No child in my generation escaped the terror, chaos, confusion, and lack of safety posed by intoxicated adults on their weekend binges that occurred every weekend except during Russian Orthodox lent. I witnessed these events from perhaps the age of three until I left for boarding school at the age of twelve.
The men of the island worked brutalizing hours killing seals for the federal government, sometimes seventeen hours a day during the three to four months of summer when the seals returned to the island. While they had a breakfast of pancakes, powdered eggs, and bacon, the rest of their day the workers had meager rations to fuel their bodies—they only had coffee and a sandwich during the lunch hour, and coffee and a sandwich after 5:00 p.m. To these “sealers” as well as the men who worked in the village, it was not uncommon to hear the agent bark commands while saying such things as “you stupid Aleuts, it takes five of you to dig a ditch,” or “you think you are so smart—get on the garbage truck.” For years, day in and day out, the men were subjected to these kinds of verbal abuse. The only time the men were left alone was on the weekend—when they perhaps let off steam from the indignities they suffered by drinking “peeva,” a homemade brew that they made in fifty-gallon barrels. The brew was mixed with raisins, sugar, fruit, and potatoes. It was awful stuff. But the men, joined by their wives, would drink to a stupor every weekend. Except for just a few families, the entire village of adults would be drunk. The men frequently got into fist fights, and I remember once seeing my uncle, Eddie (aka Iliodor), on the floor after being knocked out by Tracy, a family friend. It was not a safe place for kids during these times, especially for girls.
Once, when I was nine years old, I heard my seven-year-old sister, staying in her own room downstairs, screaming for help. I ran to her room, but the door was locked. My sister screamed that some man was inside. I could not get the door to budge, so I ran outside to her window and opened it. There was a thirty-five-year-old man, drunk, trying to fondle my sister; I screamed at him to stop as I crawled through the window. I guess he saw the rage in my face and heard it in my voice, so he quickly unlocked the door and ran out. The next day, we told our parents what happened as soon as they were sober, but they did not believe us. Everything went on as “normal” that day and the days afterward. This was the story of many girls in the village: the girls would tell their parents, when they were sober, what had happened over the weekend, but their parents would not believe their own children. The adults acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened during their weekend drinking binges.
The drinking intensified during American holidays such as the Fourth of July, Christmas, and Easter, although most of us kids found a way to have fun during these holidays anyway. My aunt and Aachaa liked to share what they had with others, and prior to Christmas I would help them by carrying presents to other houses on my sled. I loved doing this. On Christmas we looked forward to our presents after we, the children, put on a Christmas program rehearsed for weeks—Santa would arrive to a chorus of “Here Comes Santa Claus” sung by the entire community gathered in a large hall. The tribal council would always have a very large Christmas tree, decorated to the hilt, on the left side of the hall, and underneath would be presents for every child in the village and large bags of fruit and candy provided by the Fouke Fur Company, one bag for every member of the community. The Fouke Fur Company had the exclusive contract with the government to process the fur seal pelts into luxury coats that, at the time, cost at least four thousand dollars apiece.
After the Christmas program the adults would drink while the kids would open up presents from their parents. My first Christmas present from my parents was a wooden gun carved by my dad that shot rubber bands. I loved it. At the time, I still believed in Santa Claus, but that ended when I saw “Santa” drunk. The man had come to our house to “party,” but my dad intercepted him at the outside door, saying that he shouldn’t enter in his condition because the kids would see him.
Of course, all holidays were times when the community would gather to celebrate. After seven weeks of lent, the entire village would attend the Russian Orthodox church for Easter service. Afterward, children would go to their godmother’s house to receive some delicacy then have an Easter feast back at their own houses. The feast usually involved halibut fish pie and “moss” berry pie, delicacies reserved for special occasions. To this day I still love these dishes. Easter and lent were the only times during the year the adults wouldn’t drink. However, it all resumed the day after Easter services.
There were things that happened that no child should ever see or hear or experience. And although the sober days were happy days at home, the stark weekend contrast was, at best, confusing to the children. At worst, it created a cycle of fear, terror, and violence that these children never escaped.
Later in life I better understood the legacy of spiritual sickness and internalized oppression that my people developed first when the Russian fur traders arrived and 80 percent of the Unangan died from disease, malnutrition, and genocide over a fifty-year period. This misery continued for another hundred years under the U.S. government enslavement of the Unangan.