"Palin thinks the youth need to move out of the villages" - Writing Raven (Alaska Real)

[Blue_In_AK]

Alaska Native blogger Writing Raven on the governor's trip to Western Alaska:

(ed. to add link)

http://alaskareal.blogspot.com/2009/02/palin-thinks-youth-need-to-move-out-of.html

This post could have easily been titled, "The point at which I lose it."

When I read, and watched, the remarks Sarah Palin made about rural issues to the Kyle Hopkinns of the Anchorage Daily News, I nearly punched the screen. I had to leave my laptop and go fume for many, many hours - talking (venting) with my parents and grandmother and even brother - before I could return and be relatively sure I would not toss my innocent little laptop into the snow for being the bearer of bad news. Even then I couldn't trust myself to post without liberal use of curse words, which I usually try to avoid.

What got me into this murderous, computer-killing rage? Please read Mudflats and The Immoral Minority for more detail, but let me try and summarize some of Ms. Palin's points as she answered questions:


Palin thinks youth need to consider leaving the villages.

"Another purpose of the trip today, is not just delivering food for a short-term solution, but to remind those, especially young people, in rural Alaska of the job opportunities that are available, albeit it requires in some cases leaving the village for a short time."

This one is what really infuriated me. The Native people of Alaska have been fighting and fighting for generations to ensure rural communities thrive, thinking up solutions to get especially the young people to stay and contribute to the community. The boarding school times in which young people left "for a short time" were some of the most devastating to these communities. Did we learn nothing about what this kind of thinking leads to? Is there no thought to a real future? Palin shows a lack of the study of Alaskan and American history. So much time and energy trying to salvage these towns and villages from social and economic collapse, and the governor of our state can sweep them aside with one ignorant comment.

What these communities need is infrastructure, jobs in the communities themselves. Ironically, I just got a look at the Indian country provisions in the stimulus bill, and was thinking how forward we've come in our look at what Native communities really need. Maia of Own the Sidewalk forwarded me a link to a National Congress of American Indians page devoted to the Indian country provisions of the stimulus bill. I haven't been talking about the stimulus package becuase the last thing anyone wants is me commenting on anything to do with money. But I was incredibly impressed with the funding set aside for Native country projects.

Basically, it's all about infrastructure in these communities. Energy projects, building projects, roads and weatherization. Things that will not only create jobs and a viable economy in the short term, but ensure a future community exists at all. I don't know about the rest of the stimulus, but in this, they've got it dead on. Why are the only solutions Palin talks about all about getting out of the community? Helping out the oil companies? She throws out something about becoming VPSO's or teachers in your own community - but how can they when the whole youth of the village is now set on leaving? There's no one left to police or teach.

<snip - much more>

Despite Palin's assertions that this is not the governments problem, this has everything to do with government. Lack of support for energy projects, restrictions on subsistence, laws about fisheries and over-fishing... The short-term problem is hungry kids and no heat. But the short-term problem could have been avoided completely by addressing these long-term solutions that Palin has been unwilling to even look at, much less be part of a dialogue about.

[snowbear]

1. Saraclueless..

.
.

I wonder if she's ever considered the piss poor statistics of how many Alaskan Bush teens actually make it to to college? Or even worse.. how many struggle to just finish high school?

I think that the state should focus on those kids who (for whatever reason) can't attend college or who struggle to make it through high school- to be able to attend a program similar to the King Career Center.

The state (with the assistance of native corporations) could easily build an in-state trade school (with housing) that focuses on the types of jobs that are most needed in the villages.

It's insane how much money some of the native corporations here invest in building malls in places like Arizona, or high rise ritzy hotels in Las Vegas.. They, along with the state, should invest in native youth for a change.

The kids (who can't or don't want to attend college) and who want to remain in their villages could attend a trade school with housing in the fall (after fire season) at the age of 18 and older.

I know from being in Tanana & Galena for a summer, that a massive amount of teens 18-and older (male and female) take summer jobs with either the state (DNR) or the feds (BLM) making good money during the fire season. Everything from hotshot crews based out of Fort Wainwright, to various logistics jobs in their own, or other villages. It's a good way for them to make money during the summer (mostly because of all the overtime); and they travel frequently with crews to the lower-48 as the fire season in Alaska is wrapping up.

But yeah... I think that native youth who want to reside in their villages could have a much better system of being trained in various trades -if the state government and the native corporations put their heads together to help invest in their futures.

..

[Hekate]

2. KnR. That woman is a walking nightmare. nt

[Ken Burch]

3. Our Lil' Sarah is Kit Carson in Neiman-Marcus.

If we HAD wells in Rural Alaska, she'd probably poison them.

Sarah is Womanifest Destiny.

If her party gets their way up here, our First Peoples will end up doing their own Ghost Dance.

[Blue_In_AK]

4. Phil Munger has also posted a good piece about this.

http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2009/02/on-palin-suggests-controversial.html

<snip>

Alaska survives by taking life, power and value from outside of the towns and cities, and bringing those things to market.

Life, in the forms of salmon, King crab, Walleye pollock, halibut or oysters.

