Hi there! I have been exceptionally busy these last two months. I have found a new job in Kotzebue and have relocated to Kotzebue and am now a permanent resident! I am in the process of looking for an affordable place to rent here which is no easy feat - an efficiency goes for nearly $1300 here. So, for the last month or so I have been packing and cleaning and getting ready for my move.
I also made a special trip to Arcata, California for a 3-day intensive for school. I am enrolled in a part-time MSW program at Humboldt State University and traveled to campus to meet the instructors and my cohort. I must say that, so far, I love the program, the curriculum and the instructors! The instructors are passionate and so far (in the 2 weeks since we started) the course materials are stimulating and challenging. I am enthralled to begin this new journey and am looking forward to the next 3 years.
While in Arcata I got to see one of my very good friends after four years and had the honor of meeting her 3 year-old son. I was happy to see my friend and her family again and am looking forward to our time together in the next 3 years, since I will have to make a yearly trip to campus. My friend and her family are awesome - they are very kind, gentle, funny people. I have learned a lot about what it means to be human in my interactions with her and her family. They are from the Hoopa Valley Tribe and I've had a glimpse of what it means to be Indigenous in California. I would like to share my experience today.
While in Arcata, my friend was going to show me some of their ceremonial grounds, where they held dances and such. We were driving along the highway and suddenly stopped - I thought that we were going to check out some tourist attraction, perhaps a pretty view of the ocean. As it turned out, we had arrived at the actual location. This kind of shocked me because their traditional land is located in the heart of State, public land. The highway is right there, where there is little to no privacy.
She showed me their houses they had built and I was taken aback that there were tourists walking around. She explained to me that their land was also on State land, so that they often had to contend with tourists walking in on some of their ceremonies and taking pictures. One time, they had built a ceremonial fire only to come back to see a white family roasting marshmallows and hot dogs in the fire. Regarding use of their traditional land, they must jump through several bureaucratic hoops with the State to use it. For example, when they want to have special events, they must plan ahead and start the approval process very early (in the meantime, it is okay for tourists to do whatever they want whenever they want).
I was speechless and this terrible feeling in my gut because our experience in Kotzebue is very different. For example, we have fish camps where we go to prepare traditional food. These camps are typically outside of town and so they are relatively isolated and we rarely see tourists or outsiders, save for the occasional State Park people doing research on birds or what-have-you. We certainly don't get tourists coming in and taking pictures whenever they want to (although I have had white strangers taking random, unsolicited photos of us at in Anchorage and Kotzebue).
That experience has stayed with me ever since and I understood oppression at a deeper level. Americans are very aware of personal space, we typically don't like people intruding upon our personal space. And yet to have tourists coming in when my friend was sharing with me some of their personal things made me think that it must be that much more worse for her family.
There is also that sense of entitlement on part of the tourists. I would never think to go to someone's church ceremonies and take random photos of the people and yet, many tourists feel that they are entitled to do this. I think that it is a prime example of privilege too, both white privilege and the fact that my family and I have special privileges that my Hoopa friends don't have. That experience made me realize that we take our land and privacy for granted.
I will talk a little bit more about white privilege sometimes soon (this was actually a topic in one of my classes and so it will be interesting to revisit it).
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