Unheard voices
Remembering to listen to what is really here
Click on Archives: November, 2005 to see the contents of this month’s paper.
By Geoff Bederson
If a face could talk, this one would speak words from a distant age. If a face could act, this one would recreate a world that has disappeared.
I’ve known Thomas for years as a guest at our Inn. Occasionally he did some electrical work for us in exchange for rent. He was not a big talker. I might see him hanging off of the roof, working in freezing temperatures, but he never complained. With all the turnover at the Inn I didn’t have time to listen to his story.
He speaks so slow. There is no flippancy or trivia spewing out of his brain. Something from the past, something that we have erased, still lives in him. In order to hear, you have to open up those compartments in your mind - the ones formed when we were still living in the wilderness, before the matrix of civilization lowered itself down on us.
Thomas Maillelle: I was born and raised in Holikachuk, on the Innoko River. We are a group of Athabaskan Indians in the Interior of Alaska. We lived a subsistence lifestyle. The people used to move around with the seasons, and fish and hunt and trap in different parts of the country.
I grew up in a log cabin. The only modern thing was mail, which came from the mail plane. There was no electricity, phone, water. We hauled ice in winter for drinking water, and we used good, clean snow for washing clothes. The snow was closer, but you needed quite a bit more than ice.
Drinking was pretty frowned on. It wasn’t accepted in public places. When people did drink they stayed home, because they knew everybody didn’t like it.
At one time the village was pretty big. It is still there, but no one is living there now. The whole village moved to Grayling in 1962. Then we got modern, with running water, electricity, and television. It sort of messed up everybody’s life. Everybody had too much leisure time after that. Nobody had to work, and we didn’t have to depend on each other too much.
Has the traditional culture been destroyed?
A lot of it is gone, but there are certain things you always remember, because they are a part of you. We respect each other enough to listen, rather than cut you off. We always treat strangers with ultimate respect. We feed them and house them, and make sure they have something to eat before they go anywhere. This kind of thing has never really changed.
What really changed is the modern conveniences that take over our everyday lives. Like heating your house: you don’t have to work to keep your house warm anymore, other than by the Western way, making money. Money became more important than people and friendship. Before, having a big family was the way to go, because the more people in the family, the easier it became to run a household. Now the more money you have the easier it is to run a household.
You can pay people off to do anything, to haul water, to put an oil stove in your house, to go hunting for you, to go to the store, to buy a slab of beef.
Alaska is a unique place: it is so remote yet modern. I traveled widely, but there is nothing quite like Alaska. The indigenous people still have roots. Everyone else wants what we got, so they’re all moving here. There are getting to be too many people.
You come from a very different world than I, but we are both living in the modern, global world. How does it feel to be part of this world?
I don’t like it here. It’s not made for survival. Without money it’s virtually impossible to survive, you live on the streets. The people that do have money look down on those that don’t. It’s been that way forever. This society destroys the land, the animals. There are hardly any more moose. They kill them for trophies. That’s how they killed the buffalo in the lower 48. There is a lot of waste. The landfills are getting pretty full, even in the villages.
But when I came to this modern world another world opened up to me, one that is not so temporary, that is more permanent than this one. I came to realize that my soul is made to live for eternity. I learned about the Bible, about why we are ultimately here, and where we will spend eternity.
All we see, smell and touch is temporary. All this will eventually be gone. Everything is rusting away, wearing out, burning up - there is nothing permanent about this world, except for our soul. I learned that after I moved to Anchorage. I learned the hard way, by searching and searching and searching for the meaning of my existence here.
I didn’t think there was much reason for me to live. I tried quite a few different ways to eliminate myself from this world. I counted 33 different ways my life was spared. I tried shooting myself, drinking myself to death, accidentally drowning. I became sober. The more I drank the soberer I got. It’s like drinking water after awhile. You quit getting drunk.
I kept asking, Why am I still alive? There must be a reason, a power greater than I know. I kept pondering that, I started going to church, I was reading this Bible. I found out that the reason for people to live is to give praise to God.
You don’t have to have money, clothes. You just have to take care of all the birds, the animals - they live without having money, without storing up things. You are worth more than fish, more than birds.
The peace and joy I have now is everlasting. I can see beyond this world. My job now is to help people realize that the peace they are looking for is very temporary.
How do you maintain your true identity in the middle of all of this busyness? How does it feel to be living here in this world?
I’m relaxed. I’m not worried about yesterday or tomorrow, or today. I don’t care about that. It’s not in my hands. My God said He is in control. I’m relaxed about everything. I have a peace about everything. I don’t like to read the newspaper. It’s mostly negative stuff. There’s some good information, but it’s basically old news.
I know how it is, I’ve been there. I did have a bad temper. I was mad at white people for ruining my land, hunting all my fish and animals, taking all the things that I knew and were part of a perfect little world, and turning it into a money-hungry world. And for forgetting about our grandchildren and generations to come.
I’m not mad anymore. I just feel sorry for them. I think Alaska Natives and indigenous people all over the world have a grounded world. They have a good grasp of concepts like unity, family, belonging. Indigenous people all over the world know that the spiritual world is as real as this world. The white people seem to have no understanding of this.
On the one hand you have been talking about the power of the indigenous culture and the meaning of it, and the other hand you have been talking about the Bible. How do these interact with each other?
The indigenous people knew of God. They had visitations of the supernatural, of God and his power, long before the white man ever got here.
The Native people knew about it, and knew it was coming, before it got here. Various prophets foretold of the Bible coming and being spread throughout Alaska.
Is there something else that is going on within you, that is very important but that people don’t recognize, that you would like them to recognize?
I’m holding back on quite a few things. There are a lot of things I’d like to say that I don’t think anybody would understand or believe.
One day I asked my God to see, and He showed me. I couldn’t begin to say what I saw. It was like a big flood, it was like looking at the stars, and every star was a bit of information, and this totally flooded me so that I couldn’t say anything. I saw that I was a very small piece of sand in the world, and this overwhelmed me. Now it’s constantly there.
It’s something that I want people to search for. You can have it if you search for it. The more you search the more you get. The more you ask the more He gives. It depends on you.
There will always be a hunger in each and every person, and non-fulfillment will make you search in other places. Love your neighbor as yourself, and if you do that you’ll not want to hurt him, steal from him, destroy him. That is the ultimate law. That is the bottom line.
