This summer I took part in a teacher education institute (July 2002) in Chevak, Alaska. I also helped out at a family friend's fish camp, where we set nets for fish, cut them then dried them. In the institute we learned a lot about Cup'ik culture and history. With help from three elders we made a timeline of Chevak history with the elder's stories, and my dad and John Pingayaq's (born and raised in Chevak) knowledge about the region. We were led on a walk into the tundra around Chevak, where we picked a few berries here and there and gathered native herbs and learned their uses. John Pingayaq taught us how to make a fishing gig called a manaq out of wire, string and a stick of wood. We went clam digging on a tiny sandy island called Sand Island, though most of the teachers wandered around looking at the shells and feathers while only a few actually dug some clams. We stumbled upon a seal or walrus carcass, pleasantly rotting away, and a seal skull. 

Camping was a big part of the institute, and we set up camp on the Qissunaq River with Chevak in the distance. It takes a skilled driver to pilot a boat through the rivers, with all the twists and turns it is easy for someone to lose all sense of direction. While camping we got to try out our manaqs, we would cast the four pronged wire hook baited with fish or bird gut (whatever we had on hand) stick the wooden stick into the river bank and wait. To hook a fish you have to watch and feel the tension in the string then jerk the hookup and out of the water sharply. We caught only a few fish, and most of them we put back. Also while we were out camping we visited the old village sites, and a black brant geese study site. 

I was one of the assistant cooks for the institute, and help set up for meals and wash the dishes afterwards. While out at camp I learned how to make fry bread (which is extremely delicious) and sat inside the cook tent with my mom (the head cook) up to my arms in flour and dough for hours. It was very fun. 

Every night we had a talking circle, where a talking stick would be passed around to everybody and they would be able to talk about whatever was on their mind, without criticism, just everyone listening. Even though their were around twenty of us, we all got to know each other very well through the talking circles.

Towards the end of the institute the teachers created their own curriculum and incorporated things the thing that they had learned while in the institute and I made myself a mini-curriculum for myself (see vision page). At the very end we held a potlatch for the community, preformed  the Crane dance that we had learned and then watched some actual dancers. 

Item 5 Description

Chevak

John Pingayaq's fish camp on the Qissunaq River, about 8 miles in from the Bering Sea, from left to right, cook tent (white building), sleeping tent, smoke house (with green tarp).

Drying fish at John Pingayaq's fish camp. The fish cut into strips (in the background) is my family's fish. My job was to take the strips my dad cut and wash the slime off of them in a bucket then put them in a bucket of brine for fifteen minutes and hang them to dry.  They can also be smoked in a smoke house (on the right) .

This is the inside of the cook tent at fish camp. We would mostly eat dried fish, pilot crackers (with peanut butter and jam), rice, Spam, hard boiled eggs (crane, duck, or geese eggs, when available), and trail mixes. The cook tent would be the warmest place at camp, so during the day it was the place to be when you weren't working and the wind was blowing. It is also where the CB radio was to keep in contact with Chevak and others out at their camps.

The maqee, steam bath, out at fish camp. It's a little room where you sit with a fire that heats up rocks on which you pour some water to make a steam. It gets you sweating, and probably gets you cleaner than a shower. I haven't taken one yet, but my parents did every chance they got. In Chevak most people also has a maqee at the back of their house, though this year they are getting plumbing to the older houses and showers will be possible to take (beginning last year, the newer houses got showers and plumbing).