Diomedes two
Created | Updated Oct 29, 2004
Radio show 9-3-'04 Richard Creasey BBC Radio 4?_
Audio Radio show 9-3-'04 Richard Creasey
32kbs Voice
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We are riding now on an A.T.V.
an all terrain vehicle from Gambell
And it is a very gravelly pavelly area
and I am with a gentelman who is eighty years old
Winifred James, and he is gooing to take us
to explain to us what it is like
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to actually come from russia
to Saint Lawrence by boat, a sealskin boat,
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which his ancesters have done for thousands of years
And he will tell us how they did that,
right up until the second world war
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Right now the waves are whistling at us,
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That is right, and when did this stop?
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and they used to use sail, sail accross and paddle accross | ||||
So they would sail from siberia all the way to here | ||||
yea | ||||
and you speak the same language, siberian yupic | ||||
Yea same language, exactly the same language | ||||
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we fluently speak it just like I am telling the person: "well, we are going to go home today the weather is really good" and then I am speaking "Aw sled dan na be wech lan noch wok, ilachna poklad chiwak taman ga am Qhua din chy num mey dinak gas chiwok commn kash kokit" hi hi then erm, | ||||
About how many peoplle in the world speak that language | ||||
How many people in the world, I beleive Gambell, Sevunka there is people all accross, about five, five villages overthere, and in russia that is about it | ||||
And you are keeping that tradition together | ||||
yes | ||||
That is terrific | ||||
Yes, So we are very proud of where we came from. | ||||
Gloria James:
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That is eighty year old Winnifred's doughter Gloria
Like her and dad, Gloria's children are determined
to stay here in Gambell a sixhundred strong village
on the islad on Saint Lawrence
To them, this barren wind swepped island
is nothing more or less then 'home'
When Nancy Mendenhall moved the alaskan regional center of Nome,
She knew nothing of the contacts accross the boundary
between the U.S.A and Chukotka
that is the region of russia closest to alaska
And she was stunned to find out firstly
that people had relations on the other side of the border
and that secondly, because of the cold war,
they could not get to see them
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| local lady? It was dark it was hurting us it was painfull It was black without them you know not communicating with them, we have not we really cryed when we saw them again |
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from Nome alaska to provadenia U.S.S.R. it is only twohundred forty miles, an hour fourteen mintes for a piper navaho |
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at long last it seemed that the ice cutain,
as it was locally called, was beginning to tore
in nineteen eighty eight a friendship flight
of american people made the national news,
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The soviet hosted the americans in their own appartments, scattered troughout the tiny seaport for most it was their first contact ever with americans we brought over hot dogs and marsh mellows and american sparklers sharing the american culture with them |
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with luck the soviet children may be allowed to visit their new american families in september in Nome this is Tim Bush |
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Leo Rasmusin: We went over in eighty eight with a friendship flight to provedinia erm, it was like a flood gate opened just all kind of events happened after that all of them, proporting to propose peace this group going here and that group going there and, we are comming by kayaks, we are comming by umiacs, we are comming by snow machine, well everything was going to create this great peace thing that took place and I think what really happened was reality begin to set in about ninety three things begin to shut down the military begin to excercise It's god given law right and russia, and the border seezed up again |
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Leo Rasmusin was the mayor of Nome
at the time of the friendship flights
Charly Johnson is responsible
for native american visa free travel
between these corners of alaska and siberia
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Cold it opened up erm, in the late eighties [6:52] and we where first able to go over, that was great times and great times of erm, meeting people and learning about them and, finding out that they are actually still, very much like us and they are not these demon communists that we where told by you know, the U.S. government that we where likely to run into then |
