The Definitive Guide to Kotzebue 99752

 

Author's Note: I wrote this a couple of years ago for my friends and family but lately it has been getting a lot of readers, and a lot of misinterpretation.  The writing is not a critique of Kotzebue or its people, both in my opinion are wonderful and beautiful.  The writing is an amalgam of things told to me by Elders and locals, the 2000 census, FAA reports, training sessions in Kotzebue, 35 or so science and expedition publications, several publications of, or sponsored by, the Friends Church and a couple personal observations.  I have put the first line in bold...please keep it in mind as you read this little piece.

Another Note: I have to thank everyone for the overwhelming support for this piece and for the 15000 times it has been accessed. Whoopee!.

I'm working on a "page 2" and should have it ready in mid-November.

 

Kotzebue is incredibly beautiful, but it is a beauty not easily understood.  If the Arctic is a pristine diamond then the villages are the flaws that give it character.  Without character beauty can’t be seen.  I was once told, “Without Deadhorse, this place would be flat and ugly.”  I finally understand what was said, though at the time I thought this a revolting comment as I looked on the industrial blight of Prudhoe Bay surrounded by a blazing tundra.  Sadly, I don’t think the fellow understood the wisdom of his comment, or ever will.

 

Before you come to Kotzebue, before you venture north of the Arctic Circle, you need to prepare yourself mentally and perhaps spiritually as well.  If you do you will be able to leave with an incredible experience and revelations and a new understanding to apply when you return to your home.  The first thing to do is throw out expectations of some resort or Disneyland or anything in your experience of places you have ever been or lived.  Kotzebue bears little resemblance to any other place on earth.  Though some very vague images of desperate Indian reservations of southern Arizona might come to mind, these are mirages they are not Kotzebue.

 

Kotzebue is not many things.  It is not pretty.  It is not quaint.  It is not filled with spirited Noble Savages practicing ancient religions of the earth.  It is no Paradise in the Persian sense by any means.  It has no shops, no industries, no remembered savage past and perhaps no future in raising tides of change.  And though it may look like a collection of hovels or worse; no real poverty either.  Kotzebue has no boutiques, nor sandy beaches, “no Mudd Club, no CBGB’s”, no racism, no visible wealth, no effective police, no sense of itself or its worth.  Kotzebue doesn't have any trees.

 

Kotzebue is perhaps the most polluted place I’ve ever been.  It is flooded with light 24 hours a day; during the dark winter by blazing street lamps and security lights (except when someone is sighting their rifle at the power plant), the summer by the midnight sun .  It is a continuous cacophony of engine noises, aircraft that rattle the bones, snowmobiles and four wheelers whine, boats and heavy equipment throb, day and all through the night.  Choking dust raised from dirt streets heavily trafficked is pervasive as are the odors of burnt fuels emitted by the ever running machines and the springtime beach is a dump waiting for the ice to go out and carry away the winters garbage.  Kotzebue streets bustle even though there is no place to go.  Kotzebue is home to 3000 or so folks according to the 2000 census, mostly (about 87%) claim some Inupiat lineage.  Kotzebue's population is about 1/2 of the population of the Northwest Arctic Borough, an area the size of Missouri and is the geopolitical hub for the region.  The entire town of Kotzebue is a is a federal Superfund site, though it is not apparent that much has occurred towards clean-up.  Kotzebue is a land of many churches, 10 at the last count and more at the coming.

 

Kotzebue sits on a narrow gravel spit theoretically 6 miles long and a couple hundred yards wide at 66.89N 162.58W.  The village uses the last mile and a half at the tip sticking into the Kotzebue Sound and much of that is relegated to ponds and swamps.   For most intents, it is an island.  The swampy tundra where the spit attaches to the Baldwin Peninsula is impassible except to snowmachine and dogsled in the dead of winter.  In summer a boat or plane is needed to leave the village.  When you come to Kotzebue make sure you have arranged local transportation in advance to the exotic areas that surround it.  There is no road to Kotzebue.  There is no road from Kotzebue.  Kotzebue has three excellent cab services.

 

The high point of the village is the airport, at ten feet above the current sea level.   Despite the seaside nature of the village the air is usually quite dry.  This part of the Arctic is by quantity of precipitation, a desert.  Unlike most deserts, the U/V factor is lessened by the oblique solar angle.  Even at the height of summer (when the sun doesn’t set) the angle of the sun never exceeds 32 degrees, like noon in Miami on Mid-Winters Day.  Sunburn does occur when boating so bring sunscreen and your inhaler if you are asthmatic, and your sunglasses, too.

