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June 19, 2017 - Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor
01:08:37
An Alaska Native Reflects on His People
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Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another installment of Radio Renaissance.
I'm very pleased to have with me today Ryan Kennedy.
Ryan Kennedy is an Alaska native in more than one sense, in the sense that he was born in Alaska He's 43 years old now, and so that makes him a native-born Alaskan, but he's also an Alaska native in the sense of the word that used to be Eskimo.
We used to talk about Eskimos, but apparently that's no longer the case.
They are Alaska natives. And Ryan is one-eighth native, and for that reason, he has certain tribal privileges.
But he has agreed to come on and talk about the Alaska Native situation in Alaska, and also just the general racial picture as it's seen today.
And this is something that I certainly know very little about, and I suspect most of our listeners know very little about it either.
And so I'm particularly pleased to have Ryan Kennedy on.
Welcome, and thanks very much for joining me.
All right. Thanks, Jared.
Good to be here. Yeah, I'm part of the biggest tribe in America, actually.
I call it the wannabes.
That is people who have an Indian relative in the woodpile and go around telling everybody that they're as Indian as Tonto.
But you do genuinely have a claim on one of the tribes, do you not?
Or one of the Native American groups?
Yeah, I got a little card that I'm looking at right now.
It says, Certificate of Indian Birth, called CIB. It's known commonly as a CIB. And not Combat Infantry Men badge, but Certificate of Indian Blood.
And it's kind of interesting.
It says, degree of blood.
It's like a racial purity card.
U.S. government issues these things.
With this card, I get all sorts of little benefits.
I get free healthcare. I'm exempt from Obamacare.
I get this little certificate. I watch these debates about Obamacare and how awful it is.
I always say to the television, why don't these people have the good sense to be born part Indian?
That would solve their problems.
Right. So you have a card that is a certificate of Indian blood, and it says just what your percentage is.
Yeah, and anything under an eighth, you don't get the goodies.
Because they've got to draw the line somewhere, right?
But they don't really police it that well, from my understanding.
So, I mean, you know, it's funny.
We never really taught, when I was a kid, I was never really conscious of it.
But then when I came of age, my mom, who was well aware of our Indian, that Indian thing, you know, said, Brian, you know, you better look into that.
And my sister actually got her whole college paid for by the same thing.
I see. I see.
Well, then you have to register when you turn 18 or something like that?
Well, I mean, you know, you just have to apply it, you know, when you fill out, when you fill out, you know, the, you know, there's all sorts of programs and whatnot, and you've got to Be conscious of it.
I remember when I was 18, they had this little minority conference thing and I was there at the conference.
For all outward appearances, I look white.
I was there at the thing and I got a lot of sideways glances and everything like that.
I was like, hey, I'm here to cash in on this stuff.
Good for you. Good for you.
Make the most of it. Well, at one-eighth, you barely squeaked in under the wire.
But I suppose... Now, if you were to marry and have children with just an ordinary honky girl, then your children would not benefit.
You'd have to marry, I guess, yet again, at least one-eighth native in order to pass along the benefits.
Well, my understanding is by law, yes.
But my nephew somehow...
My sense is that they don't really check that closely.
I see. My understanding is that in the lower 48, sometimes, for instance, the Cherokee and those guys, they actively go running around kicking people off the rolls.
But since all this comes from the federal government, of course, that's an endless well as As far as this stuff is concerned.
I see. So instead of the money coming to the tribe or the group and then having to be doled out, you just get it directly from the federal government.
So your tribe, are they called tribes in the case of Alaska Natives?
Well, yes.
They do have tribal recognition here, but it's very weak compared to the lower 48.
In 1971, ANSCA was passed.
That is the Alaska Native Settlement Claims Act, and that extinguished tribal sovereignty or tried to, and it did to a large degree.
For instance, we do not have the reservation system here.
Instead, they set up...
It's Alaska Native corporations and the respective tribes in each discrete tribe and group has a native corporation, both one at large and also they have these little village corporations.
In essence, every native who enrolled in 1971 has these shares in these native corporations and they receive dividends every year.
Just like any other corporation, some outperform others.
The main source of the goodies, at least in my case, is the healthcare, of course.
I don't get much else.
Because I was born after 1971, I don't get those shares.
When my mom dies, I'll get her shares, but it's not that much because our corporation isn't that good.
I see. Oh, and another thing I forgot to mention.
I also get goodies from Canada, too, because you said I was Eskimo.
That's not correct. There's Eskimo, which are the Inuit, but then there's Indians, like the Athabascan Indians.
They're considered Indians.
My particular tribe is also Canadian.
My ancestors came from Canada, and then Then they settled in Alaska because the tribe actually crosses borders.
Actually, I have hunting rights in Canada as well.
Have you ever exercised luma?
No, I never have.
I'm not a hunter.
What is the name of your group?
The Gwenshin. The Gwenshin?
Yeah, they're the same ones who are in ANWR. They're the ones always making a stink about ANWRs.
That's the area where there's the oil, the place where they want to drill for oil in Alaska.
Right. Anchorage stands for Alaska Native Wildlife Refuge.
Yes. Yeah, they're based there and they're always making a stink.
Oh, you're going to ruin our caribou hunting and I have my doubts about that.
It's not going to ruin their caribou hunting.
Sometimes I think they're just rent-seeking.
They just want to say, okay, you want to drill oil here?
It's going to cost you. Right, right.
That's my suspicion, but who knows?
They could be sincere. But now, you said that you get certain goodies from Canada.
