Читать книгу Racing Toward Recovery. The Extraordinary Story of Alaska Musher Mike Williams Sr. онлайн

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The place we live also dictates what we do. We live off the land, but the land is alongside the river. We do not live near a highway that can take you anywhere to go shopping. The lifestyle and the place come together. This is a big part of me. This is where I grew up. That’s how my dad and my grandparents lived and it goes way back. Each generation is taught the same way of doing things.

Akiak is a small place with only about 350 people. A lot of the people are interrelated as cousins because in the beginning there were four Williams sisters who were here and got married. Not very many people have moved out, but they always stayed here and existed here. So we’re interrelated to a large extent and we have been helping each other survive over the years. It is not a transient community. The door is always open in my house and my relatives come in and out and they stop by for lunch and eat whatever we have.

In a small community like this everybody helps everybody. If we see people that need help we give them help. If they need food or they need water, if they need shelter, we’ve been able to prevent problems in our community for a long time. There is a sense of family, a sense of being together and supporting each other.