Return Home

The view to greet me in Kodiak

I have been telling people for a while now that I am on my “Salmon journey home.” I was born on Kodiak to Arum Kone and Denise Nekeferoff and I have deep roots in Kodiak, but I’ve lived pretty much everywhere but Alaska since I was about five. My intention was to go to college in Alaska but it never worked out. Instead, I got a degree in psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and then somehow ended up in Montana (with some adventures in between) to start a PhD degree in Indigenous and Rural health. My intention was still to end up in Alaska, but I had given up on understanding my path. This first post is about my Salmon journey home.

The biggest hurdle in my Salmon journey home was being settled down happily in a completely different state, where I had just recently begun a whole new degree and was without a clue that I would soon end up back in Alaska. It was like one of those dams in the Kalamath river, pretty impossible to surpass. But Salmon are crafty and resilient, plus, I think some ancestors and Creator intervened on this front, opening up an opportunity to travel all the way home to Kodiak to visit for a conference (the Alaska Food Policy Council food festival). I applied to present at this conference earlier this year, without really knowing what it was about or how my work fits in with what folks throughout Alaska are doing to address food policies. I applied while sitting on the floor of the Seattle airport on my way to visit my family in California. I figured I might as well apply, even though I really had no idea what I would present.

I traveled to Kodiak with a friend (shoutout Solange Saxby- registered dietician and doing some amazing post-doc work at Dartmouth right now, but super passionate about ending up in Alaska and joining our traditional food sovereignty party :). I presented at the AFPC conference and it felt amazing. I was able to run around Kodiak during those days of the conference, meeting people and spending time on the beach and imagining life here. Then, I got to present to my community about the work that has brought me such joy and fulfillment while I’ve been down on the plains, with great responses.

I presented on the Feast Table, which is a process that has been developing naturally in my communities of Indigenous students at Montana State University. 10 months ago, I was put in charge of the Indigenous Foods Cohort meetings when I showed up in Bozeman, Montana to begin my studies as a PhD student in the Indigenous and rural health PhD program. My advisor, Jill Falcon Ramaker, runs an initiative called Buffalo Nations Food System Intiative (https://buffalo-nations.net/). This is a program in cooperation with the Intertribal Buffalo Council and the tenets of the Buffalo Treaty (https://www.buffalotreaty.com/). It is a program that holds many students and their dreams for their communities, giving us a space to explore what it means to live like our ancestors and to care for our communities now and for the next seven generations. The Buffalo Nations crew at Montana State are Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, faculty, and community members, all who are interested in uplifting traditional, sustainable food practices and the lifestyles of our ancestors. It is a safe, warm, welcoming, and healthy environment and it gave me the foundation to start dreaming about going (coming) home.

The Feast Table

So I presented on the process by which we develop community around the feast table in our foods cohort meetings throughout the last year of school. I got to really engage in the food system down on the plains because I was so involved with cooking and preparing for these meetings. I learned how to make dry meat, how to process squash, how to make corn tortillas out of corn harvested right there in the Indigenous garden spaces, how to make all sorts of amazing things with Buffalo meat (Buffalo miso bone broth, Buffalo spring rolls, Buffalo and squash soup, Buffalo and fiddlehead tamales). Most importantly, I got to experience the joy of cooking with plant and animal relatives that I have a relationship with, and to cook them in a way that honors them and uplifts them and the sacrifice of their lives for our nourishment. I got to experience cooking with a group of amazing humans who truly care for their communities and love what they are doing. I got to see what it can be like to love your community through food. What is is like to honor your community with every intention and thought that you put into nourishing the Land you are on in honor of your community and with respect for the plant and animal relatives on those lands. These things healed me as a Native person.

And, of course, I got to eat some really delicious foods! And to share them with some very lovely people doing very amazing things. We all got to know each other on a Beloved Community level (more on that later!). First, we prayed together, inviting our ancestors to the table and honoring the plant and animal relatives that gave their lives so that we could be nourished. We told the story of the food (where each ingredient came from and how it was prepared, perhaps what it means to our community). Then, we ate in community with one another, trying new things and updating each other on our lives. We built a Beloved Community around that table, with both those foods and each other. We used the teachings that I learned in Hawai’i from Aunty Puanani Burgess to build Beloved Community with one another and with the foods and ancestors we also invited to the table. We shared stories and exchanged knowledge about recipes and ingredients and preparation techniques and we shared an ultimate love for each plant and animal relative honored at that table in those foods. Then and ONLY then, with that foundation, did we move onto the business end of things. We shared about our work at the school and invited feedback and thoughts from our Beloved Community.

Our Bi-weekly feasts for the Indigenous Foods Cohort at Montana State University

Feasting in Alaska

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that process and the meaning that it holds. So much so that I even came all the way up to Alaska to present on it :) That process of sharing food and building community around the table means so much to me. To me, it is a sacred process to cook for those that you love and to nourish your Beloved Community in body, heart, and soul. I want to explore what it means to build Feast Tables in Alaska, and I also want to understand how my ancestors’ used feasting to build community and honor their Lands and Waters in much the same way.