Anything other than hunting rights?
No, just hunting rights.
But I think that's interesting.
I think I've only been to Canada like...
Two or three times in my whole life, and yet I get...
It's kind of amazing that the political correctness has gone that far, is that they even give I have more rights than a Canadian citizen, a white Canadian citizen, as far as hunting goes.
I see, I see.
Well, well. Well, now, depending on how well the corporation is doing, are there Alaska natives, either Eskimo or Indian, who can just live off of their dividends?
Well, I wouldn't say that.
The best performing one that I'm aware of is the Cook Inlet Regional Corporation.
And one year, I think for like three years a night, you know, I don't pay that to my attention because I told you that I don't receive them, so it's something I don't pay attention to.
But I do remember one year, each shareholder got $20,000 a year, $20,000.
If your whole household is getting $20,000 a year, that's pretty good.
But that was an unusual thing because Siri did quite well in telecoms.
Some get really bad checks.
I've heard they get like $100 a year or something, some of the lower performing ones.
So no, I wouldn't say they're doing all that great.
Well, tell me, if there is no such thing as really the reservation system, where do most Alaska Natives live?
Do they live in villages out in the interior, or are many of them in the big cities?
Yeah, I'd have to look it up, but I think most of them live, for instance, here in Anchorage, they're only like 5% of the I think most of them live out in rural areas, you know, where they came from originally.
They're sort of spread out all over the state because the reason they're spread out so diffusely is because, you know, of course, hunting is a zero-sum game and so you need to be spread out to get all, you know, the game and their patterns of settlement mirror their original They're sort of creatures of habit in that way.
Coming to the big cities is sort of jarring to them.
Even today?
Yeah, even today.
A lot of them will come to the city and they'll just feel so...
Some people, I mean, that happens with white folk, rural white folks as well.
I mean, they go to the big city, New York City, and see the big skyscrapers and all this craziness, and, you know, everybody's, you know what I'm talking about.
Yes, yes. Coming to the big city, and it's just, it's so hectic, and everybody's go, go, go, the rat race, and it's just, a lot of the natives are like that.
And, like, I remember there was a case later, Recently she made the paper because it was something to do with her divorce claims, but she came into town and she was making like $120,000 a year and she just says, I can't stand this and she quit and went back to her village to make nothing.
The reason that made the papers is because she was part of some sort of divorce settlement.
People were debating whether she should be on the hook for a big divorce settlement payment.
I see, I see.
In other words, she would rather live back in a village with essentially no income, but with her own people and with her own way of life.
And that's not uncommon.
Well, I think natives typically don't make that much money.
Somehow she got some...
That was the interesting thing.
I was like, what is this? She had some sort of liaison.
From my reading of it, it was some sort of...
A lot of companies are under pressure to hire natives.
I think that's what it was.
Because she only had a high school education.
And it was some sort of It sounded like a make-work job, but it was something like a community liaison coordinator or something like that.
She said, I can't stand this city life.
It was for Alieska Corporation.
That's the pipeline that runs all the way from the oil fields to Valdez oil terminal.
She worked for them.
Those type of Corporations, those kind of big corporations, they're under a lot of pressure a lot of times because the natives are powerful here.
I mean, they're politically powerful.
So there's a lot of pressure to hire natives.
Yeah. Right.
Yeah. If you have some sort of big corporate entity or government, there's going to be pressure to hire natives.
Mm-hmm. But it hasn't really helped me.
I don't know.
Well, you probably need to push your native status a little harder.
Maybe. I don't know.
But what percentage of the population of Alaska is native?
It's 15%.
That's what the old census tells us.
That must be a figure that's higher than any other state in the U.S., isn't it?
Yeah, I don't think they break I think the biggest, I looked it up, and the next biggest state is New Mexico, and I don't think they get past, I don't know what it is there, but I don't think it gets past 5% there.
That sounds about right, yes.
It's pretty high in Washington, too.
Yeah, I just was there.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I was there just this, I spent a good part of last summer in Washington State, and yeah, you see those reservations everywhere.
It's It's crazy how the casinos and all that, they play the game a little differently down there.
Now what accounts for that large population?
Is that because it's just a small non-native population that has moved to Alaska?
Or what is the explanation for the fact that there's so much larger proportion of the Alaska population is native compared to any lower 48 state?
Well, it's interesting.
There's this book called 1491.
Some of your listeners might be aware of it.
It's written, but where is that book?
I guess I don't have it.
But anyway, it's 1491, and it's about pre-Columbian America.
It's a great book, and it basically describes pre-Columbian America.
It also describes how they got wiped out.
And a lot of people think that white people, you know, Killed them as they went across the continent, but actually this book says that's not the case.
They were kind of wiped out before we ever set eyes on them.
That is, when I say we, I mean in this case, you know, the white part.
That the disease got there beforehand, especially from the Spanish, that there is huge plagues across the United States.
Before an Indian saw any white man, they'd already been decimated by mostly smallpox.
Well, to answer your question about why that didn't affect Alaska, it did affect Alaska to a degree, but I mentioned that they're more spread out here and they don't have agriculture here because, of course, it's cold.
And because of that, the pox and everything, all those diseases weren't able to To spread like they did in the South.
I see, because the Alaskan natives were so spread out chasing game.
Right. At least that's what I corresponded with the author of that book, and that's what he said.
That was his hypothesis.
I had that same suspicion myself.
I was wondering, how come they didn't get wiped out?
I thought, were we nicer?
