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Relationship between outsiders and Indigenous Alaska

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Relationship between outsiders and Indigenous Alaska

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1918, Spanish Influenza was introduced to Inupiaq in Alaska.

They did not have enough resources or knowledge on this sickness. So 199 people from Teller and 197 people from Wales died from this disease.

Nurses could only provide comfort to the survivors as best as they could.

Young boys were asked to kill reindeer so the broth could feed motherless babies and sick adults.

Dead bodies were moved to vacant school rooms, and eventually moved to the church.

Sled dogs broke tethers and roamed the streets looking for food. Fed on frozen human remains in abandoned homes.

Rumour was that a bad spirit had come from an unknown area.

Several months later, a relief team arrived in Wales with flour, tinned milk, sugar and coffee for the survivors. And shovels to bury the dead.

Kevin (superintendent) was assigned to go to the communities and marry widows and widowers. Told them that they had to marry and take in orphans who lost their parents. If not, the kids would be sent to an orphanage far away.

Widows (or young women) were told to go to one side of the room, and widowers (young men too) went to the other side. The men were them asked to select a wife, they went to the front, gave their names to the secretary who wrote them onto a marriage certificate.

If any man hesitated, a spouse was picked for him. They also did all this while friends and family were still in the chapel, dead, waiting to be buried.

A story is then told about how a 50 year old man did not want to choose a new spouse. So one was picked for him, someone much younger than he was. They later had a divorce, and the girl was able to marry the man of her choice. While the man did not marry ever again.

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The relief team was there to help with the epidemic. To bring food, shovels and to help bury the dead. The intent of the superintend was to try and “resolve” the problem of widows/widowers and the orphan problem.

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A group of orphans build a path outside of Bristol Bay.

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https://alaskapublic.org/2020/05/06/what-alaskans-learned-from-the-mother-of-all-pandemics-in-1918/

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Relationship between outsiders and Indigenous Alaska

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Relationship between outsiders and Indigenous Alaska

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It doesn’t really talk about relationships between them. But I’d imagine that the relationship between nurses/doctors were okay. It says that they tried to provide as much support as they could to people who lost their loved ones, or people who were dying. But with the superintendent, I don’t think they liked him very much. You just lost a loved one, and now here comes this man telling you that you have to marry another person.

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The action of the superintendent was not good, it raised concern for the Inupiaq. There were not many people who talked about this in the later years.

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After reading this I had so many emotions/reactions. Those poor kids who lost their parents. Left to fend for themselves, surrounded by dogs and their dead family. I can’t imagine how they felt. But also the superintendent coming in and telling people that they have to marry each other. The way he did it too, just got them to line up and pick and choose, almost like they were animals or something. Like, they just lost their other half, someone they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with. And here comes this man telling them they had to marry, while still grieving.