Rebecca's Ramblings

I know I promised a bunch of ya'll I'd post for a few days now, so here goes!
As a kid I spent every summer traveling around the States with my family. My favorite parts of those trips were meeting different people and imagining how I would grow up if I was from the same community they were. Since I switched my major from Biology to Human Development and Family Sciences (with only three semesters of college left), I've become especially interested in social policy and in the environmental effects of personality development.

Coming to Alaska has been an extreme learning experience. Growing up, I never really thought about Alaska (or Hawaii) as part of the US, but now that I'm here, it seems more to me like the core of rural America like anywhere else. So far we've met nothing but amazing people. The pastor here is absolutely great, and his wife is not only super involved in the church and its ministries, she also runs their music program, runs the Child Development Center as a volunteer and homeschools their four adopted children. Superwoman? I think so. When we got here were were told that a guy named Dana would be helping us out by overseeing our project, and he came every day after he got off of work. The church president also came to check up on us one day and ended up doing a lot of materials runs, got us a permit to cut down trees on the side of the highway to make mulch, left two trailers at the site so we could store materials, and hosted us twice at his house.

We also have had two of the high school youth come help us with construction. Alaska only gained its statehood in 1959, so very few people were actually born here, making it an extremely interesting mix. You're basically either a native, a retiree, or were relocated for a government or energy-based job. We've been told by a lot of the people here that the local economy depends tremendously on the government jobs, and that they are also the only ones that pay enough to get by. In addition, many of the service-based workers are spread thin. Little Man, who is the maintenence/cleaning guy here at Mt. Drum, is also the head of the volunteer fire department (which covers an immense area up here in a region where fires are common in the summer) as well as a former head of the local Boys and Girls Club. Laura, one of the church members, is the only social worker in the Copper Basin area.

She also cooked twice this week, once for youth group and again for the recovery group that meets here on Friday nights, which she also leads. Addiction is a huge problem here. You may have heard about the problems with alcoholism and drug abuse in Native American populations. They're especially prevalent here, and its interesting to ponder the causes of the problems. I'm not an expert so I'm not going to point any fingers, but I think it's important to point out some of the current problems held by the native population. Our government not only took away then destroyed their land, but we also decided that we could somehow give them something back to right their wrongs. Their solution? Reservations where each family gets a room the size of an efficiency. Some of us got the chance to see one of them, and it was basically a single room with a kitchenette and an attached bathroom. For a family of five. I've been to few different reservations in a few different states so I know that this isn't the case everywhere, but it upsets me more here in Alaska, especially when you consider that 15.6% of Alaska's population is either American Indian or Alaskan Native. Compare this with the fact that only 11.5% of Texans are African American, and it becomes apparent that the problems of the natives are the problems of the rest of Alaska.