NY Times article, Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all (both?) of our blog readers. Yesterday the kids had a half day of school and at noon there was a "feast" in the cafeteria. It was interesting - practically the whole village was there. Because the population here is so small, the families tend to be very intertwined, and when you add the casual adoptions that take place in many families and the way people who actually aren't related call each other their "Yup'ik cousins", well, pretty much everyone is family. Most of my interactions here are with the younger kids so it was nice to be able to match younger siblings with older, and children with adults. The feast itself was a little strange, it was all school food, with the teachers serving, which our neighbor E likened to a soup kitchen kind of environment - it did have a bit of a condescending feeling to it, and B commented that it would have been more of a community-building activity if it had been a potluck style thing. Still, the families seemed glad to be there and it really was a treat for me to see everyone together like that. In general Thanksgiving doesn't hold much relevance for the people here, at least not the kids. They were kind of vague and confused about the meaning and history of the holiday, and even more so when it came to their own celebrations. Which makes sense, since as my dad pointed out, the history of Thanksgiving is this nice story about two cultures coming together to share and help each other out, when in fact one of those cultures ended up just about wiping out the other. So as indigenous people maybe the community here doesn't find a lot to celebrate. But I actually think it's more that the people up here don't have a strong sense of being American, at least not in the way that I think many of us in the lower 48 do.

Later today a group of the teachers (all of us who live in the BIA) are getting together to eat, along with OFL and his wife K. B and I made: corn bread, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, apple-peanut butter-caramel bars, Tofurkey, green bean casserole, broccoli, and sweet potato puree. Should be a good meal. I don't think there will be any other vegan items on the table so my feelings are kind of torn between my love of sharing food I've made with others, and being annoyed that everyone can try our food while we can't eat any of theirs. Hopefully my more generous side will win out.

One other thing, my friend Holly sent me an interesting article from the New York Times website yesterday, about rural schools in Alaska. Many of them are closing for lack of students. Our Village isn't in that dire of a situation yet, but I do see that kind of situation in the future for many of the villages. The culture has been pushed aside by western values and technology to a pretty serious degree, such that many of the children here don't have a strong desire to stick around when they grow up. The language, though it's taught in the schools, is nonetheless being lost. So this article was, in my opinion, a look at what will happen to many schools and many villages if things keep going the way they are.

I know that's kind of a downer on a day we're supposed to be thankful, so I'll end with a short list of a few of the many things I'm thankful for:

• B (Besides his many wonderful qualities, there's the fact that I honestly don't know if I'd make it through a year up here alone).
• Family and friends, who've made a point of staying in touch and keeping us feeling connected while we're away.
• Mail.
• My parka, which so far has kept me warm even in the chilliest of wind chills.
• Full Circle Farms CSA, for sustaining us with fresh vegetables every week.
• E, for being a good friend to us here and for having all the Wes Anderson movies on his computer.
• Children, for being utterly unique, yet so much the same no matter where you go.
• Tofurkey.