The Beat Begins - Alaska

"There are strange things done in the midnight sun..." Robert W. Service

When I was young my given name of Conley was the same as that of my grandfather. I never liked that name growing up because I identified it with old people.

I much preferred the nickname given me by my name sake – Snapper. Why Snapper? Well, the family story goes that when Baba (my grandfather) first saw me I was red and blinked my eyes like a red snapper. I am sure he had never seen a red snapper but facts like that never got in his way.

Times have changed and I no longer introduce myself as Snapper. It sounds sort of silly for a person of my age. I have come to think of Conley as a very sophisticated and beautiful name.

In most of the villages I lived in while in Alaska the naming of a child took on a complexity all its own.

Many children, when given a Christian name, were named after the recently deceased, relative or not. Some believed the spirit of the deceased entered the body of the person thus named. So if you take this to the extreme you can really be your own Grandpa.

Most villagers had two names, Christian and native. When given Christian names, the girls were often named after their mothers and were tagged with the Junior and Senior thing, just as boys. It was not uncommon for children to take their mother's last name.

To complicate the matter, some children were given to relatives or neighbors after being born, and they kept their birth name regardless of who raised them. For instance Sandi Collins' mother was Sandi Collins, her father was a Kohely, and she was raised and adopted by a Quinn but she is always Sandi Collins Jr. Her brothers and sisters, even if she was a twin, might have altogether different last names depending on who's who in the tribal hierarchy at the time.

Trying to tell who belongs to whom or who is related to whom got very confusing.

I have not figured out tribal naming customs to a great extent, and the natives have a hard time explaining it to an outsider. They are sort of reluctant to anyway, because they have been conditioned to feel that Gussicks (non natives) don't approve of the double name thing. Perhaps way back that was true, but all the Gussicks I knew think it really a neat thing. But old wounds do not heal very fast between cultures.

I use to ask kids what their tribal names were but I seldom called them that because I could not pronounce the names correctly and when I tried I got laughed at.

Now and then Gussicks are given an Eskimo name. Usually it is just a casual thing, and the name more often than not refers to an animal or a physical feature the Gussick might have. Like Polar Bear (for a big guy), Walrus (for someone who has long teeth), bearded one, or baldy, things like that.

These names when said in English do not sound flattering, but when said in the local language, it is almost elegant. Besides the names are not given to be insulting, just descriptive.

Sometimes, however, a Gussick is named by an elder under unusual circumstance, usually without warning, and it takes on a mystical quality, almost as if that elder has or had some connection to the ancient shamans. There are no shamans anymore, or so the natives would have you believe, once again keeping such knowledge to themselves so as not to suffer ridicule by the Gussicks. There are hints from time to time that one or two are still around, but don't try to pin a native down on who or where.

I now have a Yup'ik Eskimo name. It was given to me by an elder who was telling stories to my students one day. She stopped her story in mid sentence, looked at me and asked if I had a Yup'ik name. I had not and said so. She looked at me for a long time and said, "You will be known as Cauyam anngaa."

Don't even try to pronounce it. I have heard it several times and still can't. I wondered at the time if she was one of those closet shamans that are said not to exist.

I use to write a weekly column for The Independence Examiner and liked Tundra Drums as the title. But there was a newspaper up there that served the delta region with the same name so that was out. I also used the same title for a collection of short storie I wrote and made available to friends and family. I use to have a web page called "Arctic Drums" and the first story I ever wrote was about the making of a drum. No native at the time knew any of this.

So why do I think the elder might have been a shaman in hiding? What mystical quality surrounds my Yup'ik name to make me think such? Well the English translation for Cauyam anngaa is "Brother of the Drum." Go figure.

So this is Conley Stone Snapper Cauyam anngaa McAnally wishing you well, as always. The beat goes on.