Power in the forms of crude oil, natural gas, coal and hydroelectricity.

Value in the sense of the above resources, and ivory, nickel, copper, gold, silver and other precious metals.

In the sense of a long-term, sustainable Alaska, people in Wales, Emmonak, Marshall, Russian Mission and Nunam Iqua, get "it" no less than do people in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau or Seattle.

The direct ancestors of Tikagaq people who live in Point Hope have lived there since well before the English, French, Spanish or German languages as we might even vaguely recognize them existed.

The direct ancestors of the Tlingit have occupied parts of Southeast Alaska for thousands of years, far longer than any written human language now extant has been in use.

Native Alaskans survived quite well for thousands of years without non-Native assistance. Tony Hopfinger's The Walrus article about Wales documents the generations of heartbreak White contact have brought that community. There is no lack of other articles and books that do the same.

Gov. Palin, during the press conference in Juneau on February 11th, made reference to "Cluster Villages" as a solution to problems in hundreds of isolated, small Alaska Native villages. I think we've seen them already, at least the predominately Native American versions. At best, they are named Gallup, New Mexico. At worst, Rosebud, South Dakota.

The concept of moving Alaska Natives from place to place to educate, train or indoctrinate them has been tried year after decade after generation after century. It has seldom worked.

Diane Benson has explored various aspects of these attempts and failures in some of her dramatic work. So have other Alaska Native artists. I prefer reading or listening to people like Benson, Desa Jacobson, Heather Kendall-Miller or Writing Raven on these issues, to Hopfinger & Coyne. Certainly Palin is better analyzed by Kendall-Miller on this, than by Hopfinger & Coyne. Coyne should know that, having written one of the best profiles of Kendall-Miller there is.

There was far more pre-journey coverage of the Palin-Graham-Prevo missionary trip than there has been post-journey coverage. That may change, as impressions from people who witnessed their efforts are just coming in and being published here and there.

The reality of people from faith backgrounds like Graham, Prevo and Palin, though, is that unlike early Christianity, during its expansion into non-Christian areas, the Graham-Prevo-Palin version of that religion has no intention whatsoever of adapting any aspect of its doctrine to the people it seeks to "help." Rather, it is that faith's expectation for those it seeks to "help" to be converted, through evangelical activities, to their very restrictive world view. Prevo, Palin and Graham all represent a narrow subset from within Christian doctrine, that expects the world to end soon in a cataclysmic event.

Some Alaska Natives all over the state have already been exposed to these peoples' brand of Christianity. It is expansionist, and regards the growth aspect of its existence to be far more important than assisting any single aspect of any Alaska Native culture to survive in a meaningful way, let alone the package represented by the spiritual independence of Alaska Native cultural renaissances here and there .

Regarding creating "Cluster Villages," one needs look no further in Alaska than the coastal fisheries management practices as created with the extensive help of Sen. Ted Stevens, or to the buildings occupied - but not owned - by Native Corporations, to see how well Palin's, Hopfinger's, Coyne's, Graham's and Prevo's visions might work. Outsiders from Seattle would own the means of production, distributing crumbs, called "IFQ's" until they chose to stop distributing them. And the "Cluster Village" headquarters and administrative offices would be owned by a Jon Rubini-esque developer, who would rent or lease these facilities out to the Alaska Natives at a higher rate than they would have had to pay to end up owning them over the course of a generation.

How do you tell people who have been around a few generations, that their ideas on how to manage the affairs of people who they have all but ruined, but have been here for millennia, haven't been proven?

[Blue_In_AK]

5. More, from Celtic Diva - "Is Alaska Dispatch Kidding?"

http://divasblueoasis.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=457

<video>

This is the summary of the above video (originally appearing on the ADN) according to Alaska Dispatch:

Palin approached a topic that most Alaska politicians shy away from -- the need to seek employment and opportunities outside village Alaska. (For Outside readers, there are more than 200 villages in Alaska, most unconnected to roads and the power grid.)
Palin may have been criticized for not reacting swiftly enough to cries for help from villages hurting this winter from high food and fuel prices, but she clearly is thinking about the long-term future of rural Alaska.

The harsh reality is that rural Alaskans have limited opportunities, be it employment, education or even dating. In the early 21st century, rural residents are still dealing with many of the same perplexing questions as they have for decades:

How do they hold on to tradition, to hunting, to fishing? If people leave the village for new opportunities, how can the community sustain itself? What is the purpose of the village today? Why are so many people suffering from suicide and alcoholism?

Watch this video and listen closely to Palin's remarks. It seems she's thinking about these larger issues, and perhaps this might prompt a state conversation sorely needed, especially in these uncertain economic times.

I say again...are you kiddding me?

I spoke to Writing Raven on Saturday after being alerted via email to this post. Her poignant response and educated and informed summation of Palin's comments have been rightfully quoted by many other blogs.

Her response to the seemingly uninformed staff of the Dispatch should be shouted from the rooftops:

After stewing all night, I woke up this morning to a phone call from Celtic Diva. She and Mudflats pointed to an article in the Alaska Dispatch, praising Palin for "speaking from the heart" and being "thoughtful" about solutions for the communities.