 

The most important outdoor equipment is a head-net for mosquitoes.  Kotzebue itself isn’t too bad but once you leave the spit going inland you will encounter the full force of nature.  It has been stated in certain scientific works that the biomass, weight, of mosquitoes in the Arctic is greater than that of caribou.  Before you encounter this wonder contemplate on the number of mosquitoes it would take to make just one caribou, then if you are into significantly large numbers multiply that by 500,000 (the number of caribou in the Western Arctic herd), then you might enjoy taking on Carl Sagan’s accent and famous entry line “billions and billions”.

 

 

Since this is “definitive” I should complete the physical preparations one should make before arrival.  Always keep in mind that this is the Arctic and shifts of over 100 degrees have been known to happen in a day.  That is, it might be a sunny 80 degrees and a few hours later a howling blizzard and -20.  This doesn’t happen often (hardly ever gets to 80) but it can. If you’re 200 miles from town in your mosquito proof T-shirt and left your gear in your room your body won’t need chilling prior to being returned for internment.  Additionally you should make sure your guide, pilot or friends have the necessary survival gear, most up here always do, for themselves, but ask if they have enough stuff for you too.  Oh, and the fire-extinguisher in the plane or boat is to put out the pilot, or so we're taught in Aircraft Safety and Survival courses.  A handy thing to remember.

 

Kotzebue does have a pretty well staffed and supplied hospital.  Most emergencies except cardiac arrest can be handled.  If you have a major MI or do have heart failure you might as well kiss it good-bye.  At a recent EMS training I heard that Kotzebue has a 100% record in dealing with severe cardiac problems; nobody made it.  Even mild conditions should be considered before you come up here, if the airport isn’t fogged in, it’s a minimum of 4 hours before you can get to the cardiac ward in Anchorage.  If you take medications, be sure to bring them.  The hospital pharmacy is fairly well stocked, but the stock is only the most common generic medicines.

 

We do have food in Kotzebue.  Three grocers provide highly preserved staples and some fresh (a term used with perspective) vegetables and fruits. They are: more of the same, not as much of the same, hardly any of the same.  All three grocers buy most of their stuff from Carr's. Likewise, we now have  four sit-down restaurants; “The Bayside”, Chinese and Korean made by Koreans, “The Empress”, Chinese and Chinese made by Koreans, “The Shogun”, Chinese and Japanese made by Koreans, and “The Pizza House”, Chinese and Pizza made by Koreans.  Some of our Korean neighbors/restaurateurs are related as well.  Though all these restaurants provide delivery, we also have a delivery only place which despite its Eskimo name, provides, unusually, Chinese made by Koreans.  There may be a take-out Mexican place but I haven't found it yet, and have heard both exceedingly positive and negative things about this elusive establishment.  There are two sort of bodega type places EZ-Mart and Bison Street.  EZMart is open 24 hours which is quite convenient when the sun doesn't set from June 11th  'till July 2nd.

 

The grocers provide some other goods.  At Alaska Commercial (A/C) pretty much everything from cheap Taiwanese birthday gifts for the kids to the fanciest snowmachine can be found or at least ordered.  Hansson's also has a section of goods though what you find seems to have been purchased at a flea market.  Rothman's has cloth and furs in their back section.  We also have a NAPA/Ace Hardware owned by KIC. It is pretty well supplied considering we're in Kotzebue, though they didn't have the proper blank for a boat key.  I lost mine. Pretty much everyone has bullets and shells and beef jerky.

 

As I mentioned the entire City of Kotzebue is a Superfund site.  At one time the cause of the pollution was of great economic benefit to the local population.  Apparently, so much fuel oil flowed from leaking storage tanks that folks "mined" their own heating oil. At the equivalent to five dollars a gallon you can imagine the boost to the families who heated with mined fuel, especially in a place where it takes thousands and thousands of gallons a winter.  Of course, there is, and was, the problem of living on top of a volatile poison.  Coincidently, the wealthiest families of Kotzebue seem to live along the path of the old diesel river.

