Sunday service had 14 in worship and four of our regular worshipers had gone out of town.  The singing has gotten much better.  The two Philippine women have been in church every Sunday after the first one and they add some good music on the Ukulele - boy can they harmonize.  I mentioned a scene from the movie Acts of Valor and a couple in church, Ryan and Yvonne, had met in the military and had serviced the Harrier Helicopters in movie.  Small world.  

It is clear that I am seeing the 2015 Yakutat.  So many of the stories I hear are of a time not so long ago.  Many Native villages have lots of trouble with alcohol - it was true here too.  But there have been great efforts to change that behavior and it seems that the method that is working best is to build pride in their heritage.  This week I attended Culture Camp where the young Native children are taught about their culture: they are taught the Tlingit language, about leadership, about ethics and about how to survive.  They are taught how to live by subsistence.  For them this means that the primary source of their food comes from the land.  It has to be this way because foods that are shipped or flown in are expensive.  Most say that subsistence is the best way to live.  So the children are taught to fish, a variety of ways to process fish, to hunt and to make due.  At the dump there is an area for washing machines, one for refrigerators, another for furnaces, and so on.  If something on yours breaks the first place to go for a replacement part is the dump - it’s recycling on steroids.  An expression I’ve heard over and over is: “we may not have everything we want but we have everything we need.”  It’s true.  There is a good quality of life in Yakutat.  

The population of Yakutat has been falling off.  I’ve heard reports as low as 400.  The census, which is a little behind, indicates a 25% decrease in the last 10 years, from 800 to 600.  I’ve heard that the majority of the exodus has been ‘the whites’ and it’s because they can’t find jobs; costs of fuel oil is high, and education is underfunded.  There are whites who live the subsistence way but if it’s not part of your culture I can see how it would be a hard transition.  

Culture Camp is 10 days long and goes from 8 am until about 7 pm each day.  I’m trying to spend several hours there a day.  They have sent out a few hunters to get a seal so they can teach the kids how they process it.  This will involve processing the meat and rendering the fat into oils.  I’m hoping they get one so I can observe the process.  

The first (and only) Salmon I’ve caught weighed about 8 lbs.  It was a Sockeye.  Sockeye are vegetarians so you don’t actually fish for them with bait.  You have to snag them and if you don’t snag it inside the mouth you’re supposed to throw it back.  It seemed impossible but I got one, hooked completely inside the mouth.  Of course, this is much easier when the river is ‘bubbling’ with salmon but that hasn’t been the case so far.  The numbers are way down - only about 3,000 have gone through the Weir.  According the Forest Ranger I spoke to  there should be 8 to 9 thousand through the Weir by now.  He said they were not going to panic for another week or two.  Fish don’t alway operate on our schedule and it has been an unusually dry and warm year.  Four years ago they had over 450 inches of snow but this year it all went to Boston!

Off to Culture Camp.  I pray all is well back in Beaver Butler Presbytery!