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Both, the people on either side of the bering strait have waht they call visa free travel they still have to get permission but that is easyer then gettin a visa and they have erm, they can get this written permission and go across for ninety days to visit their relatives or to do whatever, along the coast, it nowadays, it does not include everybody in alaska, it does not includ eeverybody in chuckotka although they would like to open it up more but the people along the coast for sure are able to do that if they are alaskan native or russian native. |
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I started my trip back in nineteen ninety three when I first went over there on bering air a fifteen minute ride to provodinia, chapolino and cerenikian I went over to cerenikian in skinboat it took me four hours to get over there |
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And they where using the same skinboats
Same. . |
as you use on the island
Same skin boats as we do have here say every, about everything, you know here what we are born and raised with same outfits same crost books and same kind of clothing it is of that for use are dogs for hats and erm, fur for ah, to make warm clothing out of raindeer skins and leather, muton leather for their boots |
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An individual that is native from erm, the bering strait chena and other regian in alaska can invite a native person from chuckotka and I have the forms, they bring it to me I stamp it and sign it and, send it overthere and by doing that I am verifying that the individual is ellegible for making an invitation and then on the other side what happens is the local authorities stamp, they put a stamp on an insert into their passport It says two things, one they are who they say they are and two they are elligable for visa free travel So the governour of chuckotka has proposed that we expand the territory to all of chuckotka and all of alaska since we are, it is just a very small portion that is ellegible and we have proposed that to our governments and russia is supportive of that but the U.S. is not, I am go there and I meet with all the I and S officials in washington and I get a two hour lection that I will probably getting in el quida and mafia in through this visa free program. and I keep telling them that in the thirteen years that this program has existed, there has not been a single violation of this program and erm, we know the native people |
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In the past, you know we have always prolaimed we are the land of the home and the free and the brave and all that and erm, now it is just the opposite, the U.S. is trying to close it's doors and erm, and russia was before the blocking us and now it has kind of evened out to where U.S. is equally fault for tightening its borders and not allowing free interchange |
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Haah, it is hard, right now, this here, it is really hard so where I in no matter how much I want to go back but it takes a lot of time, lots and lots of time to get overthere So I try their best side maybe next year, huh, ha, hi, I will go back again give it a try |
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Back on Saint Lawrence Island,
siberia is whitin sight
Winifred James explains to me
how the people of the island are still hunting sea mammals
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That is a whale whith the lower jaw, two lower jaws, the lower jaws are twenty some feet long |
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when the boat get a whale they bring it in they pull the whole whale up with their tractors you know and then they cut them up and erm, on the beach because this is erm, going on, it is going to go on again next year right now, international whaling commision kind of control the erm, harmony we are to get you kow This village here Gambell gets eight stroiks eight stroiks or eight whales which means erm, that if we are lucky we can get all eight whales in the spring |
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As far as we mammals go alaskan natives are the only ones that can hunt and bring mammals for subsistence I do go wallrus hunting every summer every year I do also some seal hunting in fact erm, My favourite meat of anykind is burdered seal or an ogrook as we call it We have different names for depending on what age they are, that what I tryed to get for meat is we call it a mochlachot which literally means erm, young birdseal and on salon salam they call them machlocks which is you probably heard the word machlock and that is quite the word for boot as machlock because of a sole of the machlack is made from burried seal or machlack as we call them, as they call them as well, |
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just about everyone I talked to,
hunted seal and whale
Charlie Johnson is also involved
in a major cross boundary project
concerning polar bears
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We have always been able to hunt polar bears and even while we where hunting them, the polar bear populations have been growing what decimated the populations before nineteen seventy two was sport hunting, where there was hundreds taken every year uphere and we take an average of sixty to a hundred polar bears a year |
And is the same story true in russia?
