Place Based

Wednesday, March 20th

I helped skin a beaver in the Yup'ik class. I was first just observing, as Justin, the Yup'ik teacher showed one of the boys what to do. It seemed that only a few were interested in what was going on. The girls were especially disinterested, but it was strange to see how quiet everyone was, even if they weren't involved. They weren't chatty or distracting necessarily, but clearly not interested in what was going in. After a while Justin asked if any one else wanted to try and I volunteered. While I've never skinned any animals before, I felt pretty confident with it and did an alright job. This is something I've always imagined being squeamish about, but always remind myself that it is not that unnatural or scary. It's part of any hunting.

Removing stretched beaver skin after it's been dried. 

Using traditional tools that students would have made in the class beforehand, we skinned the beaver and laid the skin out to dry, and be stretched. They would not tan the skins in the village because of the cost, but would instead send them to a tannery. I felt that this was the perfect example of both traditional knowledge and learning, mixed with contemporary tools and resources. Justin and his father trapped the beavers themselves and many of the students were familiar with at least some of the methods of preparing an animal for eating or skinning.

Student skinning beaver with traditional tools.

I got to know some more of the women of the village that day. Not elders, but the mothers and middle aged women who were involved in the school and the tribal council. It's a shame almost everyone I had gotten to know left to Anchorage or Dillingham for the weekend. It took a few days to really break the ice with the locals, but the teachers were still a little distant on Wednesday. I feel like more has been learned from the natives than from the teachers, which was unexpected, but still great.


Spending the night in a large school alone has a creepy vibe to it. For the first two nights I was in the downstairs Special Ed room with my own cot and bathroom. Next door, in the Home Economics room, the Teacher Mentor, Kat was staying. I got to talk to her more about rural teaching and why we had been getting a weird vibe from the people there. We were not very well informed of our duties and expectations before we arrived, and had no contact with the school, so it left us in a strange situation where everyone thought we knew what we were doing, when we had no idea.

Spooky Hallways and Netflix

This was also the day that one of the teachers, Chuck, approached both Colin and I about our stay. We explained to him our situation, and he sort of took us under his wing for the afternoon. He was an interesting guy, and very knowledgeable about teaching in Rural Alaska. He spent about 10 years all over the state, and told us of his experiences as we walked to the Airport after school that day. Out of all of the teachers, he was the most enthusiastic man we met. He was single, he had little in terms of family outside the state, and he seemed to have a free spirit vibe about him that made me believe that some people are just meant for this type of job.