We were nicer. In a certain sense, you didn't have the Indian Wars like you did in the lower 48 here, because most of the settlement of Alaska came in the 20th century, and we were more civilized.
There wasn't all those little bighorn and all that stuff.
Well, is it not also the case that settlement of the white man was mostly along the coast, and you had just said that Alaska Natives are sprinkled really throughout the interior, so it's not as though the white man wanted the Indians land the way it so often took place down in the lower 48.
Yeah, I think that's true.
My understanding is that the biggest populations of Of natives here are in the western part.
And yeah, you're right. The biggest draw here to Alaska was, of course, the gold rush.
Like the Klondike gold rush.
And that happened about the 1880s, about.
But it really didn't affect the natives all that much.
They were almost like peripheral.
They're almost like part of the landscape, as far as I can tell.
They didn't...
I mean, it was like, oh, those crazy white men are after that gold.
So the white men left the natives alone, and the natives left the white men alone, because there just wasn't much to bring them into contact or conflict.
Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong.
I mean, if you talk to some natives, they'll probably be plenty sore about it, but...
I mean, there's always going to be friction and conflict, but not anything like you saw in the lower 48.
Like in California, they used to have paid bounties for a native head.
Nothing like that ever happened here.
The people who live out in the villages, what is it that they do for a living?
There can't be anything in the way of factory jobs except in some unusual places.
How do they make a living? That's sort of the reason I contacted you.
They're not real honest.
The local press isn't really honest about this because they kind of subsist off the state out there.
A lot of them have what they call mailbox money, so it's like their whole existence is...
In economics, it's called the basic sector.
That is the fundamental part of the economy that provides the impetus for everything else.
They get the housing.
The state provides the housing subsidies.
They get welfare.
They're just myriad welfare programs and they're just sort of content to idle away out there and then they supplement it with hunting and fishing and they kind of just eek by, but it's really kind of sad and It's a purposeless situation, and the suicide rate is just astronomical out there.
I got some figures here.
The national average of suicides per 1,000 people in the U.S., it's 11.5%.
In Alaska, it's almost double that.
It's 21.8.
That's just Alaska as a whole.
And then among Alaska Natives, it's 35.1.
So that's three times the national average.
I see. And then, get this, among young Alaska Native men, it's 141.6 per 100,000 people.
Wow. So they are probably...
That's like 10 times.
That's from young men age 14 to 19, though.
I mean, it is really high.
And you'll see, if you go to the villages, you'll see graffiti, like, that's really sad.
It'll say, like, Jim, I really miss him.
You know, like, carved. It'll be, like, little ad hoc memorials and that kind of thing.
And it's just really stark.
It's just because the young men are...
It's, you know, I think everybody needs a purpose and a drive, and when they don't have it, it's...
So they sort of...
I don't want to say they're all like that.
There are folks who have advocations, but the alcoholism and the idleness is just terrible.
But what you call mailbox money, that's checks that come in the mail, basically.
In any case, money you don't have to earn.
It's a patchwork quilt of grants.
There's a lot of state grants.
There's fuel subsidies.
Welfare, food stamps, the natives.
Some of them have jobs and stuff, but not many.
That's another thing. The really important jobs, because the state has an obligation to teach the kids by the Alaska State Constitution.
Like a lot of states, it obligates the state to make sure every kid gets an education.
And that's all paid for the state, too.
That's another thing, is that the local villages don't have much in the way of a local government.
So their local governments are wards of the state.
So the state pays for all the local stuff that a local town should usually pay for.
So in effect, they don't have to pay taxes either.
Right, right. Do they pay the state?
Well, that's...
You have to remember that Alaskans as a whole don't pay taxes.
About 85% of all state government is paid for by oil severance taxes.
Alaskans don't pay income taxes or sales taxes, but a local government will pay A local jurisdiction will pay some sort of property tax or sales tax, but not those villages.
There's nothing to tax. If they had a property tax, how would you get...
Yeah, that wouldn't work.
You can't get blood out of a turnip.
Well, surely they must have structures of some kind that they live in.
They live in, like, really kind of shanty, like, trailer-type structures.
Yeah, it's not...
Well, they must be at least well-insulated and well-heated for the winter.
Yeah, they are, because, of course, I told you they have all these, like, heating and they have these subsidy programs to retrofit houses and Make them all toasty warm and everything like that, and efficient boilers and stuff like that.
I see, I see.
So, if you do wish to live out in a village, you can pretty much scrape by on mailbox money, supplemented with hunting and fishing.
Is that...? Yeah, that's my sense, yeah.
Wow. I can see why that, along with the alcohol problem, and it seems like Native Americans, Amerindians all have an alcohol problem, that really could combine to produce an atmosphere in which young men really do feel aimless and end up killing themselves.
Yeah, that's another thing I wanted to mention about that I don't think it's...
Of course, the local press doesn't really never go into this, but because it's...
It's almost like bad manners, you know, to bring this stuff up.
But, you know, because it is such an embarrassing problem for them.
Because, like, I used to work around this native gal and she was just brutally honest about all this stuff.
And she just, she goes, Ryan, this is how the natives talk.
They go, Ryan, it's so embarrassing.
Gosh. Because if you go around Anchorage, you'll see all the, you'll see the homeless natives and they're almost all Well, I don't want to say all, but I would say something like 75% of them are native.
And she goes, Ryan, it's so embarrassing.
Look at them all. She did not like that.
And yeah, my view is that it is genetic.
And I think there's some literature.
I think there's scientific literature to back it up, but I don't think it ever gets pushed to the degree that it should.
