Eskimos face hard times after Iraq call-up

[Judi Lynn]

Eskimos face hard times after Iraq call-up

By MARY PEMBERTON, Associated Press Writer
18 minutes ago

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Military families across America often endure hardship when a loved one ships out. But there are not many places in the U.S. where those left behind have to chop ice out of the tundra for drinking water and make sure the freezer is well-stocked with walrus and seal meat.

The first major call-up of National Guard reservists from rural Alaska since World War II could mean sacrifice and upheaval for Eskimo villages that practice subsistence hunting and gathering in some of the most remote and unforgiving spots in the nation.

Eric Phillip's job in the small Yup'ik Eskimo village of Kongiganak in southwestern Alaska is to hunt walrus, seal, mink, otter, geese, ducks and other animals to provide food for his immediate family and other relatives. With Phillip shipping out, his wife and their two young sons will be moving to the city of Bethel, about 70 miles away.

"Out here it is harder for them to live alone," Phillip said. "In the village we don't have water. We have to go to the tundra and chop ice for water and melt it, and we don't have flush toilets. It is hard for a single parent to live around here in the village."

Similar stories are being told in Eskimo villages across the vast state, in places with names like Alakanuk, Emmonak and Manokotak, as 670 soldiers from some of the most hard-to-reach places in the nation head to Iraq and Afghanistan.
(snip/...)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060619/ap_on_re_us/eskimos_iraq

[Warpy]

1. I'm sure there are similar stories out on the rez here

because people there do subsistence farming and sheepherding. Again, it's tough on the families left behind, caring for the kids, doing all the chores, chasing sheep, and trying to keep it all together so a soldier will have something to come home to.

At least tomorrow night Frontline on PBS will be exposing this gang for what they are and for who is the real problem: Cheney.

They are pure evil, folks, and I don't use that term lightly.

(I never used it for Nixon. He was just sick and wrongheaded.)

[Swede]

2. How will they do in 120 degree heat?

Day after day in the desert will be pretty tough on these guys.

[rodeodance]

4. here

......Before leaving for Iraq and Afghanistan, the troops will get three months of training, which will include getting used to hot weather at Camp Shelby in Mississippi.

Maj. Stephen Wilson, who returned from a one-year stint in Iraq in 2005 and is overseeing the deployment of seven soldiers from Barrow, 340 miles north of the Arctic Circle, said the Alaskans should do well once they adjust to the 120-degree heat in Iraq. In Barrow — the northernmost city in the United States — the temperature doesn't get much higher than the low 50s in the summer, and often drops below freezing at night.

Maj. Mike Haller, a Guard spokesman in Anchorage, said about 35 percent of the approximately 4,000 National Guard members in Alaska are Native, well above their 19 percent share of the state's population.

Being in the National Guard is a rite of passage for many young Alaska Natives, Haller said, a tradition that started during World War II when Alaska was still a territory. In that war, the state's National Guard troops fought in both Europe and the Pacific, and some were stationed in Alaska's Aleutian Islands to guard against the Japanese.

[rodeodance]

3. that is a lot of troops from AK.