My First Village Trip

This picture is of Sarah Palin and myself.

This past week was a nice steady week. I was very proud of myself because I was able to gain permission from a publishing company to use their book. Another big event this week was KNOM's 38th birthday.

Finally, I got to go on my first village trip. A village trip is invaluable to KNOM members. They help us learn more about our audience and their lifestyles. Since Nome is more of a city, it doesn't fully portray the lifestyle of these villages.

Friday was my first trip. I flew to Unalakleet, one of the larger fishing villages, to attend a bill signing. Sarah Palin flew into Unalakleet to sign this bill into a law. The bill was about the cost of oil for rural Alaska. The bill stated the cost to heat a home in Anchorage is approximately $2,200 and in Junaeu it costs about $4,440 but in rural Alaska, it costs about $6,600. The bill is going to put limits on the cost of fuel oil to heat homes so it will be more affordable.

Sarah came in and spoke for a while and had the mayor speak as well as the people who made the event possible.

The event still amazes me. The entire town helped make this possible. Everyone brought in their best salmon (mostly king salmon) or entre and make it a potluck. There was so much food. We had king crab, pink salmon, chum salmon, king salmon, salmon dip, fried bread, cheese and crackers, pasta salad, and even eskimo ice cream! Eskimo ice cream is a combination of seal oil or crisco, sugar, and wild berries. They used seal oil in the stuff i tried and it was amazing! This sweet old lady kind of adopted me because my coworker ran off to talk to other people. She kept throwing food on my plate and told me to put some meat on my bones.

The lady, who seemed to adopt me for the afternoon, introduced me to her entire family. She told me all about the IRA and how important it was to her. In addition she introduced me to half of Unalakleet's IRA. No village was recognized by the state of Alaska, in the time of the indian land act, unless it sent in a petition to the state to be a town. After they were approved, the town had to have a mayor and various other parts of a local government. The town maintained their old ways sort of a tribe leader through the IRA. The IRA and local government work together but some of the elders don't always respect the government because they believe that the IRA should run the village. In some villages, there is a huge rivalry, but there didn't seem to be anything to bad in Unalakleet.

After the wonderful Sarah Palin/Potluck event, I went to Summersize. That is a summer "camp" program for local children. Since this event is a Nome event, it was a big deal to have it in Unalakleet. I went to see if there was a story. There wasn't but I did get some children to record their youth dreams for a spot we have.

After this, I walked to me with Jessie and the mayor saw me and picked me up to take me to his work. The mayor is also the manager of the commercial fishing company in town. He showed me around the building and introduced some of his employees. He has people working for him from age 18 to 80. Jessie arrived and we interived him on building activity going on during the summer. After the interview Jessie and I relaxed and had a smoothie at "Peace on Earth" pizza parlor.

This is a picture of me next to my first bush plane flight. The flight wasn't that bad. There wasn't too much turbulance on the 9 passanger plane.