I mean, people should be aware that there is this gene.
And I think it boils down that these natives...
And I'm one of them. And it runs in my family, too.
I have family members who are alcoholics.
And I think that my theory is that, like I said, the natives have not been exposed to alcohol.
And so the white man brought all this alcohol.
And And they don't have any defense.
Like, okay, what would happen in a usual competitive situation is that the people with that gene would not get to reproduce because who wants to reproduce with a drunk?
They're going to get you killed or beat you or something.
They're not going to compete, right?
And over the centuries, they haven't had that winnowing out.
So now a lot of them have that gene.
And you can see it.
When they drink, they go 0 to 60 in an instant.
I mean, you know, they go...
You know, you see white folks drink and they'll get all happy, silly, but natives just seem to go...
The happy, silly phase, it goes really quick and then they're off to the races about, you know, they're at each other's throat and saying crazy stuff and jumping, you know, just...
You mean when they get drunk, they really get hostile and potentially violent?
Yeah, a lot of times, yeah.
I mean, they just get just out of control, you know.
It somehow affects them.
Like, they don't have some sort of enzyme to break down and I've read that, that they lack a certain set of enzymes to process the alcohol out or something.
That's my sense and I wish there'd be more.
You'd figure with all this money floating around for all this stuff, for everything native in this state, that they'd have something to research the genetics of this stuff, but that's not very fashionable.
No, that would be very unfashionable, to look for genetic causes of Native Alaskan dysfunction.
Right. Even if it could be useful, even if it could be used for genetic counseling or something like that.
It would be extremely politically incorrect to talk in those terms.
But surely there must be sort of an alcoholism counseling program.
Oh, there's all... I mean, yeah, they have all sorts of...
For instance, in Barrow, Barrow, that's the northernmost town in Alaska.
Everyone who wants it can go to inpatient alcohol treatment or drug or alcohol treatment.
I mean, that's expensive. That's like $7,000.
But Barrow is very rich because they're in the jurisdiction where they pull the oil out of the ground.
And I told you that I told you that there's nothing to tax.
Well, there is something to tax in that jurisdiction.
That's where all the oil rigs are.
So they have big property taxes there.
And so that jurisdiction is very rich.
I see. But the revenue from the property taxes goes to the Indian corporation.
No, no, no. It goes to the local.
And that's a very unusual case, though, because that's in the northern jurisdiction.
That's where the oil, you know, like Prudhoe Bay.
Yes. They're in the same...
They created a township there.
Yeah, I had a friend who was an engineer and she said it was so crazy.
She said when they build projects, they actually look to make them as expensive as they can because they want the follow-on economic activity.
You know what I mean? They don't care if the road is twice as expensive as the usual road because they want all the contractors to get rich.
They want all the workers to Get paid more than they should and all that kind of thing.
Wow. Wow.
Yeah, so they do quite well out in Barrow.
And oh, by the way, they changed the name of Barrow just recently.
They had a local Puebla site, or not Puebla site, but initiative.
They asked the voters if they wanted to change it to a native interpretation.
And what is it called now?
I'm looking at the name.
It's hard to get your...
It's kind of funny is that they call these towns...
You know, they use the native pronunciation.
It's hard to get your...
I'm sorry. Barrow.
Everyone calls Barrow now.
The town that used to be called Barrow.
That's kind of like Prince because the new native name is so ungainly.
But let me take a let me take a whack at it you too quick a goop Vic you
It's quick quick. Yep, Vic Yeah, that's the official name of Barrow now
So, good.
I'm probably messing it up, something fierce.
It hasn't really caught on.
People still call it Barrow.
This just happened within the year.
I can see why people still call it Barrow.
Me too. I think that'll persist for a while until people get the hang of it.
We may never get the hang of it. Yeah.
Yeah, it's kind of interesting about how Alaska differs from... I was down in Hawaii
visiting and if you go to Hawaii, I mean everything's native.
It's like, you know, Waikiki, that's native.
You don't have that here. You have like English Bay and Prudhoe Bay and Norton Sound and So very few, very few place names.
Well, there's some. I mean, Kodiak, presumably, that's an Indian name.
Or Kiska and Atu and some of those island names.
But towns?
Just not like in Hawaii.
It seems like they're more...
What about street names in Anchorage or in any of the cities?
Do they tend to be just English-sounding names?
Yeah, they're pretty much just English names.
Well, there are some.
There's like Telequana Avenue.
I suppose that's native.
I just noticed it wasn't as much as the Hawaiians really bring it to an art form.
Well, I get the impression also that Alaska Natives are not as demanding, not as likely to be out demonstrating the way American Indians have been known to do.
Is that generally the case?
You just don't hear much about them making fierce demands and campaigning and occupying things.
Right, yeah. I think they do most of their I mean, don't get me wrong.
Native politics are forced to be reckoned with here, so maybe it's because they get their way other ways.
They've been pretty successful at playing the political game, because they have the numbers to do it here.
Yeah. Oh, that's an interesting thing.
This would be the envy of AMREN, is that every year they have what's called the Alaska Native Federation, and every day they have...
I'm sorry, not every day.
Every year they have an annual conference and they get together and they explicitly form an agenda about what they want as a people and how to pursue it politically.
When they say people, they mean Native.
Every year they make Anchorage and Fairbanks dance and it's a serious thing.
They'll get together and then the senator, every important political person either addresses it or addresses it via, you know, they put their face on the monitor, say, hey everybody from Alaska Federation of Natives, like, how's it going? I'm working for you here in Washington.