 

Today the tanks are fixed but not the gravel.  Crowley Marine controls the fuel in town, in fact, everything that comes in by barge.  Several local establishments purchase fuel from them, Hansson's, EZMart, KIC, and a couple others.  Crowley also sells fuel.  They even have gas wars.  The current price of gas is $3.70 and diesel is $3.85, not terrible for a highly profitable monopoly price fixed commodity.  This doesn't normally mean much to the visitor.  You can't rent snowmachines or fourwheelers or boats in Kotzebue.  Sixty bucks to fill your snowgo stings the locals.   KIC does rent a couple SUV's though I can't imagine why anyone would want to.

 

We also have two coffee shops, “Arctic Blues Espresso” and the “Big Dipper”.  Curiously, the barista from the one often buys her coffee from the other.  “Arctic Blues” is the place to find the local newspaper (Arctic Sounder) editor/reporter and deliveryman James Mason.  He can be observed most mornings and yours truly, local photographer, is seen mostly around noon.

 

Kotzebue has many governments and authoritative organizations.  This confounds most people.  The City of Kotzebue, the Northwest Arctic Borough, the Native Village of Kotzebue and Kotzebue IRA, NANA Regional Corporation, to name a few.  Plus there is the Federal representation of the National Park Service, BLM and US Fish and Wildlife that staff various offices here, and of course, various state authorities like the State Troopers and Fish and Game.  Maniiliq Association, which is the non-profit side of  Native politics also exerts tremendous influence, even though it is not "officially" a governmental body.  That may be because it employs nearly a third of the population( men, women and children) and bears enforcement responsibility for various tribal and federal agreements.  The reason this issue is so confounding is the Inupiat people historically had no government, no nations, no chiefs, no authoritarianism whatsoever.  The same officials and dignitaries revolve from organization to organization as political winds shift.  Fired, disgraced or displaced at one organization they are quickly ensconced in another only to be found back where they started when the climate shifts or miss deeds are forgiven.  There isn't a health inspector for food and eating establishments.

 

Kotzebue has a fairly decent NANA owned hotel, the Nullagvik.  I really like the people who work there.  I've never stayed there so I can't really say how the accommodations are.  Luckily, we don't have cockroaches, fleas, or snakes, or turtles for that matter, in the Arctic so....

 

We also have a great airport Wein Memorial.  Though I never appreciated memorial as part of an airports name, (kinda makes one think); our airport despite its name is pretty nice as airports go.  True the runway seems incredibly short when you land in a blizzard or pop beneath low clouds, or are on the third or fourth attempted landing; its really quite exceptional for a village of three thousand.  Shoot, Santa Fe, New Mexico's capital city doesn't even have jet service and we have three Alaska Airlines 737s a day.  Bering Air, Hageland, Frontier, Cape Smythe and several other small carriers offer regular local and regional service and charters.  Jim Rood and Buck Maxson are two of our colorful Bush pilots who offer charters and a fun, knowledgeable, and interesting experience. 

 

Of course colorful individuals are one reason people come here.  We have a boat load of 'em.  Big "N" Natives, little "n" natives, transplants, locals, and folks hiding from something, abound.  One hundred and ninety-seven year old Art Fields, (well I'm not really sure how old he is) still guides into the wilderness, but just as exciting is to accost him on Front Street.  You can learn a lot about things you weren't really sure you wanted to know.  It seems he's been here forever. Several licensed hunting and fishing guides can be found in Kotzebue, all of them are pretty unusual folks.

 

When you talk about people you get into history and culture. Despite the foolish notions to the contrary, these are totally subjective subjects open to interpretation and revision.  Kotzebue may be one of the oldest continuously visited "places" on the planet.  Some suggest that the maritime Eskimo may have begun their migrations about the same time the aborigines of Australia did 40-60,000 years ago.  Though that is pure conjecture, there is some evidence above water that folks have been coming to this area for 5000 years, some other evidence suggesting 9000 years and some other evidence suggesting 13-14000 years ago.  Whatever, its a long, long time ago.  But it doesn't look like folks lived here, they just camped, fished and partied until around 1897.

