Greenpeace

I am sure many, if not all of us, have heard those words spoken by mommie at lunch or supper time. For me and my brothers and sisters, both times at home on St. George Island were special. Mom was a wonderful cook, especially when prepairing our traditional foods of seal, ducks, geese, kittiwakes, murres and halibut and cod. She knew what she was doing, cause, hey, she is mom. And Dad, he as you know already was a real man's man. Now I understand him as a true person, a real icon to be emulated and admired.

Well, painfully and sorryfully, we did not make it to Kipnuk. This, however, not for the lack of trying. We really made an effort, but that is not what I wanted to talk about today. Today is all about present-ence, if I am spelling that right.

We spent almost twelve hours, from the time we left the ship until our return, in an absolutely wonderful place with more. Toksook. An unassuming little Yupik town in an unassuming part of Alaska with unassuming people. We were the assuming bunch. Assuming we know of what we speak, and more, maybe of how we speak about what we speak.

I guess its time to bring up a subject which has always excited me. I have not spoken about this before because, quite frankly, many others have and I just figured many people would and do understand the concept. It is called Local and Traditional Knowledge or LTK. Basically, and this should be evident, what LTK local people have about their environment, their home, must be taken seriously. A case in point.

As a kid growing up on St. George Island, one of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, one of the highlights was the occasional, very sporadic, "outings" my parents arranged with the United States Federal Government. Its interesting to me now that I think of this. Anyway, my Dad would walk ever so gently to the office of the then Island Manager, Dan Benson, who oversaw the US Governments operations for the entire commercial fur seal industry, we being a captive work force. I say ever so gently, probably all the while thinking about what he was going to say, what Mr. Benson, as we addressed and referred to him, was going to say and how my Dad would respond. I know this is probably what he did because sometimes I do the same thing. Anyway, he, my Dad, after making plans for a picnic, or "outing" on our small Island, would walk down to Mr. Benson's office and ask to borrow a truck. Not a pick up, or a van, or some other small vehicle, but a truck with a big dump on the back of it. Probably used to dump the blubber off the fur seal skins he used to blubber, a term referring to scraping the fat off the skin. As a kid, I did not know all of this, so I did not really appreciate what it took for Dad to do this. This Mr. Benson was the judge, jury and carry outer of the sentence for everyone and everything that happened on that small Island, back in the day. And sometimes, Dad would drive this big truck up to the house, all smiles and proud. This because his job as a carpenter during the off fur seal harvesting seasons, did not allow him to drive. So seeing him behind the wheel of a big truck, well, he thought he was cool. And to me, to us, he is. Very cool man.

Well, we are leaving my home lands and waters for a couple of days, maybe more for sure, to venture up into Bristol Bay, to Dillingham and from there north west along to Coast to Kipnuk, Tooksook Bay and Mekoryuk on Nunivak Island. As we are doing this, we have a break from our rush, climb ashore, into a RIB and to meetings, as we have been these last few weeks. I must say, this is a nice reprieve. We have a chance to regroup, reflect and plan. And we also have a chance to just sit and do nothing for a few minutes. So as I was doing that, I heard a verse in a song on my ipod shuffle, by The King, my bud. In a song he says: "..listen to me talking to you!" And I reflected on that.