Fuzzy, Furry, and Warm (& Alaska Natives of the Alaska Panhandle)
Here are some more pictures Charlene sent me on Monday. ~ Bonnie
We took a bus tour along the Klondike Highway into Canada.
We saw beautiful lakes and mountains and a lovely valley.
And then we came back to Alaska.
We saw several glaciers, too, but I will need to wait until I get home and can share pictures from my camera to show you those.
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Alaska is an Alaska Native word, meaning “place the sea crashes against.” Today is to be our last day in Alaska, and we are scheduled to be in Ketchikan. The area is rich in Alaska Native heritage.
Five distinct culture groups make up the Alaska Native people. These include:
- Athabascan
- Iñupiaq and St. Lawrence Island Yupik,
- Yup’ik and Cup’ik,
- Unangax and Alutiiq
- Northwest Coast
The Alaska Natives of the Alaska Panhandle are part of the Northwest Coast culture, as are the First Nations of the western portion of British Columbia, and the Native Nations of the Northwest Coast of the United States. God created seashores, dense rain forests, fast-moving streams, and coastal mountains here. The salmon He provided in its streams gave Northwest Coast nations their most important food. The cedar in its forests provided wood for homes, canoes, and intricate wood carvings. Northwest women wove skirts and cloaks from cedar bark.
Alaska Natives of this region lived in villages of large, cedar plank homes that faced either a stream or the Pacific Ocean. They decorated their homes with painted carvings. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins lived together, but each mother and father had a certain area for themselves and their children. The men in some nations carved house posts and totem poles from the trunks of red cedar trees. Totem poles told stories and recorded history.
Some Northwest Coast nations traveled on the ocean in large dugout cedar canoes. Some canoes held as many as 60 people. They used harpoons to kill porpoises, seals, and sea lions. Some small groups of men went to sea to hunt whales.
The people of the Northwest Coast region lived in social classes. Some were born into the noble class and others into a lower class. Some nations also had an enslaved class. A person became enslaved by being captured during a war, by being in debt, or by being born to enslaved parents. Some nations also bought and sold enslaved people.
Owning land and other items was very important. Everyone could use some of the land and water, but families owned home sites and the land where they hunted and picked berries. They also owned their own seal rookeries and the waters where they set fish traps.
Wealthy men gave large parties called potlatches to celebrate special occasions, such as dedicating a house, raising a totem pole, or honoring a family member who had died. A potlatch lasted many days and sometimes weeks. A wealthy man and his family might take years to prepare for one. Guests, wearing regalia, arrived with great ceremony in canoes, rowed by enslaved people. In the evenings, the group gathered around a bonfire. They enjoyed singers, dancers, and actors. Sometimes the host cut off a corner of a copper to let it melt in the fire or threw boxes of expensive fish oil into the fire to show how wealthy he was. During a potlatch, the host gave away piles of blankets and furs.
If the family was celebrating the raising of a totem, guests gathered outside the host’s home. The most powerful chief stood, holding his speaker’s staff. He announced that the time had come to raise the new totem pole. Men used ropes to put the base of the totem pole in a hole in front of the host’s house and then stood the pole up. The powerful chief then told the guests the totem’s stories.
Even though we don’t expect to find bitter cold in Ketchikan today, I chose a vintage post about a very warm winter coat for today.
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Fuzzy, Furry, and Warm
A Vintage Post from March 10, 2014
My very busy parents were great about making the six-hour drive from Tennessee to central Illinois to visit us again and again during the eight years we lived in Illinois. I always appreciated it so much. We have great memories from those visits.
One time they came near Mother’s birthday. After a meal, I surprised her with the first dirt cake she had ever seen. Dirt cake is a combination of crushed Oreo cookies, chocolate pudding, cream cheese, Cool Whip, gummy worms, and such (this was obviously before our health enthusiast days). I placed the concoction in a plastic flower pot and finished off the illusion by putting silk flowers in the “dirt.”
Pretending that this was Mother’s birthday present, we brought it to her at the table. You can imagine her surprise when I stuck in a new, clean trowel and began offering everyone a serving of “dirt.” Her face and laughter were priceless.
Sometimes we took my parents on outings, just as they had done for my brother and me when we were young. On one very hot summer day, we went to the St. Louis arch. Another time the children and I took them to Chicago, while Ray stayed in Champaign-Urbana to work.
A downtown department store was having a super sale. I was attracted to something very different from anything I had ever owned before–a fake fur coat marked down from $200 to $50–not a bad price for a coat that would keep me very warm in the cold Illinois winters though I went nowhere that I needed a coat that looked like that. Still, I thought it was quite beautiful with its nice satin lining; and, if you looked at it from far enough away, it almost looked real. As I stood looking at the coat, my parents really encouraged me to buy it. I did. More than twenty years later, I still wear it when the weather is super cold, because the coat is super warm.
It’s great for playing in the snow.
I can’t believe I’m showing you this picture from our snowy winter of 2010!
I don’t know that I have ever worn that coat without feeling kinda funny. It feels hooty tooty to me. However, I also have a grateful feeling when I wear it.
My old fuzzy fake fur coat keeps me warm in other ways besides physical ones. When I wear it, I remember that my parents, children, and I spent happy hours in downtown Chicago one day. I remember my parents encouraging me to do something special for myself. And, I remember that my parents made my family and me a priority. The song that just popped into my head is an old Motown song from the 1960s. The chorus says: “Ain’t no mountain high enough; Ain’t no valley low enough; Ain’t no river wide enough to keep me from getting to you.”
That’s how my parents made me feel. Nothing was going to keep them from getting to us–not being short of cash, not the fact that they had a limited amount of time off, not anything. With my parents, it wasn’t excuses (or even reasons) that mattered; it was we who mattered.
You are helping your children form the view of themselves that they will carry into adulthood. It is crucial that they see themselves as valuable. One of the best ways I know to build up a child’s respect for himself is always to let him know how very valuable he is to his mama and papa. Doing that is not a “once and done” activity. It starts on the day a child is born and continues every day from that time forward.
Aren’t we thankful that no high mountains, low valleys, or wide rivers kept Jesus from coming to see us and doing what we desperately needed Him to do while He was here.
It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance,
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,
among whom I am foremost of all.
1 Timothy 1:15, NASB