The beginning of a beautiful friendship

• San Diego teens travel to Nanwalek to learn about traditions, elders and dance

By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune

Twice a year, the Grauer Preparatory School of San Diego picks an “expedition” to go on. It’s a chance to learn from another culture or build someone a house.
This time, of all the places in the world they could have gone, the Grauer School picked the village of Nanwalek. The school decided on the remote Alaska village after learning about how young people in Nanwalek have a special way of interacting with their elders.
“We’re working hard to find ways to incorporate elders into our studies, but it’s not easy because they are isolated from us in our area,” Stuart Grauer, founder of the Grauer School, told people gathered at the Robert Kvasnikoff Community Center in Nanwalek Thursday. “For us, elders are here and young people are there. We’re trying to find ways to incorporate our elders, but it is not easy.”
To learn more about their interactions, the Grauer school traveled 2,500 miles to the Kenai Peninsula village of 250 Sugpiak people who continue to speak their language, eat traditional foods from the sea and treat their elders as a cultural treasure. In a ceremony culminating the eight students’ visit, Stuart Grauer and trip leader Christy Goodson wrapped up the visit with a potlatch where the teens served tea and lunch to their elders. The lunch included fried hooligan, assaleeak (fried bread), salmon eggs, octopus and clam chowder. They also tossed in a few familiar foods like spaghetti and baked chicken with rice.
Grauer students Dorma Ball, Audrey Grauer, Keli Rowe, Charlie Burton, Olivia Burdge, Dyian Larson, Philip Elster and Christopher Apodaca learned, and then performed the “Mask Dance” along with the Nanwalek students. The Sugpiak dance is sung in the Seg’testun language. To make the dance even more memorable, Nanwalek students sewed each of their visitors a Taqmak (dukmuk) to dance in. The kuspuk-like shirts are nearly as long as dresses.
Daryl Kreun, tribal youth program coordinator at Nanwalek, set up the visit after he was contacted by the Grauer group. He arranged for it to include a dance lesson, a fishing lesson and lots of interaction between elders and students. The school is a tuition-based college prep, started in 1990 as a way to offer an authentic education.
“An authentic interaction is creating an environment where everyone can get involved in a great conversation,” Grauer explained. “That is what I think education should do – have a full-on engagement, provide a rich dialogue.”
The school features trips twice a year to places the students want to learn about. Grauer students have been to all seven continents.
Grauer said it took a few months to set up the visit to Nanwalek. He became intrigued by the village based on what he had read and heard about how the youth and elders take care of each other as ways to pass along or receive traditional knowledge. Chief Tayuk Wally Kvasnikoff approved the visit.
“He took a chance on us. He is very wise to realize the best way to continue tribal traditions is to not push them, but to walk that careful balance of letting people pick it up on their own,” Grauer said. “This was a gentle learning environment for seeing how that works and how traditions are passed on. We’re very grateful for this experience.”
The visit was marked by many firsts for the San Diego residents. Frank Berenstoff taught the group how to fish for silvers in the lake by cabins where they camped. They caught two fish. Berenstoff said he found them surprisingly eager to learn as much as they could from him, including about his own life.
“When I was teaching them to fish, they really wanted to learn how to do it,” Berenstoff said. “I was walking in the water, unhooking the hooks from the rocks, and they asked me how can I do that. I told them I do a lot of hunting and fishing, and I’m wet all the time in the fall. They thought that was real interesting.”
Though there are a great deal of differences in the lifestyles between the youth of San Diego and Nanwalek, the commonalities became endearing to the students, said Tribal Youth Administrator Pauline Berenstoff. “It was a great experience. We got to know them and learn from our similarities. I think we are a lot alike. It’s hard to be in school, no matter where you live. They wanted to know what is it like to live in Alaska, and we talked about that.”
One of the interactions during their two-day stay was a dialogue in the Grauer tradition of everyone sitting down for a serious discussion about the future.
“We talked about the biggest issues we could find, that we could think of – and it was about family, and the fear about whether or not they would be successful in their lives,” Grauer said. “In the case of the Nanwalek students, it was about wanting the exposure of the outside world, but also wanting to be in a safe space.”
Now that they have established a connection, Grauer offered for the Nanwalek kids to come to San Diego, to form an exchange with the school. This way, Grauer School could become the “safe space” for village students to become exposed to the larger world.
“I would like to be their partner school,” he said. “As these young people want to try out what it is like out there, we could be there for them.”
The students presented the Nanwalek elders with gifts to thank them for their time and their stories. They gave each village elder a bag of fresh produce, organic carrots, nuts, rice, apples, potatoes and oranges. In return, Grauer was given one pillow lined by sea otter fur and another pillow lined by fox, as well as a mask by Emilie Swenning.
After the gift-giving, dancing and lunch, the eight young people from San Diego picked out an elder and sat down for a visit. One boy remarked that a highlight of his life is going to Lake Tahoe where the family has a cabin. It gets him out of the busy crowded city and heavy traffic. Segtestun teacher, Sally Ash, then shared with him how life operates in the village, where elders eat first at community dinners and traditions are coming back after some years of not practicing them.
“I told him about Nick (Tanape) who took his teenage godson hunting. When he got his first seal, they threw him a big party,” she said. “That is how we are getting our traditions back, like to celebrate the first hunt of a young person.”
Life has its differences for the young people of both places, but it’s the similarities that will stick with them, said teenager Christopher Apodaca. “I really want to thank you for taking us in and making us feel like we are at home here,” he told he group at the luncheon.
Human kindness and sharing need no translation.

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Posted by Newsroom on Sep 30th, 2009 and filed under Headline News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.