by Katya Carl, Madison Alirkar, Christianna Cedillo, and Aqualena Carl
These are letters to the Community of Bethel from the ONC Environmental Youth Litter Patrol Participants: Katya Carl, Madison Alirkar, Christianna Cedillo, and Aqualena Carl.
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My name is Katya Carl, and I am from Kwigillingok, Alaska. I am 16 years old and am in 10th grade. My parents are from different villages, my mom is Pauline Carl and she is from Kuigilnguq and my dad is from Qipneq (Kipnuk). I am writing a letter on Why it is important to throw away your trash in the right places and to share a message from our Elders to the children.
Why it’s important to throw away your trash
It’s important because it will help our animals and the tundra become healthy, we could have more salmonberries, blackberries, ayuq (tundra teas) and animals. You could have yummy akutaq after you put your trash away. Think of all the goodness that the land provides us.
Seeing trash out in the environment is not a fun sight to see. People who go out to gather subsistence foods should stop putting trash out in the river and out on the tundra. When we go egg hunting, kapuukaqing and berry picking, we see and find trash.
People shouldn’t bury their trash out there no more because it doesn’t stay underground no more. People need to start putting their trash inside their pockets or backpacks and bring them home to throw away properly. And people who travel by boats need to check their boats for loose trash so it doesn’t blow away.
Message to the children,
Listen to your parents, don’t talk back, don’t call people names, be nice to others, don’t go into people’s houses without permission, try not being on your phone too much, go outside and help pick berries. Respect people’s belongings and respect elders.
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My name is Madison Alirkar, I am 16 years old and am a Junior in high school. I am from Bethel and am writing about what I learned from participating in an interview I had with an Elder and about environmental awareness.
We interviewed Robert Lekander. He told us he remembers using a telephone that could not reach far distance from his house. When he was to communicate with someone he mentioned about these telephones, if you ring once, you’ll get your next door neighbor and so on.
He also spoke about building mud houses back in his early days and how they built them. He said while there were mud houses, they’d put cardboards on the walls from the inside so the wind would not pick up. They would also put grass in all the corners of the floors to keep drafts from coming in. I thought that was pretty interesting.
I asked him questions about if he is worried about if our culture will be forgotten soon in the future, he said that the culture is already forgotten, so I asked him what we could do to let the culture not be forgotten. He said that teaching the little kids when they grow older to help their grandparents so that it teaches them skills that our grandparents taught us and pass it down.
Environmental awareness: What I would like to see is that families should use materials that can hold recyclables, and teach their children which bin is used for collecting trash and recyclables. Along with that they should teach children to not throw their trash on the ground or in public areas to make sure they are not hurting the environment.
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My name is Aqualena Carl, I am 15 years old and am from Kwigillingok. I currently live here in Bethel with my dad, Andrew. I attend the Kuskokwim Learning Academy here in Bethel. I have 5 older siblings. What I like to do for fun is play basketball with my friends and family, work on subsistence in my dad’s hometown Kipnuk, stay with my aunty for picking berries and spend my summer break over there.
I am writing a letter on Why is throwing trash away good? And what we need to teach our next generation. By throwing trash away in the right places we can help keep the environment clean and the animals protected.
Plastic can be reused to help animals like turtles, otters, seals, fish, etc. to not get hurt or have problems with their bodies. Cans and stuff that are aluminum, they are recycled because animals might be harmed. Animals think they can use pieces of trash to build nests and others think trash is okay to eat. Please hold onto your trash and put them in the right places at home or at a designated spot.
What we need to teach our younger generation is how to be more involved with working on and gathering subsistence. Parents and families should teach their children how to hunt, teach children not to be mean, teach children how to have respect while visiting other people’s houses and to be respectful to everyone and everything. The other is helping other people even if you know they won’t help in return and to treat others like how you treat your friends.
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My name is Christianna Cedillo, my father’s name is Jose. I am from Bethel, AK and am working for ONC as one of the Environmental Program’s Youth Litter Patrol participants for the summer before heading back to school. I interviewed an elder named Robert Lekander and am going to speak about what was interesting to me.
Robert’s message to the younger generation:
He remembers a long time ago everyone had to hunt for their foods, most would go out hunting and it took hard work and a lot of patience. Robert says that nowadays there are stores, companies, shops, technology, vehicles, money… He said that back in his days when you had a dollar you were rich, but in today’s date everything is expensive and you need to have a job.
He grew up working hard as most people did long ago when there was no modern technology. Robert spoke about the weather, how it was like when he was younger and how much it has changed since then.
When seasons change, so does the food. During the summer fish was the main food. He used to gather mouse foods, tundra tea and even went berry picking. Some of these things he can no longer do due to growing older and deals with body aches and pains.
He wants families to teach their children/the younger generation how to hunt, and misses being invited to the schools for elder storytelling sessions.
Quyana!
