December 15, 2010

(Editor’s note: Special thanks to Ms. Ruth Tong for her special submission for today’s story! – Thank you, Ruth!)

Interdependence

Written by: Ruth Okitkon Tong, Intake Specialist, CITC Child & Family Services Department

Here’s a story about interdependence as told to me by my older brothers and sisters, of the life in Koyuk, a small village on the southeast corner of Seward Peninsula.

My parents had seven children and also took another family, the Pedersons, a mother with four children, to our summer fish and berry camp. We traveled by boat and would stay in white canvas tents all summer. My mother and father took me and my next older brother, Kenny, the two youngest in the family, back to Koyuk with them to buy more “grub” from the village store to supplement the foods from the tundra and the Ungalik River. Mrs. Pederson stayed at camp with all the other children. My oldest brother was in his early teens, and so was the oldest Pederson boy, and the youngest Pederson girl was about three years old.

We got to Koyuk and my parents bought the foods, then we tried to head back to camp. The weather had turned stormy, and they would try every morning to return, but the weather stayed bad for two weeks.

Meanwhile, back in the camp, Mrs. Pederson and the nine children had only fish to eat. They ran out of all the condiments, flour, sugar, etc., even salt. They just ate fish every day, day after day, waiting for Mom and Dad to bring a little variety for the diet. I believe this was late June, before the berries were ripe, but there was plentiful fish. They would already have picked “surra,” the young willow leaves, earlier in the summer, and preserved them in the village for consumption during the wintertime.

The story shows the interdependence of two families, three parents watching over all the children in both families, and also for their dependence on the weather, in a remote village setting in the mid-20^th century.