Don't forget me come November and that kind of thing.
I see. Could you imagine white people doing the same thing, having an annual convention, getting together and saying, this is what we want as a people?
What's another thing?
Every year, they host it in either Anchorage or Fairbanks, the two largest Alaskan cities.
Of course, Anchorage and Fairbanks, they always want to see the money because there's a lot of natives that come here to that thing and they say, well, what are you doing for us lately, Anchorage or Fairbanks?
They make them, you know, give them something, you know?
I see. Well, that is fascinating.
They get together and they say, this is what we want as a people, and then they will present their demands, or they will push their interests.
That is quite remarkable.
They'll say, well, this is important legislation, we want this.
And, you know, this candidate is no good, and here's why.
Wow. And so they say this person is, so like, politicians are conscious of that, or at least statewide ones.
I think some of the, they don't, of course, local politicians have less, I mean, they have less say over, but, you know, of course, there's not many natives on the local level, so I think local politicians, but anyone who has ambition for statewide office, because they do block vote, you know, so you can't ignore the natives politically.
Yeah, but that's another thing I wanted to – I noticed about – you mentioned about demands in writing – or not writing, but just general – the natives here are – they're just not as – like, I went to Hawaii, and boy, those guys are nasty.
They can be nasty. I mean, they have like Kill a Howly Day and stuff like that.
Yes. I read your article, or not your article, but one of your writers there about how bad it was.
And I've had that corroborated from other sources, you know, that my brother went there and he was at the beach and these big hulking guys came up to him and they go, hey, what are you doing here, Howly?
He goes, oh yeah, yeah, I was just leaving.
He got up and left.
He goes, what are you doing on this beach, Holly?
Locals only. I had a friend who used to run a scuba shop out there.
He owned a little scuba business.
He likes to tie one on from time to time, but he went to a bar.
This guy that I know, he's a tall drink of water.
He's like six foot one.
He knows how to handle himself.
And he just barely got out of this bar alive.
They wanted his head, you know?
But you'd never get that kind of hostility.
Never, never, never.
You'd never get that kind of...
I think...
Yeah, I mean...
Yeah, you never get that kind of hostility from natives here.
They're pretty docile. They're very taciturn, very quiet people.
You know, so...
And so they're kind of charming in that way.
But they are...
I say the worst of it.
Every now and then, they're kind of pitiful in a way.
Like I told you about how so many of them are homeless.
And every now and then, some rowdy teenager will somehow assault them with some of the local inebriates.
Like one year, these kids...
White teenagers, they went around.
They called it...
What did they call it?
They shot them with paintball guns and recorded the whole thing.
Oh, gosh. Yeah, it was terrible.
But, I mean, that created a lot of resentment.
I think they did catch those kids, though.
Hmm. Yeah.
Well, are there still native languages spoken in Alaska?
Yeah, they still...
Yeah, I told...
I told you I get free healthcare.
They have a big native hospital here, and it's a top-of-the-line hospital.
And I go there whenever I need my teeth worked on or something.
Usually, my biggest thing is teeth.
I'm young enough to, I guess, knock on wood.
I don't need any big medical stuff.
But when I'm there, you'll see natives there, and they'll be yammering away in their native tongue.
I mean, they're older folks usually, but they obviously still retain the language.
Now, so are they trying to pass that language on to their children, or is that kind of ability to speak native languages dying out?
I assume it's probably dying out.
Yeah, it is, but they are taking active steps a lot of times to pass it on.
But I don't know if there's the interest on the part of a lot of younger folks to actually learn it.
There was one language that died out completely, the Yak language.
I remember some ethnographer had the presence of mind to make recordings of it back, I guess that was like 50 years ago.
But they had the last native speaker of that language, and some ethnographer made a big attempt to document the whole language before it completely died out.
But that was a very small tribe.
So I think the ones...
In the western part of Alaska where there are bigger populations to sustain that language, it's still there.
Which is kind of neat if you think about it.
Yes, yes. I think it's always rather tragic when the last native speaker of a language dies.
But you said a native hospital.
Is the hospital there in Anchorage exclusively for natives?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exclusively for natives, as far as I can tell.
Wow, so you show your, what is that card?
Certificate of Indian Blood.
Well, usually you just go there, like if you need treatment, they'll ask you, you know, what's your date of birth, you give it to them, and That's usually enough.
They don't really ask for your ID. But I suppose you could tell your friend, I don't know how that worked.
Because they'd look at your medical records and say, oh, this is not the same person.
Right. But yeah, if you were a white person who said you wanted care, they'd just politely tell you you need to go to a different hospital.
Unless it was the emergency room, of course.
I'm sure they'd treat you then.
And you get free dental care there as well.
Everything free, every kind of medical...
How about glasses, contact lenses, that sort of thing?
Is all that free too? The exams are, but you have to pay for the glasses.
Right, right. Because...
I don't know why that...
No, you don't get contacts either, because that's considered not...
You don't really need contacts, do you?
No. No. But they do...
But they are cheap.
The glasses they do get you are cheap.
They'll give you your prescription and everything like that.
I think most of our listeners would be astonished to hear that there are hospitals set aside for natives and that other people cannot patronize them.
Well, you know, it's seen as part of the treaty obligation to the natives.
That's the way they look at it.
That is...
That somehow they have a government-to-government relation that is treaties with the native people, and that the federal government has an obligation to take care of the...
That's the way they look at it, and that's the way the feds interpret it.