You can only be thoughtful if you've met with the people from the communities and listened to them. Palin is calling for a change in leadership - with who? What are these leaders doing wrong? Who are they? When has she talked to them? And she gave NO solutions except to say these youth should think about leaving. So the solution is "leave the village"? She can't be a spark to "real dialogue" when she's never taken part in a dialogue! The dialogue has been going on, but Palin doesn't care to be part of it.

The article was also preemptively defensive about the race card being thrown at Palin. As if Palin needs to be a racist to make ignorant remarks about the state of rural Alaska. Personally, I believe Palin is willing to be pretty racially equal about throwing rural Alaska under the bus. For that matter, she's screwing us all equally in her painfully obvious stab for national attention. I didn't agree with the remarks about Ted Stevens at the time (don't think the guy was racist, just wrong) and it is interesting to note that the only people to bring up racism with Palin's remarks have been the people of the Alaska Dispatch.

To be very clear - Palin's remarks aren't racist. They are ignorant of the real issues, display a willingness to decide what is right having never had the dialogue, and take us back about 50 years in the struggle to maintain thriving rural and cultural communties. But in ignorance, she's being quite equal.

My own observations:

-- I was angered and amused by the Dispatch's reference to former Sen. Ted Stevens as someone who also "thoughtfully" discussed rural Alaska's future. In truth, the FBI investigation of Stevens originated as a result of the shady deals involving his son Ben with various fishery entities in Alaska and Seattle. The results of this and other Stevens-supported legislation has been the all-out acquisition of the Alaska cod and other federally-controlled fisheries by the Washington State fishing fleet, the loss of thousands of fishing jobs in Alaska, and possibly irreversible damage to the King Salmon run on the Yukon River...a run many villages depend upon for their survival.

Any "musings" of former-Senator Stevens may not be racist, but are clearly warped by his corporate ties and the undue influence of monies from big-business over his decisions.

-- I agree with Writing Raven in that Governor Palin's comments do not necessarily reflect racism but do reflect self-promotion and ambition in its purest form.

Governor Palin has shown that she is actually quite predictable...whatever most benefits her is the direction she will follow, no matter what the results or consequences. Most recently, with the dawn of "SarahPAC" and her recent trip to meet with huge donors and "bundlers" like Fred Malek, it has been clear that her quest for finances and support for a 2012 presidential run has dominated all else. This includes her Governor's "State of the State" speech, where Alaskans were looking for some glimmer of a message among the platitudes directed at her national audience.

Some of this will be tricky, however. Sarah Palin desperately needs money and must somehow court the corporations without appearing to contradict her "Mavricky" image crafted during her Vice-Presidential run. So I don't believe it's a coincidence that the position on Rural Alaska reflected in her comments has been the same position spouted by corporate-hacks-posing-as-Republicans for years.

And this ties in with a theory:

The vast majority of Alaska's resources including gold and other minerals, oil, natural gas, etc...are found on and under lands traditionally inhabited by Alaska's Native people. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was a tool by which all individual Alaska Natives legally relinquished their claim on the land. It established the Village Corporations (for example, Emmonak Village Corporation...the people who live there) as owning the surface rights to the patented land while the regional corporation (for example, Calista Corporation) owns the subsurface rights. This lasts as long as the Corporations exist.

For those of you who have never lived/worked up in oil country, much of the North Slope is completely under corporate control. The only "police" are oil-company security. Whoever gets in/out is completely within the control of the oil companies.

So, what happens if the Native population of Emmonak is starved out of a village, the people move and the village no longer exists nor is it incorporated? Is it probable that the surface rights would be up for grabs or revert back to the government? Would the government also have a case to challenge Calista for the subsurface rights if there was no longer a Native population living there?

I believe that corporations would love to encourage the Alaska Native population to leave their villages in order to clear the way for unfettered development.

-- The Alaska Dispatch commentary on Palin's remarks and their further response to emails show the same ignorance of the issues that our Governor displays...an ignorance born of not even bothering to investigate or learn from the people whose lives are presently touched by the problems. Both Palin and Alaska Dispatch focus on "charity"...something which the Alaska Natives abhor more than anyone. However, both Palin and the Dispatch ignore what the communities have needed for years from the state and federal governments...not charity, but simple infrastructure like a port at the mouth of the Yukon (jobs), energy extraction projects (inexpensive energy, jobs), and a solution to the fishery problem which has severely damaged their ability to live off of the King Salmon run (jobs, income, food). Palin is clearly willing to (quietly but deliberately) continue the quest for the billion-dollar-plus Knik Arm Bridge, but wants to reject the infrastructure money coming in from the stimulus package which could revitalize Rural Alaska.

So yes, there must be many discussions on Rural Alaska and the solutions to their issues, but the discussion doesn't begin as one-sided commentary suggesting leadership change (before the leadership has been consulted) and that the youth move to the cities to find jobs...a sure death of the villages The fact that neither Palin nor the Dispatch seems to "get" that reflects badly on their understanding of the issues and, for the Dispatch, their alleged "journalistic neutrality."