In russia, see, russia is a little different russia classified polar bears as, as endangered in the red book in ninteen fifty six and banned hunting however now that we can go there and know the people like we do even though polar bear hunting was banned, they continued to hunt bears in cuckotka not only by the native people but by mlitary and russians as well so, we are finding out that inspite of the ban they continued to hunt all these last fify years or so in nineteen eighty nine russia reclassified actually by then it was the soviet union that reclassified the polar bears in the alaskan chukotka population as a recovered species and notified the U.S. official wild life that they wanted to share in the harvest of alaskan natives like I said before we have always continued to take bears out of this population so we began some negotiations with the russian And i will have a really credit the late molib lady who was director of the U.S. fish and wildlife since we are the only legal hunters of the polar bear she asked us to be part of the U.S. delegation for negotiating polar bear treadty with the russia and because of that we where able to negotiate some aspects into the treaty that give us as native people equal participation in the management and conservation of the polar bear not only that, the treaty languages specifically states that the commission will operate on a unanymous basis and when the russian ambassedor to the united states erm, Uri Ushkovs signed that treaty he said this is the most democratic document that has russia has ever agreed to in its history and erm, for the first time russia agreed to give an essentially a ritogar(?) to a native group on their resource management |
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Nancy Mendenhall is head of
the alaskan friends of chuckotka
a non sectarial group
wich is breaking down the 'Ice Curtain' mentallity
in Nome she met a woman with relatives in chuckotka
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in Ninty eight when things where really tough overthere under the former governour I heard through one of these woman who I knew that things where really bad overthere and that she had heard that in a couple of the villages they had ran out of food and this was at easter time and easter spring is always the worst, you know and they had ran out of food and then one of the villages they had reported to her and ironically even while they did not had food they had telephone service so, they where talking to her by phone, from the village of Nunmagun over to here and teling her that they where boiling their old walruss skins 'that is what we have to eat' and some families where eating dogs and we heared that and it was easter and it really upset me and I was my gosh here we are sitting down to this fabulous dinner with the family and I am getting this phone call, telling me: 'did you now they have nothing to eat right accoss the water from us, our neighbors' and erm, I said we are really going to do something about that these are our neihbors for heavens sake it is, it is not like etheopia or its where you can have put it on your mind, you should not, but you try to put it out of your mind but how can you do that it is your closest, your closest connection |
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Nancy has managed to use the russian postal service
on to contact families on the other side
others are also reaching accorss the boundary
and even the military now find ways
of working with their russian counterparts
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Colonel Mike Bridges commander
of the first batalion of the alaskan national guard
explains how things have changed
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| Well, obviously the soviet union was an extremely closed society for seventy years and it takes a while to devolve from what they had gotten into with everything very secretive and what not, to a more open and fully democratic type of society I think though from my perspective, having my own cold warrier certificate they have come a long way erm, we work with the russians with the mongolians in search and rescue training now on a regular basis, the alaskan national guard does. |
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| They have been very open to improving the hands on neighbor working relationship with us, on anyways in alaska we are direct neighbors We are as close to them as anybody gets except for eastern european countries So that relationship and its development has been really positive |
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Having in mind the iditera, a dog sled race
wich draws tourists from all over north america to Nome alaska
Leo Rasmunson has been thinking of exporting something similar
accross the boundary to siberia
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| The original intent with these sled dog race when we where suggesting such back in eighty eight and eighty nine and began working in that direction was that this would be like the iditera that is for alaska would be the sellig point of bringing people to chukotka for tourism they have some beautifull stuff on the other side The anadia river is about eight hundred miles long and navigable there is gold mining there is just timber, there is everything along the river you could sell tourism there hey, look people pay twenty five thousand dollars to go to outher mongolia they see or shoot a yak. And if they are going Ha Ha all the way to go something crazy like that you think they would not pay five to ten thousand dollars to go up the anadian river or go see the last vestages from the stalineous era or whatever it is I did try to explain to the people on the other side when we where there they where busy getting rid of their history Hey, they where trowing the Stalin statues in the water, they where getting rid of erm, the Lenin things they where tunring down the second world war interment camps they had around there tremendeous history, sure it is bad is it not so was Al Capone but his house is still there, you can go visit it and people pay to go into the front door That is part of tourism they where trowing all our tourism into the bay |
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And Larry Persily journalist and energy expert
can see the possibilities of
coorporation in the oil and gas industries
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| Yes, since the cold war has thought to use the cliche i think alaskan see oil and gas service opportunities there have been attempts at joined venturing tourism opportunities certainly there are long standing disputes between the alaska and russia as where the boundaries are for commercial fishery so I think alaska sees russia as a long term economic partner in that area of russia certainly |
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And in this corner of the world
any sustained talk of coorporation
quickly leads to enthousiasm
for joining the two continents together
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for a railway bridge or a tunnel
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| If you told the russians the money was there tomorrow, they would have the railroad build straight to the bering strait reality is that if you build that bridge or you tunneled and the tunnel is probably far more practical You folks know what a tunnel did for you you can imagine what a tunnel very well could do you do not have to maintain those environmental problems that come with a bridge icing snow storms ship running into the abodments whatever it is you have got you have to deal with the tectonic plate the problems that come with that and the concept was that there would be a bridge between the diomedes where the two tectonic plates make contact there would be a bridge in that area and there would be a tunnel between the other two other wide bodies of water  That is money. [22:25] |
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| Argh, it is a bad day, |
Oh, really?