I suppose politically that could change, but the reason why it doesn't, of course, is because the natives are such a small portion of the population.
I suppose, you know, if natives were...
I mean, if we were...
If there are as many natives that were blacks, it'd simply be unsustainable.
But, you know, since we're such a little tiny mouse, that kind of largesse doesn't break the bank.
Well, when you say blacks, you're talking about blacks in the entire country because...
Well, yeah, I'm just saying that that kind of largesse is sustainable because they're just not as many.
Like, if you tried to have the same kind of relationship, which is...
I think that's what inspires the black reparations people like Tanahashi Coates, is they see what a racket the natives got going on.
And they say, hey, we need some of this.
Oh, they're trying to do that in Hawaii, too.
Oh, yes, yes.
Lots of reparations and land and special elections just for them, that kind of thing.
Right. Well, you know, it says in the Constitution, it says something in the effect, I wish I had the exact quote, but it says, It says that Congress lays out the powers to deal with Indian tribes.
It says Congress shall have the ability to negotiate with Indian tribes.
And they interpret that as the federal government has an obligation to somehow take care of them.
And that's how it's interpreted as well.
Well, at this point, though, in Alaska, Indians don't run casinos, do they?
No, that's because the ANSCA Corporation, the Alaska Native Settlement Claims Act, the one that happened in 1971, it extinguished tribal sovereignty with respect to reservations, because reservations were seen.
They didn't have a great track record of success, so they wanted to avoid that.
And they got rid of the ability to set up reservations.
And without reservations, they don't have the ability here in Alaska to tax.
So they don't have their own taxing authority.
Most of the tribal sovereignty here is pretty much for child stuff, like family court.
And also criminal matters.
Oh, there are native criminal courts.
Yeah, and it's relatively new.
It's called concurrent jurisdiction with the state of Alaska.
That is, whoever touches the case first has jurisdiction.
But usually the state takes care of it because, of course, it is expensive to run those courts and they don't have taxing authority.
In a lot of cases, even the natives themselves would rather have the state handle it.
I think they use it for kids getting in trouble and stuff like that.
They have that ability to have...
I guess it's a relatively new thing because of course the Indian sovereignty movement has kind of We push more and more for this type of thing.
Under Obama, the federal government has been more conciliatory towards that kind of thing.
Well, there are no native-run prisons, are there?
No. So if you're convicted by a native court, then you go to prison in a regular state prison.
Yeah, yeah. Because again, they don't have the money to pay for that.
They wouldn't want to pay for that.
They don't have taxing authority.
Right. Well, I understand there are, what, four or five major different Indian or Eskimo groups within Alaska.
Do any of them have particular reputations?
This particular group, the Tlingit, or like this?
Yeah. How do their reputations differ to the extent that they do?
Or are they all pretty much similar in how they behave?
No, they vary.
But most white people don't pay any attention.
Most white people kind of lump them all together.
Oh, those native people. They don't know the distinction.
But I kind of pride myself.
I'm like, oh, I bet that dude's Tlingit.
And then just to see if I'm right, I'll go up and ask him.
And then, oh, I was right. I can spot him.
I can tell him apart. But yeah, the Tlingits are the most warlike.
They're the ones from the southeast.
Yeah. And they had a tradition of warfare.
They would raid other clans and villages and stuff and take slaves and that sort of combative mentality persists to this day.
I remember my mom was active in native politics and she actually headed a community action program which gets money from the federal government and on her board sat Different people from different tribes.
In her moment of frankness, she would always say, Ryan, gosh, Ryan, I hate those Tlingits.
They're always so nasty.
They're always wanting to fight on her board.
So the Tlingits like to scrap.
I couldn't tell you what the other...
The Tlingits stand out in my mind.
The Eskimos, the Inuit, the ones from their...
They're like real almost shy and stuff.
Quite peaceable.
Yeah, they're nice folks.
But that's...
I'm drawing a blank.
It's just that the clinkets are the ones that stick out.
I see. Well, is there anything that Native Alaskans are particularly good at?
I mean, Blacks are good at sports, Asians are good at mathematics, science, that sort of thing.
Is there anything that stands out?
Is there anything like tracking animals?
Is there anything they're particularly good at?
Not really. I mean, drinking.
Well, besides...
Drinking and getting out of control.
They like basketball, ironically enough.
Not that they're that much good at it, but they like it.
The reason is because out in the villages, it's an indoor sport.
You'd think they'd be into hockey or something like that.
They like basketball because they can all get out of the house and go to the community room.
And it's warm and for whatever reason that caught on and they like that basketball.
But it's kind of funny because they're the least suited people.
I mean Eskimos are built very squatly.
Alaska Natives are kind of built like barrels.
The reason they're built like that is to retain heat and stuff like that.
Not a very good...
But, you know, whatever.
They like it. If you're not competing against black guys, I guess it doesn't matter, does it?
So all across Alaska, in these villages...
I'm sorry. To answer your question, I can't think of anything that they're particularly good at.
They're not a very capable people, and I think a lot of that has to do with what I told you earlier about the sort of The idleness and the dependence and the alcoholism that's really blight on their community.
And honestly, I don't know how I'd go about solving it.
But I'm trying to imagine, all across Alaska, in these little villages, there are community rooms or gymnasiums where Eskimos and Indians are playing basketball.
That's just an image that's difficult for me to grasp.
Well, you know, again, the state has an obligation to teach everybody, so they're usually a schoolhouse.
There's usually a schoolhouse where the communities that are large enough to have a community area, a community rec center that's A lot of times paid for it, you know, like the school or whatever.
