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

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That was as the result of first contact. It was a little bit what our brothers and sisters in Indian tribes in the Lower 48 experienced with the Trail of Tears—all of that loss of their land, death, war, alcohol, and the killing of women and children.

This was not something I was really conscious about when I was a kid, but the Elders would talk about it. They talked about what they had seen and the starvation and about the ways of living that were going away. They talked to us about that. In their youths they had the language, ways of life, culture, hunting, and fishing all set. They all had rules that were followed. Then first contact hit us right between the eyes. It is hard to imagine how much grief and trauma occurred. So many families could not take care of themselves. Then the missionaries came. The Moravians established an orphanage. Parents and other adults were wiped out. The Moravian orphanages were established because children could not take care of themselves. The Bureau of Indian Affairs started its schools. The goal was to provide education, but only up to the point of eighth grade and only in English. It was good to learn English, but they didn’t have to ban the speaking of Native languages. Yupiaq was prohibited here.