An Eskimo Child's Day - Alaska

This was first printed in:  Whispering Wind, American Indian: Past and Present  Vol 34 No. 4

While not typical, this could be an average day of one Eskimo child in “bush” Alaska, let us call him Itauk.

Itauk wakes at 8am because he is cold.  The family spot smells from not being dumped the previous day.  Mom was to sick to take it to the landfill and no one has seen Dad for two days because he does not want to return from the hunt empty handed.  Itauk steps outside to relieve himself.

He is numbed by the cold but he always is.  His tooth still hurts and his nose is running and his cough won’t seem to go away.  He digs through a pile of clothes on the floor and picks out what he wore yesterday because that is the cleanest things he has, not that he cares that much anyway.  He hurries off to school for the warmth that a centrally heated building provides.  He goes into the special education class where rolls and hot chocolate are sold.  He sits there long enough until the teacher offers him something free and one of the other kids shares one of this rolls that more than likely he also got free.  The coffee shop does not make much money.  He stays as long as he can but finally is forced to go to class.

He does not have a pencil has no idea what happened to his home work, does not understand what the teacher is saying, finds no relevance in what is being taught and therefore puts his head on his desk and goes to sleep.  Eventually he slips to the floor and uses his jacket for a pillow.  The teacher does not bother to wake him because if he is asleep at least he is not causing a disturbance, thereby requiring Itauk to be sent to the office thus being kicked out of school for up to two weeks.  The teacher realizes that school is far better than home.  Let him sleep.

When kids line up for lunch he awakes and gets in line.  Lunch is hot, plentiful, and free.  After lunch he plays basketball until a different teacher comes to the gym, they line up and goes to his afternoon class.  He is awake now but doesn’t do much because he does not understand what sustained and silent reading means, wonders why anyone would want to circle a noun even if they knew what one was, and cannot imagine why anyone would want to learn the capital of Missouri even if they knew what Missouri was.

Some how he manages to get through the rest of the afternoon without getting into to much trouble, and when school is dismissed he lingers and asks the teacher if he can check his email.  The teacher knows Itauk does not have an email account but lets him get on the computer and ignores the fact that he has gone on the Internet and is playing a video game. When the teacher is ready to go home he tell Itauk that it is time to go and Itauk reluctantly signs off.  The teacher retreats to a world not imagined by Itauk.

Itauk goes, not home but to the playground or the gym and hangs around other kids who do not want to be anywhere else.  If it is warm they play outside.  Warm being above 0 degrees.  Ituk gets tired of playing and is hungry.  He goes to a teacher’s house (he goes to a different one each day) and asks if he can visit.  About half the time he is welcomed in, he is likeable and cute.  He watches TV, uses the bathroom, is offered something to eat and out stays his welcome.  He is politely reminded he should be going home and he just as politely agrees. Itauk, though not a good student or understands why he should be is not a stupid child.

He wanders around the village, perhaps stopping by a friend’s house , perhaps an aunt or uncle’s, maybe the local missionary, or a half dozen places that might give him some warmth or something to eat.  He runs into other kids and if they have a four wheeler or snow-go he rides around with them.  He does this for hours going from one part of the village to the other, down to the beach, out on the tundra, anywhere.  If there is a basketball game, which there is most nights, he and his friends go to the gym and hang around outside until a teacher who has not been hardened pays his way in or he is asked to do a small errand, payment being free entry.

After the game he continues his journey around the village.  The local police start to enforce the curfew at 10pm, but this does nothing but to make riding around the village more fun.  Who can stay away from the police, and not get caught the longest is a badge of honor.  This lasts until at least midnight and eventually the inevitable takes place and Itauk goes home.

The one room house is cold, the family pot is full, Mom is still sick and Dad is not there.  The TV reception is not good but there is an old video and it is watched.  Around three o’clock in the morning Itauk drifts off to sleep.  There is school tomorrow.

So ends the day of Itauk, just one of the next generation of a culture that has lived and survived in the Arctic for ten thousand years.

Note to reader:  When I returned from Alaska I started teaching school in the inner city.  Itauk’s life was not a lot different than many of the students near the urban core.