Immediately following the American Civil War, Russia sold Alaska to the United States dirt cheap. Why? The Russians were fighting the British in Crimea. The Russians had no army in Alaska. Canada was a colony of England who could simply walk in and take over at Russia’s Eastern tail. The United States became a buffer of protection between them.
It seems now that the native lands and people of Alaska are becoming more and more colonized by interests from the same direction. It is true of the mining interests who threaten the very sensitive and fragile eco-life of the Yup’ik people. The courageous resistance of the Bristol Bay region is inspiring and a letter to the same effect signed by 30 Yup’ik women in the Kuskokwim region highlights their maternal traditional concern for nurturing their homeland.
I write of a concern I perceive of seeming colonization of the retail food industry in the villages. These reflections are here only my own.
A few months ago Alaska Commercial opened a store in Toksook Bay. It is a direct competitor to the local corporation store and two small mom-and-pop family operations.
The Alaska Commercial Store has vast support from its empire in Canada and Alaska: it is the coterminous and contiguous heir of the Northwest Company which began in the latter 1700s and absorbed the Hudson Bay Company. It transcends the ups and downs of local economies in any of the villages with supply sources and vast financial power over profits in their many places of business.
The local corporations cannot do that. Their supply chains are direct ad hoc private orders. If supplies are damaged, lost, late because of weather or inability of local air freighters to schedule delivery and so unable to be sold, they are stuck with the consequences without recourse.
This is exponentially true of the tiny mom-and-pop businesses. It is immediate make or break for them.
What does AC contribute to the local community? There are but a very few minimum pay jobs. What else? What else?
It vacuums the local economy.
If the local businesses fail it results in loss of jobs which are ordinarily traded back and forth. The monopolistic food retailer has centuries of capital efficiency. The local village businesses operate to manage jobs and profits in communal ways which are personal and distributive. Toksook has taken an immediate and ongoing competitive hit.
The profits AC make go to corporation headquarters in Winnipeg, Canada. This is money that previously circulated into the Toksook community through the Nunakauyak Corporation and the little guy stores.
This money locally before came back to the people in dividends and occasional distribution of foods to the local people during holidays and down times. It went to the livelihood of elders whose way was subsistence hunting, fishing and gathering. This money supported the day to day often extreme because unbuffered fluctuations of their village economy.
The various village corporations in Alaska are independent of each other and do not receive support from one another. They are each on their own.
They are not run anywhere near as efficiently as AC is. The products AC sells are the same as those which the local businesses ordinarily marketed. Again, what is AC contributing to the communities? Those monies simply now go away to the giant whose home is far away.
I am a bit inarticulate here in expressing my concern. It nonetheless seems an unfair competition and an unnecessary intrusion which is not beneficial to village economies in the short and long run. It takes lots and contributes little in return. That is the nature of colony.
I am also a foreigner among the Yup’ik people though I have lived in their region for nearly 50 years. I do not write this as expressing their own point of view. I do know from conversation that some among these traditional people feel exasperated and unable to respond to what they experience as threat and reality. It is, to tie together, what makes the Bristol Bay and 30 woman responses so amazing.
All of us from outside have much to answer for. Respectfully Yours.
Thomas G. Provinsal, S.J.
Nelson Island and Yukon Villages
Beware of money-hungry thieves
Most of us in the Yukon-Kuskokwim and coastal villages know and have seen Bethel grow twice the rate in two decades or the last twenty years. When I visit Bethel for hospital check-up, sometimes, I hear stories that Bethel is no longer safe for vulnerable people especially the elderly people that walk the streets or roads at any time during the day (approaching dusk and mainly in the evenings).
In the not too long past, a few of my friends have been knocked down and their money stolen by professional street thieves. If you’re close to my age, do not carry lots of cash on the streets of Bethel. It may not always happen, but PFD time, innocent people that travel to Bethel for one reason or another become victims of prey by dangerous, money-hungry, wild men. Always plan for your transportation when you arrive in Bethel, take the hospital shuttle if you must go to hospital for your appointment and use the buddy-system if you go shopping or to the bingo hall. Have a safe falltime shopping.
Homer Hunter Jr.
Scammon Bay, AK