 

One of the beauties of Kotzebue is: it is an anthropologists dream.  This is not from the usual perspective of observing an existing culture, nor even the observance of the evolution of a culture but in my opinion the actual creation of a culture with all the trappings of invented history and traditions, a creation of mythology and development of a society and ethnicity.  Many things led to this wonderful experiment.  The great famine that ended in 1883 was perhaps paramount in that the interior Eskimo population dwindled to literally a handful of individuals and the maritime Eskimo population was merely decimated.  No official figures exist but some early explorers in the 1830's suggested that the area that we now call the Northwest Arctic Borough contained about 1200 people speaking 24 distinct dialects.   Dialect was the apparently the primary marriage rule, so it is inferred that there were about 50 families occupying about 14 seasonal ranges.  Each family was said to have a summer and winter "house" or meeting place or perhaps a better description, camp.  With ranges of 2-3 million acres per family, society as we conceive it was not a prerequisite.  Dialectic regions were very territorial and a non-kin stranger would be beaten to death or should two different families hunting groups come into contact the smaller group would be annihilated.  Hospitality to strangers is one of the new cultural values. There was no more authoritarianism than might be associated in a family group, as these were extended family groups not tribes.  You got to be the family boss or umialik by being the toughest son of a bitch in the family and usually the best hunter, age was not a criterion.  The modern "Elders" notion is an adoption to the new created culture.  In some anthropological terms there was no culture, per se, rather a language and set of traditions without a social component and a vague locally oriented spirituality and perhaps some "shamanism-lite", though we will never know for sure.   These folks really didn't have the time for religious foofoorah.

 

Every spring, tradition called for cessation of hostilities and moving to the spring camps shared by all the families, one of these sites was Kikiktagruk, Kotzebue, since the establishment of the Post Office in 1899.  I suspect but have no proof, that the majority of survivors of the famine had gotten to Kikiktagruk camps and stayed as this was the only place where any food was available, seal, herring and shiifish.  Though there is some talk of trade occurring with their Russian cousins, if this occurred in the Kotzebue area it must have been extremely rare before the 1900's.  Kotzebue is not on the baleen whale migration route, either, so Yankee whalers and traders didn't have much reason to risk navigating the Kotzebue Sound.  Kikiktagruk might have been or was at least equal to the poorest place on earth; starving, decimated, destitute, demoralized, isolated and ripe for 1897.

 

In the 1880's under the auspices of a guy named Sheldon Jackson, Alaska was divided up amongst a group of missionary societies to avoid competition.  I don't know much of the history of this, but suffice the then off shoot branch of the Society of Friends based in Whittier, California that followed the radical militant Whittier's tenets, (now officially broken off from traditional conservative Quakerism and known as the Evangelical Friends) drew, asked for or got by default, Kotzebue.  In 1897 they set up a mission and the profligacy to Native tradition.  Drawing on Native historical lore, concerning a certain Maniiliq, or a composite adaptation of several individuals who became Maniiliq, they cemented a mythology to support their mission.  What is truth?...come to Kotzebue, its well worth it.  Determine if the gold rush to Kobuk Valley was invented or?  There are very few "pure" blooded Inupiat left.

 

Of course, famine, missionaries, and disease (the diphtheria epidemic and the spanish flu that again wiped out another whole generation) were simply not enough to totally wipe the slate clean, not even the Indian Reorganization Act in the thirties.  In the 1950's U.S. Marshals traveled the frozen north raiding Eskimo camps demanding that the folks move to villages with English speaking schools (and mission churches) or the children would be taken away.  The result was the 11 village system that makes up the Northwest Arctic Borough and the final straw to Inupiat tradition of family groups and independence in the region.  In 1958 as the cold war heated up Kotzebue became a "city", a DEW line Air Force base and White Alice installation ending its isolation and putting it on the geopolitical and financial map.

 

Today things are different.  There appears to me to be a growing sense of self and invention of a wonderful culture to hold that chalice.  It may not be sad that the past is lost if a better meaningful future can develop, especially one that might survive the whims of the 21st century. 

 

Most folks disagree with me.  They seem to think there is only the culture as described by Burch in his scientistic "ethnography" Inupiat Nations.  I think Burch is a valuable mythology for the current culture and politics but that's about it.  Anderson, Uhl, Hopkins and Giddings are better to get a grasp on what these folks were really about.  The best though, are the writings from the Jessup Expedition of 1885, especially Bogoraz on the Chukchee.  Even though this isn't specifically about this culture it clearly shows the difference between the maritime and inland Eskimo and shows that the Russian Eskimo culture was almost identical to the Inuit of Canada.  The "Whale and the Supercomputer" is also excellent though about Barrow.  So by consensus we could presume that precursor to this culture would be similar to all the other inland Eskimo cultures around the world, again, most folks around here disagree with me.  A recommendation I would make to the traveler interested in this would be to see the movie "Fast Runner", true it is an Inuit story, but I think it is a pretty good representation of how things probably were around here prior to 1887.  Of course, I could be wrong.

