Russian Trip Report
Week of August 11, 2003

On July 31st ( August 1st on the Russian calendar), I left Kotzebue as part of a delegation to the Russian Far East. Our group included Kotzebue student Melissa Tabor and Andrea Greene, Andrew Crowe, Roger Ratcliff of the University of Alaska in Anchorage. The purpose of this trip was to reinforce the "sister city" relationship between Lavrentia and Kotzebue and to assist the Native people with international marketing of some of their traditional arts and crafts. I traveled at the invitation of Lavrentia Mayor Mikl (Michael) Zelinsky.

A King Air charter stopped for Melissa and I in Kotzebue and we flew directly to Anadyr, a city of 15,000. The flight took 1 ½ hours. I noticed lots of ice near the coastal city of Uelen and up the coast toward Wrangell Island. We also noticed some huge forest or tundra fires burning in the interior of Chukotka.

Once in Anadyr, we were treated to the sight of countless belugas and seals feeding on chum salmon as we awaited a ferry to take us to the city. The ferry turned out to be a broken down ship pulled by a tugboat. A celebration was underway during our stay there and I ran into a Russian friend that I met while in Quebec City at a circumpolar conference last November. I ran into him while feasting on reindeer meat inside a huge, circular skin tent that was set up by the reindeer herders. He introduced me to all the members of his dance group.

We flew to Lavrentia on a Russian jet freighter that had two huge engines above the wings and fuselage. We were the only passengers with seats for the 1 ½ hour flight. About 40 Turkish construction workers sat on the floor.

Upon landing in Lavrentia, Michael Zelensky met us and escorted us to the Bairdarka Festival. The winners of the young men's umiak (bairdarka) race were just finishing. Later, the whaling boats began their long race while we ate gray whale muktuk and meat. We also visited some village campers on a nearby hill. We were invited to tea and a snack of salted smelt and trout and stayed until the racers started to come in.

While at the awards ceremony, I found more old friends. One of them was Margarita, who stayed in Kotzebue for three months back in 1990 to teach traditional dancing. Their hospitality was greatly appreciated.

Immediately after the festival, Mayor Zelensky took us by van to Loreno, a small village about 80 miles away. That was quite a trip. We stopped at a spring, where cool, pure water poured out of the mountain. We passed six Eskimo people who were walking from Laventhiya to Loreno! It is not unusual at all for people to walk great distances over there and they look very fit for all the good exercise. As we approached Loreno, we began to see women walking back from picking berries at least five miles from town.

We purchased a variety of reindeer antler carvings while in Loreno and I was presented with a beautiful carved oosik. Many of those carvings are now on sale at the Borough office if anyone would like to view them. The buildings there were like everywhere else I visited - large cement structures built in the 1960's or earlier. We enjoyed a meal and bath at a natural hot spring on the way back to Lavrentia that day.

When weather in Nome caused cancellation of our scheduled flight back home the next day, we were fortunate to get on a charter flight arranged by five Canadian mining engineers. This flight to Anchorage took 3 ½ hours and I finally got to a hotel at 3 a.m. Alaska time. What a whirlwind tour!

The trip was successful in that we learned a good deal about the Russian way of doing things and how we can assist our friends in their transition from a socialistic government. As with Native people in rural Alaska, there is little experience with operating a business and we will help them find markets for their products. In turn, we will to continue to bring great carvers from Russia to our country to teach our artists. We will also bring people such as Margarita to our region to teach skin sewing at its highest level.

I am proud that our Northwest Arctic Borough staff is being called upon by the University of Alaska-Anchorage to assist the Russian Native people. It tells me that we must be doing something positive right here at home.