Many friends have contributed to my thinking about these matters, some for a long time. I begin with those to whom this book is dedicated. Bob Arnold, first director of the Alaska Public Broadcasting Commission, first consultant to Alaska’s village schools about bilingual education, former director of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Schooling, was also for a time responsible for enabling the efforts of the Bureau of Land Management to meet its obligations to implement the transfer of land title to native people under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. His views and ideas lurk in these pages as surely as my own. Dorik Mechau, cochair of the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska, has also been friend, inspiration, and example for more than thirty years. He, Bob Arnold, and I were fortunate to meet together, work together, and talk together often. Dorik has been a partner in many adventures, ranging from fly-in fishing to fencing with educational institutions and state and federal governments. His views of the matters under consideration here have shaped my own. Ted Chamberlin, professor of comparative literature at the University of Toronto, has worked with First Nations people on land claims and land use issues for many years. He has also worked hard to understand the power of language, especially oral traditions, not only in Canada but in Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, Ireland, and Scotland. His experience, and our conversations, often exuberant, have always pushed me to think harder about things. The thoughtful approach of these men to the world, and to their own lives, certainly improved my understanding of the world, and of my own life.
For almost as long, poet Gary Snyder’s views, expressed in his writing and in conversations over the years in places as diverse as California, Alaska, Montana, and Texas, have helped clarify my thinking. He read parts of this manuscript and offered helpful comments on it. Richard Nelson, a writer and anthropologist with long, insightful experience among Arctic and sub-Arctic indigenous peoples, has influenced me with his work and his conversations, readily sharing his views of subsistence and native life generally. Years ago, linguists Ron and Suzi Scollon shared with me their insights into indigenous languages and customs, enabling my own observations. I benefited greatly in those early years from conversations with anthropologist Ann Fienup-Riordan as she began her ventures into Yup’ik country, learned the language, and began to write. Her work led to more of her own investigations and collaborations in Yup’ik country and additional research by others. I was also privileged to participate in lengthy conversations with Michael Krauss, longtime director of the Alaska Native Language Center, and his colleague Irene Reed, known in Yup’ik country as “the blond Yup’ik” for her skill in the language. Elsie Mather, Eliza Jones, Rachel Craig, Martha Demientieff, and other native linguists offered insight and friendship. I am grateful as well for the observations and insights of Richard and Nora Dauenhauer over many years working on bilingual and Alaska native literary issues. Carolyn Servid’s friendship and work with the Island Institute has informed my own views and enabled many others to think harder about sustainability through the public programs the institute has sponsored. Sitka fiction writer and poet John Straley and his wife Jan, a cetologist, have offered their rich friendship and ideas through the years.
Biologist and writer Gary Nabhan, who has worked on these issues directly for years, read the entire manuscript and offered his insights and suggestions. Steven Epstein, professor of history at the University of Kansas, read a full draft, suggested changes, and offered helpful comments. His wife, Jean Epstein, joined us in many of those conversations. Carol Wilson, longtime director of the Colorado Partnership for Educational Renewal, has talked with me often about educational and social issues and provided her quiet guidance and suggestions. International consultant on issues of civility and public life David Chrislip read an early version of this work and is another profound influence. David Armstrong, a thoughtful biologist at the University of Colorado, offered a meticulous and telling critique of many of these ideas as they began to surface in an earlier paper and caused me to temper some of my notions about the natural world and humans’ role in it.
I have talked over these matters at length with Episcopal priest and social and environmental activist Benjamin Webb. His encouragement enabled me to persist with this project and certainly broadened my views of both sustainability and faith. Mary Evelyn Tucker, cochair of the Forum on Religion and Ecology and now teaching at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and at Yale Divinity School, has afforded me many opportunities to dig into Confucian works and shared her insights into Confucianism, other world religions, and ecology. Those insights, too, have helped shape my thinking. I continue to be amazed at how current and useful the works of Confucius, as well those of his followers at every period, and of the ancient Chinese poets from the earliest records, continue to be. They help balance my bent toward the pre-Socratics and other Greeks and Romans who laid the foundations of Western traditions and whom I still find wonderfully useful in thinking about our own time.
