From Russia With ....? - Alaska

Russia is closer to Hooper Bay than Anchorage. Russian influence is just around an Alaskan corner.

I had reason to travel to my first Eskimo village outside Hooper Bay one weekend. The settlement was, and still is I guess, called Russian Mission.

Russian Mission is about an hours plane ride just northeast of Hooper Bay. It hugs the side of a mountain and creeps toward the Yukon River. Russian Mission is home to about 350 Yup'ik Eskimos with a smattering of other than brown eyes. Names like Vaska, Kozev, Nikoff, Alexie, Nickoli, and Stafphanoff are proudly displayed on the school sports banner.

Promyshlenniki – Russian fur traders – established a trading post on the banks of the Yukon in 1830. The Russian Orthodox Church soon followed and started a mission, thus the name. Of course a thriving Eskimo village had been on the same spot for around 10,000 years but such technicalities have never stopped a Gussick from naming anything.

The first thing that struck me as we pulled up to the school, other than all the trees, was a strange-looking animal hanging from a drying rack. I found out it was an otter, caught and skinned by the students to feed the Lower Yukon School District board members who were meeting at the school that day. It was not ready for cooking, though, and the board had to be fed caribou and dried salmon instead. Life is hard sometimes in the Last Frontier.

The Russian Mission school had and I hope still have a subsistence curriculum. Besides learning the three R's, the kids ran trap lines twice a week, spent three weeks a couple of times each year at a fish and hunting camp and learned survival skills. The high school girls were just getting ready to go on their own three-day caribou hunt when I arrived, the boys having gone the previous week.

The Russian Orthodox Church still dominated the scenery with no less than two churches having seen use and a brand new one displaying the onion dome.

The school had 100 students K-12, about one-third of the village population, and nine certified staff including the principal a 17-year veteran of the district and responsible for developing many programs that could be a model for many an Alaskan bush school.

In addition to the subsistence curriculum the school raised enough money the previous year to send some students to Japan to environmental conference and were planning another trip.

I was there because I was the Academic Decathlon coach, and Russian Mission was sponsoring the tournament. The gym was too small to host athletic events and each village in the district was designated to hold at least one district wide event each year. It was Russian Mission's turn.

Forty students from around the district participated in the event. They gave speeches, wrote essays, gave interviews, and took tests in math, English, economics, science, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The event lasted two days and, through superb coaching, Hooper Bay did just fine. Our five girls came in second, third, fourth, and fifth. Two will attend the state championship in Anchorage and our team tied for third with Russian Mission.

I would like to take the credit for our team's achievement but in reality I did very little. I could not get the girls to practice very much and the few times I was half way successful, they more than not did their research by checking and sending e-mails to the boys they met in Russian Mission.