Perched on a barren Alaskan coast, the village of Tununak receives little shelter from the cruel winds of the Bering Sea. A storm last year wiped out its community center.
Yet it is perhaps the mercurial winds of globalization that are leaving the greatest imprint on this remote Yupik Eskimo village, population 350.
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Like hundreds of other indigenous settlements throughout Alaska—and thousands more throughout the world—Tununak finds itself clinging to the last vestiges of its native heritage against the onslaught of Western-style modernity.
The older people in Tununak complain that their native culture has moved to the brink of extinction. Listening to the younger generation, which is tied to the outside world through the Internet and satellite television, it sounds like the culture has already gone off the edge.
"This place is dead," said Aaron Link, who is 16 years old. "There is nothing to do here. We would like to make new friends, meet new people … be part of the rest of the world."
To that end, Link and his fellow high school-age students from Tununak's Paul T. Albert Memorial School are raising money for a future trip to the lower 48, as Alaskans refer to the continuous United States.
Their plan is not to travel as cultural ambassadors to promote their traditional way of life. Instead, they are going simply to discover the outside world—a world they have only seen on television but one in which they see their own future.
Cut Off
The Yupik are a group of Eskimo people. Some 20,000 Yupik people live on the southwest coast of Alaska. Situated on Nelson Island, Tununak, which means "back of the river," sits near the Tununak River and the Bering Sea.
Native Americans settled in the village as early as 6,000 B.C. Over the millennia, the village population rose and fell as Eskimo warfare raged in the area.
Today residents speak facetiously about "downtown" and "uptown" in the collection of modest houses that make up the village. In addition to the school (the largest employer), there is a medical clinic (without a registered nurse) and a general store. The store now has an Internet connection through which customers can order food online from Bethel, 120 miles (190 kilometers) away.
The one road that cuts through the village is riddled with potholes, but fixing it is hardly a priority, since only one resident has a car. There is no road out of Tununak, which is accessible only by small airplane and when the weather permits.