 

Kotzebue is also the jumping off point for Arctic adventure for naturalist, hunter, or sight seer.   There is no question here of Arctic-ness,  no boreal or sub-boreal issues, no degree day compromise, no latitude compromise, this is the real thing, home to mega-fauna both land and sea, vast sweeping tundra stretching not just miles, thousands of miles, home for 10's of thousands of years of human participation, being, of the landscape and the land and seascape being of humanness.  It is a mighty land.

 

Most of the land that surrounds Kotzebue is federally controlled.  The Western Arctic National Parklands, comprised of four park units, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Noatak National Preserve, Kobuk Valley National Park, and Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, is the big guy with nearly 12 million acres.  The Selawik National Wildlife Refuge and BLM areas especially along the Squirrel River pretty much fill in the gaps leaving about 2 million acres to the state and Native corporations.  You can find out about them elsewhere, this is about Kotz.

 

Often one travels to places like Kotzebue to purchase indigenous art.  The Eskimo, were and are, exceedingly artful in construction and crafting of utilitarian items, clothing, boats, harpoons, and spears and snow masks.  As far as I can tell, only four "non-essential" items are traditional, the drum, a sorta cube-like hide ball, the Eskimo "yo-yo", and a small female form fetish of bone or ivory.  Like many indigenous people they adopted "trade art" forms, ivory carving, jade work, Eskimo dolls, and turned the snow masks into an art.  As you might suspect the fetishes are no longer politically correct

 

The snow masks are in my opinion the most interesting.  They are not, as one might think, of any spiritual or ceremonial linage but totally utilitarian; to protect the face from -100 wind chill and blazing sun.  In fact, in some ways they are not masks at all in that they were not intended to hide or transfigure the wearer but to identify him.  The caribou skin was shaped and molded to closely resemble the wearer's face (and to fit better) and fur was added to resemble the wearer's facial hair.  A "ruff" of fur surrounded the mask to mesh with parki (parka) ruff and slits were cut at the eyes.  The slits, of course, were the Eskimo sun glasses helping to protect from the most brilliant and pure light you can imagine.  If you look carefully and discerningly at the Northwest Arctic Borough offices you can find some Native art.  If you don't care if it is "truly" Native don't ask if it is, otherwise, you better ask, though don't expect a straight answer.  Arctic Blues also carries some Native crafts.  Many Natives also "hawk" their wares on the streets to tourists.

 

Two very interesting and beautiful traditions, though rarely performed, you could be lucky enough to see in Kotzebue, are the blanket toss and Eskimo dance.  Like almost everything Eskimo, both of these traditions appear to have a history of usefulness.  The blanket toss is said to have been initially used to elevate a hunter to allow him to spot game at a greater distance.  The dances were the formal educational process and a method of recording history.  I suspect pre-1887 dance included sexual rituals as well, such as I have observed in the related Chukchi dances of Siberia.  As with everything Eskimo, language, shamanism, and tradition, the missionaries "outlawed" dance.  Today's Eskimo dance is very restrained with no sexual innuendo.  Only the basis of the story in the dance is remembered and the songs that accompany the dance are now basically chants as the words or their meanings were lost to the people.  Luckily the folks at Cape of Wales killed their missionary, a fellow named Thornton, and a few escaped to Point Hope where an underground tradition of dance was continued despite the overwhelming power of the missionaries.  Though the folks from Wales and Point Hope were village dwellers and whalers and culturally different from the "river" people their style of dance has been adopted by the Kotzebue and inland people.

 

NANA runs its Arctic Tours for those of you wishing a guided-tour of Kotzebue.  For about a thousand bucks a couple can fly to Kotzebue from Anchorage take a bus up Third and down Second, stop at the Park Service visitor center, spend the night at the hotel, watch a movie about something about here, go for a ride on our 5 mile long 35 million dollar highway to nowhere, stop at Arctic Blues and get back on the plane.  It's fun to see the stunned look as folks get off the plane and even more interesting to see the even more dazed look as they are about to get back on it.  A classic comment from a tourist was "Why doesn't somebody MAKE these people clean this place up?"  Anyway, this is actually a good deal.  The cost of airfare, lodging and a cab will cost you a whole, whole lot more.  Might's well get the tour.