So that serves as the community place where And they like to play basketball.
Yeah. Okay. In the lower 48, there's a lot of pressure on white teams not to use any kind of Native American symbols or mascots.
But there are exceptions for actual Native Americans or Indians if they have a team.
Do you have something of the same effect in Alaska?
Well, I have one interesting one.
Usually it's not really reflected much, the native heritage in the group names.
Like I told you, the white folks kind of almost work around the natives.
But they have this one mascot in Antioch.
It's called the Antioch Half Breeds.
It's the Antioch Half Breeds and it represents the fact that the white settlers there met and The Native women created the half-breed cast, and so their mascot is the half-breeds, and it's really funny because their logo is a white man, and he has a rifle, and he's looking at this Native gal, and she has a harpoon, and the look on their faces is like, I like what I'm looking at, you know, and they're crossing, and every now and then, somebody will say...
Oh, this is terrible.
This is a terrible mascot.
What's going on here? And then the community will say, hey, why don't you buzz off?
This is ours. I see.
Good for them. I don't think the natives really go in for this politically correct stuff a lot of times.
We do have the Wasilla Warriors.
I've heard that a lot of places are getting rid of places that called themselves, but there has been Of course, Wasilla is where Sarah Palin is.
That is the most Republican area in the state of Alaska.
I don't think they have any part of it.
The Wasilla Warriors, their mascot is a Plains Indian.
It's not even referring to Alaska Natives, really.
So I think Alaska Natives would see that as not even part of them.
I see. It would not be seen as...
And the other one they have is the barrel whalers.
It's a bunch of...
Their mascot is just these whaling guys.
Oh, yeah, and they still whale here.
You know... Speaking of all the stuff that natives get, the Alaska natives are still allowed to hunt whales, which no one else in America is, really.
But they do it in a sort of traditional way with small boats, right?
No, no, no. They use motor boats, but they have harpoons with explosives on the tips.
Oh, gosh. They shoot them out at the whale.
It's more humane, too, so you have that going for them.
You know, they don't have to go for the Nantucket sleigh ride or anything like that.
It kills them more, you know.
I see. But they don't do this for commercial purposes, right?
They wouldn't be selling tons of whale meat to the Japanese.
Yeah, local consumption.
They drag the whale on, just like they did back in the old days.
They drag it up on the beach and carve it out and dole it out to all the relatives.
And they eat that stuff.
I never had an opportunity.
I don't think I'd want it. It's really fatty stuff.
It's all blubber, and it doesn't look good to me.
But that's yet another advantage of being a native Alaskan.
Yeah, if you're into whale meat, I guess it is.
They eat walrus, too.
I don't know if you need a special right for that.
There's a lot of walrus. I see.
So regular honkies can hunt walrus?
I think. Don't quote me on that because I'm not sure, but I don't think there's a big demand to go around hunting walrus by the white man.
I don't think walrus has developed a taste for that.
I understand that the native Alaska population is actually growing, that there's a fairly high fertility rate among Alaska natives.
Is that correct? Yeah, they have a higher fertility rate than white.
Again, don't quote me on that, but last time I checked, it was something like three children per woman, and they tend to be younger, too.
They have children at a younger age, so...
Well, given that Alaska Natives are increasing in numbers, this is going to be a problem that's just not going to go away, it seems to me.
What do you see the future of Alaska Natives?
It's an interesting question.
I've never really thought of that.
Yeah, well, the state as a whole is really headed in some rough waters.
We're having, you know, like I mentioned earlier, 80% of the revenue Revenue comes from oil taxes and right now we're really running out of oil.
Both the price of oil is falling and that's bad because the whole state budget is based on that and also I think the output from the slope goes down about 7% a year so we're hit with a double whammy of low oil prices and low and dwindling oil output.
Yeah, it's an interesting thing.
A lot of those goodies come from the state and the state is...
We're really having a budget battle right now where the liberals, of course, want to institute a big income tax and the conservatives want to try to find cuts, but these cuts are going to hurt.
I don't know.
I think they're going to Probably more of the same except less.
But then again, maybe it would be good for them in a way.
In the way that libertarians always say that these programs foster dependency in a slave mindset, maybe it will actually be good for them.
Well, that would be good for them if that's the effect of making them more self-reliant.
But at the same time, there's a high prison population of Eskimos, of native Alaskans, is there not?
Yeah, they have about, well, for instance, like I said earlier, they represent 15% of the population of the state, yet they comprise 37% of the prison population.
And I think a lot of that has to do with alcohol, because like I said earlier, when they turn to drink, they get crazy.
And every now and then you'll read a crazy story of somebody doing just something awful to a close family member.
And at least I always know, oh, it's alcohol.
It's just like one time you read about this.
Last year there was this crazy case of this guy, like, He hit his wife in the face with a hatchet and killed her.
I don't know why, but somehow I always feel sorry for the guy who did it as much as I do for the woman who got the hatchet in the face because I know he's going to sober up and not probably remember any part of it, but he'll be in prison for the next 20 years.
But a lot of that in your mind is fueled by alcohol.
I think so, yeah.
I mean, a good portion of it, yeah.
And also, they tend to be...
Natives, like I told you earlier, are very trusting.
And I think a lot of times they don't know to keep their mouth shut when the investigator starts asking questions.
They think they can just explain it and everything will be fine.
Whereas other races might...
As lawyers will always tell you when dealing with cops, keep your mouth shut, you know?
So, natives are really not very devious.
