After serving in the governor’s cabinet as the head of the Alaska Department of Commerce and Economic Development, as it was known at the time, under Governor Steve Cowper in the late 1980s, I was hired to be the city manager by the city council in my home town. It was 1990, and I did not yet know the dramas I would witness and be part of in the ensuing four years.
On my first day as the city manager, driving through town, I was shocked at the number of outside commercial fishermen who were staggering in the streets drunk. On that first day, I saw a fisherman sitting on the ground adjacent to the bar, openly drinking beer. Yet another was carrying a case on his shoulders as he chugged down a can of beer. When I arrived at the city hall, I toured the premises. The city hall was home to the city administration, the local police force, the magistrate’s court, and a radio and TV station. The upstairs used to be the community gathering hall where I recalled our Christmas plays and the twenty-foot tree, richly decorated with colored bulbs, tinsel, fake snow, candy canes, and a giant star at the top. I also remembered how, each year immediately after the Russian Orthodox Christmas, the community would gather to watch ingenious and incredibly funny or scary performances by local people.
It was tradition, during these performances, for some men to dress up as women, and some women to dress up as men. The costumes were worn in a way that exaggerated the physical features of the gender they pretended to be—the men would attach gigantic water-filled balloons to their upper body and overstuffed pillows to their behinds; the women, not to be undone, used cucumbers in one particular location.
I always loved this skit: One “woman” would be in her ninth month of pregnancy and in labor. This “woman” would be placed on a gurney, with “men” doctors performing the delivery.
“Ow, ow, ow,” screamed the pregnant woman, “that really, really hurts!”
“Let me fix that pain for you,” the lead doctor said as he proceeded to massage the woman’s chest and then pop one of the balloons. “There, now doesn’t that feel better?”
“Ow, ow, oooooooooooh,” the woman crooned.
“That’s better. Now let’s get back to work, doctors. Her water bag has broken!” the doctor proclaimed.
“Chainsaw!” the lead doctor commanded with his palm out.
“Doctor, watch out for my bloomers! Don’t cut my bloomers!” the woman screamed.
“Chisel!”
“What are you going to do with that?” cried the woman.
“Oh, I don’t know, I just like to feel a good man’s tool,” the doctor replied. “Hammer. Quickly, I’m going to nail this sucker!”
“Oh, Doctor, this isn’t supposed to feel good, is it?” the woman moaned.
“It’s a side effect, just don’t urinate as I push on your stomach.” A focused stream of yellow water squirted at least four feet in the air as the doctor pushed on her abdomen. “Now you’ve done it! I told you not to do that! Now I feel the urge to go! Bucket!” the doctor commanded. Sounds of liquid hitting the bucket were heard, and the doctor grinned, full and silly.
The doctor then removed a can of pop from the woman’s “womb,” then a box of cereal, a box of Cracker Jacks, some bedsheets, an apple, a shoe, a bra, a pair of shorts, and finally out came the baby—a Raggedy Ann doll!
“Oh, she’s got red hair!” a nurse proclaimed. “What is an Unangan doing with a red-haired baby? And look how flexible she is!” throwing the doll ten feet into the air.
The community would then burst into a series of laughter and applause as the New Year’s baby arrived. The man who thought he was the most macho in the village would be picked to play the role of the baby. He would be dressed in diapers, with a baby’s bonnet, and a “suskaax,” or baby’s bottle, filled with milk in his mouth. The man had to cry and act like an infant throughout that night. I thought to myself, how wise this is—making overly macho men think twice about demonstrating their macho too much, and the idea of using humor in a good way to make an example of the over-macho.
“Well, our work is done here,” the doctor said. “Now let’s get back to our real work fixing plugged toilets!”
The rest of the night the men dressed as women had to continue to act like women, and the women dressed as men had to continue to act like men. This was always hilarious as many of the “women” were looked up to as “men’s men,” and a “man’s man” doesn’t have the hang-ups about behaving in a feminine way. The live band of locals would play homespun guitar and piano music as the “women” and “men” went out into the audience to select partners of the “opposite sex” to engage in slow dance. The local Russian Orthodox priest, always a man, could only dance with his wife or other men, never other women because of the laws of priesthood.
Our people love to laugh. That night was no exception, even though we might have watched a similar skit the year before, and the children were always very happily mesmerized when adults did silly things. Later in life I reflected that such traditional performances were a wonderful way to playfully poke fun at the opposite sex. It was also to remind ourselves that we all have innate aspects of the opposite gender in each of us, and that was not only okay, but celebrated. I am grateful that these ways continue.
My thoughts came back to the present. As I walked into what used to be this wonderful place of community celebration, I was shocked to see large video-gaming units that took up two-thirds of the hall. What had been a large dance floor was now relegated to an area one-fourth its original size. I checked out these gaming units, all violence oriented, with programs that awarded points for gunning down or hitting and kicking one’s opponents before killing or knocking them out. I was horrified that this precious hall that had nurtured togetherness and a sense of community was now being used for games of destruction. As my first official act as the city manager, I immediately ordered all the gaming units and partitions removed and destroyed and the community hall restored to the way I remembered it as a child and teenager. Most of the children and teenagers who played these games were vocal in their protest within the community, however. Several parents were very upset.
“Why did you do this?” one woman shouted at me. “Now our kids don’t have anything to do, and that means trouble!”
