprofit organization.
Even before boarding their return flight to the Russian Far East, the Open World delegates already had ideas on how to use their Open World experience. Moiseyeva said that she hopes to continue to communicate with the environmentalists from Chickaloon on ways to preserve wild salmon populations. Vasilyeva hoped that her new contacts in Chickaloon would help her collect English-language documents on subsistence fishing and hunting for use at future international environmental conferences. Popova reported, "I want to try to organize an indigenous council ... similar to that of the Association of Village Council Presidents in Bethel, so that we can work to effectively lobby to protect native interests." And Sharypov envisioned future exchanges of indigenous Russian and Alaskan reindeer herders, to expand ties and the sharing of native know-how across the Bering Sea.
The Alaska exchange was administered for Open World by ISAR: Resources for Environmental Activists, a nonprofit organization that promotes citizen participation and the development of the nongovernmental sector in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and was hosted by Pacific Environment, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the living environment of the Pacific Rim. Support for the exchange was provided by the Russell Family Foundation, a philanthropic organization that awards grants in the areas of environmental sustainability, grassroots leadership, and peace and security.
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