No. Yeah, they're like guileless, I would say, in a lot of ways.
That's certainly not the reputation that Indians at least had in the past in Lower 48 as being sort of scheming and untrustworthy.
But at least in Alaska, it sounds like they're almost childlike.
Yeah, and that's a good way to look at it.
I'm sure... Some of them would take objection with that if they heard me saying that, but that's my impression a lot of times.
Yeah, so...
Well, in the time we have left over, could you tell me a little bit about the racial situation in Alaska other than natives?
I understand that the state used to be overwhelmingly white, but that's beginning to change.
Well, it's not much different than other places in America, at least from what I've seen, you know.
Again, I don't often go out of state, but last year I went down and did a lot of political work down in California in Washington.
Holy smokes, what you guys got going down there.
What are you doing? Yeah, I've really seen a big change, but basically what I'm trying to say is we have the same immigration patterns as a lot of the rest of the country, because we are part of the rest of the country.
People forget that sometimes.
In the metropolitan areas, they tend to come from It's more Asian, you know, because of course we are in the Pacific Rim, so we attract more of the Asian, like the biggest immigrant group here is the Filipinos.
And as far as immigrants go, I mean, that's a less problematic group than say, I don't know, Dominicans, right?
Right, yes. And after Filipinos, then it's Koreans.
And we have a lot of Samoans, for whatever reason they...
Seems to like it here.
Samoans? Samoans seems like the last group of people that would end up in Alaska.
We got a lot of them here.
Yeah, and Yeah
Yeah, they I mean they're very you know noticeable because you know they're good.
The NFL linebacker physique, hard to miss them, right?
Yeah. Yeah, so we got a lot of those folks.
We're starting to have a lot of refugees, I noticed.
I remember just 15 years ago, you never see those Islamic dress.
I don't want to say you see it everywhere, but if you go from seeing it never to seeing it every now and then, it seems like a big change.
Yeah, so even walking down the streets of Anchorage, you'll see people dressed in Islamic headgear.
Yeah, there's some sort of burgeoning...
Somehow we've got on the refugee resettlement.
Because we get those, again, we have a robust welfare state because of the oil money.
Of course. And so I think the refugee community, and we get that permanent fund dividend, and I think the refugee folks have figured that out and are trying to shuttle a lot of them here.
To me, it's a silver lining, this economic trouble, because I don't like this trend at all, but maybe we'll get off their radar.
But our mayor in Anchorage, his wife is an immigration attorney.
It's a nightmare. She's really backing all this stuff.
Gosh. Well, no, that never occurred to me that Alaska would be attractive to refugees and immigrants for that very reason, because of the generous welfare situation.
Right. Yeah, I think we have some of the highest welfare payments in the country.
And the reason for that is because, of course, I told you earlier about the powerful Native politics, and of course they want high welfare payments.
But that applies to everybody, including refugees.
I'm a carpenter by trade, and I decided to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity for a couple days.
They gave us dossiers on all the families that I suppose motivate us, and half of them were refugees.
I worked on this one house for the Sudanese family for one day after I quit and discussed.
I was like, I can't do this.
But they had like eight kids in like ten years.
They arrived here in 2002 and he was a taxi driver.
So do the math on who's paying for all that stuff.
Boy, oh boy. Sudanese and Samoans walking around the streets of Anchorage.
That's hard to imagine, but I guess this is a globalization for you.
Yeah, there you go. There you go.
Well, does this change the school picture?
Yeah, about half the children are minority as opposed, you know, Anchorage at large...
Here, I'm talking about Anchorage.
Half the...
I would say about 55% of the population is white, and the rest are non-white.
In the schools? Yeah, in the Anchorage public schools.
I don't have any children, but my friend does, and I was looking at a school picture of his son's class, and it was just very, very different.
Kind of a home buddy. We're looking at the same school that I, elementary school that I went to school at.
It was very, very non-white.
And I was like, oh boy, what's going on here?
Well, when you went to that school, it was basically all white?
I don't want to say that, but it was like 80%.
80%.
And what's happening, too, with that regard is that there is a bit of white flight.
You know, of course, we have charter school, like much of the country, we have a A big charter school movement, and a lot of the white parents are gravitating towards these charter schools and leaving the neighborhood schools, That is school those are the clothes schools that are
operated closest to where people live and they're getting into these charter schools
And I believe they're getting into it to get to to get away from the diversity the vibrancy as we say
on our Yes, so and and so yeah, I remember reading a newspaper
article and this woman her you know They have limited space in these charter schools
And she was so concerned and she found she found out her boy got into one of the charter schools
And she wept tears of relief That her kid that her boy made it into a charter school
Gosh, well it sounds like at least Anchorage is just like the rest of the United States.
White flight, diversity, immigration, refugees.
Gee, I just wouldn't have thought of Anchorage as being subject to all those afflictions.
But as you say, it's part of the United States.
Right. It's a mid-sized city, so it's such a difference.
My sister lives in Homer, Alaska.
That's where that Where pop singer Jewel is from and it's just so nice there.
It's like 90% white.
It's just not all this nonsense going on.
Well, let's hope that at some point we can turn this nonsense around.
But in the meantime, I'm disappointed to learn the extent to which at least the nonsense has found its way into Alaska.
And so that sort of adds to the native Alaska problem.
Anyway, well, I very much appreciate your coming on.
This has been a very illuminating conversation, and I think our listeners will find it just as interesting as I have.
So thank you very, very much for being my guest.
Great. I had a lot of fun.
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