| I just broke the key |
Just lost a key?
| Just broke the key in the lock |
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Talk of bridges and tunnels can quiker
brought back to earth by the geology
for this alltogether remarkable part of the world
Martin Lefever Works for the university of alaska
[22:43]
monitoring earth quakes in this region
| Two weeks ago we had erm, fourhundred and fifty seven earth quakes here in this state of alaska ofcourse it is a large state, but erm, it is covering a rather enormous area, but quite a few earth quakes |
And what is the biggest one you had recently?
| The biggest one in recent time last november the third, was a magnitude seven point nine earthquake it was located along the denali fault in the alaskan range |
And what does that mean?
What does seven point nine mean to me?
| A magnitude zeven point nine earth quake erm, to you is a large earth quake, a very substantial earth quake, in most areas of the world it would be rather destructive earth quake but due to the remoteness of alaska it was only destructive to the roadways and a few homes though nobody was killed there where no er, a few small injuries |
And back and present to for instance
the San Francisco earth quake is it
big or smaller back and present earth quake?
| It was just a little bit bigger, just a little bit bigger, by one tenth of the magnitude point. |
So alaska is a earthquake territory?
| Yes, there are many many earth quakes here. |
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What ever the hartships in this part of the world,
it is remarkable to find that the young people
do not want to dash down into the glitter and litter
of the cities furter south
The community on Saint Lawrence island,
is holding on to it's way of life
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Is your tradition very much part of your life style?
do you feel it all the time when you are here?
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| Yes, I feel it always, very strong its erm, |
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Now we talked to your father yesterday
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And you have taken on his traditions?
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Your children also staying here?
| Yes, my children are staying here, they are nineteen, fourteen, thirteen, eleven and ten and they still go by my father what they teach me and I teach them, what he taught me |
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| 'Yuhenak, attashik attashiok, arranoga' I am with Nadezhda Sudakova and this is a suitable place to end my journey along the border I am in a school in Nome having dropped in on a quite remakable lesson a class of siberian yupic for the children of this american town Nadezhda herself came from chuckotka and consequently has huge experience in life on both sides of the boundary |
So Nadezhda, tell me what you are doing.
I prepare for a lesson a, |
So tell me what you are teaching,
you are teaching siberian yupic
here in Nome alaska, is that right?
Yes, erm, my title is bilangual instructor and this is not maybey more about erm, teaching for language maybe more about the culture, about our traditions, about our customers of yupic Saint Lawrence and siberian yupic people |
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"Kush titit, who remember how to translate 'Kush titit' ? " "Numbers?" "Yes, you are right good boy!" "Numbers" Kids are I think similar in erm, everywhere and in russia, past socialism in alaska with capitalism, but kids, they are kids and they are wonderfull, they are same so I am very happy |
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A705700