Barbara Wendland, publisher of the courageous church newsletter Connections, once again exercised her editorial wisdom on an early draft, making it easier to read and clarifying ideas. Avid reader and champion of social justice C. J. Taylor used her careful red pen to advantage as well, questioning things, catching mistakes I’d missed, and making helpful suggestions about structure.
On the homefront, Prescott Bergh, a Wisconsin farmer and entrepreneur, triggered much of this with his comment about sustainable cultures. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources biologist Larry Gates offered advice and encouragement. His broad overview of the connections among things biological, social, and political is an inspiration. Dean Harrington, president of the First National Bank of Plainview and a colleague in the Rural America Arts Partnership, read the manuscript with his careful eye and asked the right questions in his gentle manner. Jeff Gorfine and Richard Broeker, the former chair of the board of directors and the executive director of southeast Minnesota’s Experiment in Rural Cooperation, respectively, have been readers, friends, and supporters whose advice has always been helpful and whose passion for justice never fades. I deeply regret that Dick will not know how his influence on this work came out, for he left his fully engaged life much too early, in 2005. Peggy Thomas, a farmers’ market producer, read the manuscript and offered her comments. Ralph Lentz, a cattleman whose own sustainable land use practices have upset numerous experts and changed their views, has also, often, to my great pleasure and enlightenment, changed mine—though I’d hate to admit that to Ralph, and I continue to resist every foot of contested ground.
Despite the importance of the persons mentioned above, the roots of the thinking here go back to the members of eighth grade and senior high school classes I taught in Naknek, Alaska. They were my students in language arts, American history, world history, and Spanish. Eighth grader Archie Gottschalk perhaps triggered my interest but was instantly joined by other students, including his sister Glenda, Glen McCormick, Adelheid Herrmann, Norman Anderson, Glenda Wilson, and Raymond and Starlett Patterson. High school students Juliana Ansaknok, George Gottschalk, Ramona Matson, Johnny Holstrom, Sarah Anderson, Bruce Kihle, Christine Nekeferoff, Raymond Nekeferoff, Ron Monsen, Larry Ring, Mary Clark, Barbara Monsen, Ellen Aspelund, Gerry Herrmann, Paul Carlson, and Bill Tolbert all taught me so much about Bristol Bay that I am still trying to learn from their comments—and their silences.
Alaska Methodist University in Anchorage had two native students in 1968, but the next year there were more than twenty-five, and because I was on the staff, I was lucky to know all of them. Some were Yup’ik or Inupiat; some were Athapaskan; some were Tlingit. Others were Aleut, Haida, or Tsimshian. There were far too many to remember all of them, but among those who taught me were Augusta Sykes, Henry Allen, Grace Antoghame, Sylvester Ayak, Edgar Blatchford, Sandra Borbridge, Barbara Brady, Esther Garber, Sister Goodwin, Andrew Hope, Barbara Jacko, Laura Jacko, Carolyn Kalkins, Albert Kookesh, Hannah Loon, Sandra Merculief, Clark Millet, Alexie Morris, Mary Nanuwak, Henry Oyoumick, David Sam, Edna Ungudruk, and Ginny Walker. Others are now just first names: Helen and Pooch, and Arch of course was there for a time. I have been out of touch with most of these folks for two decades, yet as I call up each name, images and events rise to accompany them in my memory. I was honored to know them years ago and am honored again by their presence in my thoughts now.
I am especially grateful to Stephen M. Wrinn, director of the University Press of Kentucky, who first suggested that there might be a book like this, and his assistant Anne Dean Watkins. As usual, they have been encouraging and generous throughout. David Cobb, Hap Houlihan, and Mack McCormick have worn their customary patience and helpfulness with ease. Once again copyeditor Anna Laura Bennett has exercised her professional skill and extended her generous spirit and grace at every turn. This is a much better book because of her fine hand and eye for detail.
Finally, my wife, Lauren Pelon, who always listens patiently and adds her own thinking to mine, has supported this work throughout the long process. To say that I’m grateful to all these folks is akin to criminal understatement. They have done their best to keep me straightened out; whatever remains bent, confused, or wrong in this is, alas, all my own doing.
“Everything is collage, even genetics,” says Michael Ondaatje. “There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border we cross.”1