I replied, with as much sensitivity and diplomacy as I could muster, in a somewhat pleading voice: “Look, Molly, these kids are playing games that are only about hitting and killing one another. It’s not good for them. I will help the community find other, better things to do, and I ask for your help to do this, please! And besides, don’t you remember how we used to have the Christmas programs, community basket socials, dances, and muskahraatax skits here? Don’t you think it would be nice to bring all that back?”
“Well, I guess, but what do we do for kid activities?”
“I will meet with the young people at the school and see what they would be willing to work with me to do something,” I replied. She was satisfied. Subsequently, I did meet with the students who decided to make the environment their central focus. They decided to build rat traps (because the ships that came to Saint Paul’s harbor carried the risk of rats, which were known to devastate bird colonies), clean up debris from the beaches, and lobby for cleanup of the seven fishing vessels that ran aground on fur seal rookeries or adjacent to bird colonies on the island.
The Elders and older adults were elated that the community hall had been restored. We celebrated this when the community Christmas program was held in the hall for the first time in four years. All the Elders voiced their approval and joy at the restoration. That was the best affirmation I could have received.
I then asked the police chief to resign and hired a new police chief, Scott Stender, who was a member of the existing police force. Scott is a soft-spoken, large-framed guy who had served in the military police and then joined a police force in Washington State. Scott had experience with working on Indian reservations when he applied for police work on Saint Paul Island. I gave him orders to enforce the city ordinance against drunk driving, public consumption of alcohol, and illegal bootlegging of hard liquor.
My mother said, “I’m not afraid of the drunk fishermen, but I’m afraid of the teenagers who drink and drive.” I understood her concern because fishermen would blow off steam when their vessel came to the harbor, and that usually meant drinking alcohol. I had witnessed fishermen lugging six-packs of beer around and sitting outside while they drank themselves to a stupor. They had no care for how the town viewed them. They acted as if they owned the town.
That first month of local enforcement, we had thirty DWI arrests. The following month we had two, and no more fishermen or anyone else continued drinking beer in public.
To ultimately stop outside commercial crab fishermen from “running” our town, it took an incident that seemed to have come directly from a movie script to get out the message that this is one town the fishermen needed to respect.
One of the line officers, Jeff, called the police chief on the police radio: “Uh . . . Chief, we have a problem at the ballfield. There are somewhere between twenty and thirty guys here ready to kill each other and they have lethal weapons!”
“Roger. I am on my way!” Scott grabbed two stun or “flash” grenades and a shotgun and relayed his plan to Jeff and then me. “Boss, we got a situation here and I need your direction,” Scott said to me calmly over the radio phone as he explained what was going on. “I have a plan, but I need you to back me up on this.” He quickly explained, and I told him I’d back him up. “Thanks, boss. Would you come down as an eyewitness?”
“Affirmative, Scott, I am on my way.”
“Jeff,” Scott continued. “I plan to get their attention with flash grenades and hopefully give me a chance to use the vehicle loudspeaker to talk them down! And we gotta split them up, so when we do, you take one group!”
“Roger that,” Jeff replied.
Scott arrived on an incredible scene along with Jeff, who was in another vehicle. Jeff and Scott are brothers and both trained police officers. Local men were fighting with about twenty commercial fishermen who had come ashore on leave that night. Many of the men, on both sides, had knives, wooden clubs, and metal pipes. Some had large rocks in their hands.
Scott jumped out of his vehicle and ignited the flash grenade that went off with a dramatic, loud bang and a bright flash. The rioting men stopped in their tracks. Scott quickly grabbed his shotgun and announced over his vehicle’s PA system, with a trained and strong voice of authority, “This is the Saint Paul Police Department! I want all of you to drop your weapons and hit the ground immediately or face the consequences!” All but two dropped whatever they had in their hands and fell to the ground. Jeff then drove his vehicle between the men to split the groups in half. One guy kept ahold of his knife, and Scott walked to within ten feet of him.
“Mister, if you don’t drop your weapon right now and get on the ground face down, I am going to assume you are intending to use it!” Scott stated, holding up his shotgun. The man let go of his knife and dropped to the ground. As Scott handcuffed the fisherman, he said, “You are being charged with inciting a riot and use of a deadly weapon with intent to do bodily harm!” While locking the handcuffs, Scott turned to the other man still standing. “If you don’t want to join your friend in our small jail with riot and weapons charges, lose your job, and find your own way off this island, you better drop your weapon now!” Scott commanded. The second man quickly complied and backed off.
“I want all the non-locals out of here now and back to your boats! You are not welcome in this town anymore, and I will make sure your captain knows that!” Scott stated on the PA system. Some local citizens, watching the drama from on the hill, cheered.
Twenty commercial fishermen made their way to the dock as Jeff in his vehicle and Scott on foot, shotgun in hand, followed behind. Scott then ordered all the locals to disband and go home. Scott also ordered the only bar, owned by the tribal government and selling only beer, closed. The local tribal president agreed that it was a good idea. Later I found out that the riot had been incited by some lewd remarks from an off-island commercial fisherman made to a local married woman in the bar that brought quick reaction from the local men.
And so it went that first year as city manager in a small, remote village in the middle of the Bering Sea. At first it was surreal—as if out of some B-grade movie script in which a new sheriff comes to clean up a wild west town. But life in the community became more peaceful, and the Elders were walking the streets again, relaxed.