Life in the YK Delta

In the past few days, I have been chastised by multiple family members and friends. Apparently, I don't blog enough. Because I only want to appease my many adoring fans, here is the story of my recent trip to Napakiak, a village of 400 people about 15 miles from Bethel. One of the attorneys, Chris, and I traveled to Napakiak to visit a client. He has a hearing coming up to regain custody of his children and we wanted to make sure his housing is adequate, see how he is engaged in the community, and talk to his support system there.

Getting to Napakiak was an adventure in and of itself. We tried to get there two times the week previous, and both times our flights were cancelled due to weather. After approximately 8 hours of waiting over the three days, I have become very well acquainted with the Grant Aviation hangar. It's actually harder to fly to places closer to Bethel in bad weather because you can't fly above the clouds - if you did you would overshoot your destination. You're probably asking yourself why it was necessary to fly to a place 15 miles away to begin with. There are no roads in and out of Bethel besides the Kuskokwim River, so unless Chris and I wanted to freeze our butts off on the river (which is what I did actually want to do - last time on the river before it freezes!) flying was our main mode of transportation. We could have hiked it across the tundra, but it would have taken us about 8 hours longer than the flight, so we exnayed that option as well. I really want to hike it on snowshoes later in the year, so perhaps that will be another post.

The plane was awesome. It was a 6 seater charter plane, and we could see everything from up in the air. On the flight back, I even got to sit in the front seat next to the pilot. AWESOME. Despite the fact that I was given explicit instructions not to touch anything, I still felt important.

Once we landed, the first thing Chris and I did was look around the "airport." It was a runway with a shed next to it. We were picked up by David, who works for Grant Aviation. I called shotgun on his 4-wheeler, meaning I got to sit on the back of the 4-wheeler while Chris had to crouch in the small trailer behind us, along with the luggage that was being transported. Chris is 6'4", so that was pretty comical.

We tooled around the village for the day, meeting with our client, his mom, his girlfriend, and the Napakiak ICWA (Indian Child Welfare Act) worker. Napakiak has an ICWA office, 2 stores, a municipal building, a water and sewer building, a school, and a bingo hall. We saw it all. Our client also brought us down to the river to show us his boat, along with the other boats that are tied there.

The trip to Napakiak was wonderful. I felt very grateful to be given the opportunity to meet one of my clients face to face and be invited into his everyday life. Also, seeing Napakiak, which is a pretty standard sized village in the YK Delta, was a real gift because now I have a much better idea of what reality is like for my clients. I have seen where they live and can better understand what they are dealing with when they talk about village life. It was so interesting to see the way community works in a place that is so small and disconnected from what most would call modern society. Most people have never heard of Napakiak, AK, but life there is an example of reality for thousands of people that are forgotten about, both in Alaska and the lower 48.

(This is Newtok, a neighboring village, not Napakiak.)

(Sorry that none of these pictures are all that clear. It's difficult to take pictures from a moving plane/while walking.)