To me, feasting is part of ceremony. In Alaska, there is much evidence of this- especially in the Potlach cultures of Southeast. This was a process by which the most prosperous of  a community woud host a huge feast, giving away everything to nourish their community. Traditionally, there was no money or a scarcity-based economic system. Food was wealth. The more you gave away at Potlach, the more you nourished those around you, the wealthier you proved to be.

We have the same feasting concept here in South Central Alaska. The Sugpiaq peoples of Kodiak subsisted on whales, seals, and other larger marine and land mammals. Groups of community members would hunt together, and harvests were shared with the whole community, with the elders and those who needed it most taking the first shares. The hunter often received the least amount of their harvest because they had the least need. Yet, they were prized and wealthy members of the community because of their abilities to care for the community. Wealth meant something much more then than it means today in our modern society.

This is an excerpt on the practice of feasting in the lead-up to a hunting ceremony in the book Looking Both Ways (p. 202, Steffian, 2001):

“On Kodiak, a man who planned to hold a feast began by inviting others from his village to the gasgiq. He seated and served these Elders and advisers with great formality, each according to seniority and rank, and announced whom he wished to invite and what gifts would be given. Arriving guests were greeted at the beach, and carried to the qasgiq from their boats on the backs of the hosts.** In the ceremonial house the guests ate akutag made from berries and seal and whale fat, dried fish, and meats. The host tasted every dish first, before passing it to the most important guest. Sven Haakanson, Sr., was told that a whole village would be invited to attend the ceremonies at another settlement, and that the gatherings involved trade and games such as hill races. The chief would plan the gathering, and consider the possibilities for marriage between young people of the different villages.”

The more a chief gave away, the more wealthy he proved to be. The concept of hoarding resources or storing our wealth in an account in the bank would seem so silly to our ancestors.

What else about our modern food system would seem silly to our ancestors? Maybe the fact that we live on a beautiful green oasis surrounded by some of the most plentiful waters in the world, and yet we import a great percentage of our food? That we don’t have established trade processes within our communities, let alone with other communities around the island? That we don’t honor our food by nourishing one another with it and feasting together to show our respect for one another and our lands and waters? That we don’t hold ceremony anymore to give thanks spiritually for the sacrifices of life that our food represents?

What solutions would our ancestors give to us, if they saw our food system now? I think they would recommend that we move backward to move forward. Maybe they would suggest that we “feast it out” and come together to trade knowledge and resources until we can come to some shared solutions and understandings. I think they might suggest that we consider our wealth in food and show others how to do the same again as well.

To me, the process of feasting is the lead up to ceremony, if not part of the ceremony itself. And it is also the original research methodology. The feast is where people would ask and answer questions, trade knowledge and resources. This was an important revelation to me, as someone who is embarking on a whole PhD in research on Indigenous health. It answered a lot of questions for me, as someone who came into this program asking, “how exactly is research healing?” “what good is it doing for us, for our community?” A more recent question is also, “How did my ancestors do research?”. After all, Indigenous peoples were the original scientists. Their masterful navigation of the world comes from science done over thousands and thousands of years and passed down in stories from generation to generation- Our culture. It led to ingenious ways of life in deep relationship with their Lands and Waters. Ways of caring for a community and living in a deeply spiritual way, With the environment and not Against the environment. This science led to ways of life that never resulted in damage to the Lands and Waters and Plant and Animal relatives of Alaska. There is no known extinction of a species for all the thousands of years that the Alaska Native peoples lived here, as opposed to our track record of destruction now in modern society.

And there’s always that overarching question of “How do I live well and be Native today?”

If we bring back feasting and allow that mentality to guide our progress, will our ancestors join us in our efforts? Could every small feast create a ripple of respect that slowly builds into waves of reciprocity? How is feasting an important part of your community, your household? Who can you feast with this week that needs to be shown that version of love, and how can it be an expression of our love for our Lands and Waters?

I’ve been told that I have a lot of questions and that I am too idealistic. But I think it is important to dream, to rely on the prayers and directions of our ancestors. I have a close Lakota friend who said this in one of our first foods cohort meetings in Bozeman: “Your ancestors prayed for someone just like you”. Our ancestors pray for us and guide us, through their intercessions to Creator. They see what we deal with in this modern world as a result of colonization and the genocide of our people and cultures. They prayed for people with our exact gifts and abilities to be here working together for our community and in service to our Land and Waters. They will direct our dreams if we dare to have them.

So, one of my biggest hurdles is overcome and I am back home in Kodiak. But there is still so much further to go if I want to truly engage in this Salmon journey. To me, the true destination is the language, practices, and lifeways of our ancestors- our culture. And I’ve got a really long way to go.

One of my last adventures on the Plains- visiting a friend in South Dakota’s Black Hills :)

Driving from Montana-Washington.

Shipping car, flying Seattle-Anchorage

Driving Anchorage-Homer

Trusty-Rusty-Tusty to Kodiak

My Bahn Mi from last day of Crab fest in the pouring rain during my first hour in Kodiak. Never been more content :)

References

Looking both ways : heritage and identity of the Alutiiq people : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (2019). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lookingbothwaysh0000unse/page/n1/mode/2up

‌