For a survivor of cultural genocide in Alaska, there’s a need to reconnect to language, culture

The sun sets, from the beach in Shaktoolik, Alaska, in 2019. Commentary author John Tetpon grew up in Shaktoolik. (Alaska Division of Community and Regional Affairs photo)

I don’t have a Ph.D. behind my name, but I know more about cultural genocide than most people here in Alaska do, and more about it than most doctoral graduates anywhere else on the planet.

Being a victim of cultural genocide is a most painful form of suffering because it is unforgettable, even as you’re constantly reminded to “get over it.” Non-Native writers who reiterate the things I am talking about — sympathetic as they may be — do not know what they are talking about. Their take is third hand; mine is first hand because I am the one who experienced it.

The remnants of the pain of cultural genocide have remained with me throughout my life. It is there — every day, 24-7.

My Inupiaq language was forced out of me by a Bureau of Indian Affairs teacher and a bar of Fels Naptha soap jammed into my mouth at the age of 6. In fact, all that happened on my first day of school in Shaktoolik. The offense was for speaking the only language I’d ever known.

I remember being picked up off the floor by my neck and having the teacher (his name was Mr. Cohen) wrap his left arm around my head, with his big hand forcing a bar of soap into my mouth. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand. I thought he was trying to kill me by choking me to death. I could not breathe. I was gagging for air. Then he dropped me on the floor in a little heap.

He had an older student tell me in Inupiaq, in front of all the other students, that none of us were allowed to speak our language.

Western religious dogma, as taught in our churches everywhere in Alaska, also played a genocidal role. That, in my mind, has done the most damage, even more so than the ravages of alcohol and drug abuse, which, I maintain are symptoms of an illness rather than the cause.

In my opinion, and from my experience, it is religiosity that should be blamed for the dramatic upheaval and dislocation in Native society. We are a people who have felt out of place, looking for a place, since the coming of the white teachers and white missionaries, and living in constant fear.

It is not just wrong, but genocidal, to kill the spirit of a people by telling them they came from the ‘Devil,’ and that everything about their nature and heritage is bad and sinful. Oh, and that they are all destined for hell if they don’t conform to the new way. I have heard that all of my life. But for me, things are a lot different today.

That change took place a long time ago, but fear of reprisals and abuse from Native people who practice Western religious dogma silenced the urge for me to talk about it.

I’m now 81 years old and I’m comfortable with myself. I’ll talk about my experiences with anyone who will listen. Most won’t.

My search for an answer began in the 1980s. I wanted to know where I came from and maybe if I was lucky, where I might be going. And I connected with my past, with the generations of my ancestors who came before me, but I was left with nothing to hang on to.

The BIA teachers had taken my language and put it in a trash bag. The missionaries took away my songs and dances because those practices, they said, came from the devil. They also took away my generational history, including place names and family history.

What kept us together as Native people was erased completely. What replaced was another people’s concept of heaven, hell, and … fear.

In the midst of all that, the church commanded that we not talk about our stories, our songs, and our dances: “If you do, you’re going to hell.” That was the word. I listened and I obeyed.

Heaven, with its streets of gold and mansions for all sounded like a good deal. Hell, a place where one would burn alive forever, was a fearsome place. In the effort to avoid hell, I must have gotten saved a thousand times.

The search for truth for me, just for me, and not anyone else, took me back toward my ancestral beliefs. I wanted to know what my forefathers were like and how they lived.

“We knew there was a God before the missionaries came,” my father once said. “We called it sela.”

Then, he began telling me stories about his childhood and growing up on Nunivak Island where shamanism was practiced in the 1920s and 1930s. We would talk about that forbidden inner sanctum of the Inupiat world.

One day, I gathered up enough inner strength to ask my mother about shamanism. “Shaman were good people who healed the sick,” she said. “But the missionaries were afraid of them because they had supernatural powers.”

The missionaries told us lies about the shamans.

“Were there good shaman and bad shaman?” I asked. “No,” she said. “They were all good people.” The idea of good and bad shaman came from somewhere else, she said.

Then came the surprise of my young life.

“What’s my Inupiat name?” I asked. “It is Nasoalook,” she said. He was the last living shaman in the Unalakleet and Shaktoolik area, she added. It was later in my life that, perhaps in my 60s, that I found out shaman powers are passed on by parents who name a child after a shaman and one who would also have the same powers. That would be me.

I haven’t delved into that inner and outer world because I don’t know enough about it. But I am curious. And I am forever searching.

My dad told me about an old Yup’ik man who was dying at the old Native hospital, then located at 3rd and Gambell in Anchorage. He was a shaman, Dad said.

His last days were in the summer of 1969. Dad said he excitedly told the old man that an American was walking on the surface of the moon.

“That’s nothing,” The old man replied in his Yup’ik language. “I’ve been there.”

In 2010, I had my first heart attack. That event took me to what I like to refer to as the ‘other side.’ All I can remember of the ambulance ride from Muldoon Road to the Alaska Regional Hospital was the medic telling the driver: “You better step on it, we’re going to lose him.”

They lost me. And then revived me.

Long story short, that story taught me one thing — there isn’t a heaven and there isn’t a hell. That I can say for sure.

My second heart event was in 2011. Luckily, I was at the Alaska Native Medical Center on Tudor Road, and was at the Cardiology Clinic for an appointment. I felt a sharp pain in my chest and walked to the counter and said: “I’m having a heart attack and I’m going to die right here.”

A nurse came about abruptly and said: “No, you’re not!” and quickly wheeled me to the emergency room, whereupon I was transported once again to Alaska Regional for another operation. I now have two stents in my heart.

In the final analysis, the missionaries tried to snuff out my ancestral linkages, but failed. I am still in touch. And I am very comfortable with it.

About that thing we call death. …

What would it take to make me whole? Give me back my language. Give me back my songs, dances, stories and familial connections. Give me back my history.

My experience is that although our present body will cease to operate, we will never die. Instead, we will continue to traverse the universe, going from one galaxy to another, until it, too, disappears.

Letting go of the concept of heaven and hell has ended that constant, never-ending fear in my life, and for that I am grateful.

What would it take to make me whole? Give me back my language. Give me back my songs, dances, stories and familial connections. Give me back my history.

As Canadian Native actor Chief Dan George once said to Clint Eastwood in “The Outlaw Josey Wales” — “We must endeavor to persevere.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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