Whole Village Goes to School in Far Alaska

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 533, 10 December 1928, Page 14

Whole Village Goes to School in Far Alaska

Girl-Mothers Take Babies TEACHER COMMUNITY "BOSS” In the interior of Alaska, at Rampart, one morning, during the “night,” with the thermometer 65 below zero, a three-year-old boy appeared at the school door with an armful of wood for the stove, offering it in payment if the teacher would let him come to school. Such is the attitude of the natives, Indians and Eskimos, toward the village school. There is no age limit for the scholars. The whole population of the village may be enrolled. In the monotony of the Arctic night going to school is a welcome break. The schoolhouse is a regular calling place for the wayfarer who may be abroad (writes the Vancouver correspondent of the “Melbourne Herald”). If the corner behind the stove is not full with girl mothers and babies, it may be occupied by these wanderers, or by village fathers and grandfathers. When the May sunshine chases the last berg from the bay, the physician mariner brings from its winter shelter his 20ft egg-shaped motor-launch, cabined all over for the rough seas he travels in. Into its tiny bunkers go the medicine chest, surgical instruments, blankets, and provisions - -hard tack, bacon, and coffee. in ireacnerous seas With oilcans filled, killick hoisted and skiff in tow, the physician and his native “mate” start their iong trip westward from Aklavilc, the Arctic metropolis, at the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Westward he travels by the missions of the Behring Sea, where tides are swift, squalls sudden, and shoals plentiful. The doctor is never beaten. He cooks his supper on his tiny oil stove, packs his pipe, roils himself in his blankets, and, his mate on watch, sleeps the storm through. The little Government steamer Boxer, successor to the famous Bear that pioneered navigation In the Arctic for 50 years, comes and goes from the “outside." Her port of registry is Point Barrow, Alaska’s farthest north settlement. On her last trip she landed radio equipment for the school there. Also, a white carpenter to build a new school. He has 40 Eskimo apprentices. The Bear braved the Arctic for half a century, only to meet her end at the Narrows, entering Vancouver Harbour, where a handsome monument, erected by the Hudson’s Bay Company, tells her story of service. Far in Ihe interior, near the headquarters of the Yukon, are the Athabascans, most isolated of all the North American family, some of whom have never seen or been seen by white men, except the trooper of the Northwest Mounted Police. The majority of them do not know that a world out side of their own exists. Bath a Formal Rite Roundi the teacher and the school in these remote settlements revolves all human activity—social, industrial, and civic. The teacher is physician, nurse, postmistress, business manager, wireless operator, and community builder. She encourages the establishment of co-operative mercantile concerns, financed by native capital, and conducted by the natiyes themselves. There Is a semblance of government by council. Sanitary regulation, the prevention of too-early marriage, and education are its chief functions. -v Even among the children there Is growing up a system by which they enforce the law among each other, and bring culprits to justice. The teacher is the “boss” of the community. The Eskimo is gradually', being encouraged to do away with the unsanitary igloo, and to build houses of wood under the teacher’s supervision. The young Eskimos all speak English, and read and write. Every school has its bath, and its use is becoming a formal rite. There are 90 schools in Alaska, and 250 teachers. The Boxer transports them from the nearest deep-sea port. Every school will* have Its radio. under a programme arranged by the United States Bureau of Education. The possibilities of the radio for social communion and entertainment may be judged from the fact that the wife of the Hudson Bay Company’s factor at a post within the Arctic Circle clearly heard the “Hallelujah Chorus” sung by the choir of St. Peter's Cathedral at Adelaide.