Hazel Apok: Interview Outline: Section 9 Challenges to the younger generation and learning the basic skills Tape Reference Number: H2002-09-13 Hazel spoke with Bill Burke in Fairbanks, Alaska on April 3, 2002.

Bill Burke: What do you think is the greatest challenges for the younger generation coming up today?

Hazel Apok: Learning the basic skills of survival. They've got to learn that, you know, pretty soon we are not going to be able to afford the price of fuel. You know. I remember when we used to have 2 and 3 cent stamps, and now it's 34 cents, you know. And the price of everything has gone up. And I don't see the cash economy in our community to pay for these things.

A lot of the illegal things that occur in our community is because of economics, you know. They want electricity, they want to watch TV, they want their Gameboys, they want, you know, everything that costs money, but the cash economy isn't there for it, so they enter into illegal activities.

What was your question again? I got sidetracked.

Bill Burke: I was just asking you what --

Hazel Apok: The biggest challenge?

Bill Burke: The biggest challenge for the younger generation coming up today. I mean, you said yourself, you are trying to, you know, learn the traditional knowledge that maybe you didn't have when you were younger because you, basically, maybe weren't paying attention or something, like -- like us all. So what do you think it is for them? You know, are they going to be searching like you're searching now 20 years later?

Hazel Apok: Uh-hum. Just learning basic skills. They don't know how to pack water. They don't know how to make a hole, you know, how to -- and there's certain ways, or certain places. You know, the way the river flows, they just know where the best water is. I mean, you could argue with no -- maybe one elder will say no, that's the best place or the cleanest place or the purest water. You know, the kids don't know what kind of tools it takes to make your water hole and how to protect that. You know, the ice will get real thick when it gets cold. So you learn how to take care of your water hole so that you're not continually going through thicker ice as it thickens over the winter.

How to fish under ice. You don't see, you know -- there are a few elders that will take their grandchildren out and they are teaching them. There's Walter Cook Sr., and he's teaching the third -- you know, the proper procedures in how you set up camp and where you take care of your waste, which side of -- you know, different things. And I was real impressed when I went fishing with him just how he's learned -- it -- it instantly brought back memories about what my parents said to me, you know, you can't go -- you can't go do your -- you know, take care of your -- your anak or your pee there, you've got to do it a certain way. To where you watch where the animals normally travel or where they fly or where they swim. You are continually watching your -- that your food, the food chain, and respecting it. And -- and, you know, making sure you don't get in their way because you want to be able to catch them.

I mean there's stories and myths about why we did certain things and we've lost it, you know, we've lost that knowledge, I think. And that's why I'm excited about talking even to these elders, our kids to my parents. They watched them growing up, so they are trying to remember, too, how things were. And we feel sad about all that we've lost, but we also know that we have to begin somewhere.

And I think the biggest challenge will be to open our grandchildren's eyes and let them know why we continually push education to 'em. You've got to get trained. Something is lost somewhere, something is not sticking with our kids. They are not going off to get trained, they are not doing the things they should be whether they want to be working, you know, as teachers or doctors or biologists.

You know, there's so much that we could be doing for ourselves. And the kids are lazy, I guess, or they don't have the vision or are not thinking ahead about what -- what it's going to take to survive. And those of us that are a little bit older that have experienced how our world changed in such a short time. In the 20 years that I've been around, or the 50 years that I've been around, so much has changed and our children aren't seeing that. They've grown up, you know, with -- with what we have today. Flip a switch, turn a knob. And because we see things changing, we -- we think that they are going to have to go back to their basic skills of wood heating and packing water.

Something's got to give somewhere unless our kids suddenly decide one day that they are going to train to be teachers, they are going to train to -- what I would like to see is our own surveyors, our own operators -- heavy equipment operators, our own -- instead of always importing these skills to our community, I try to tell our kids younger than me to get trained, you know. When they complain about a certain white man, I say, well, you can do it. You got to go get trained. You know, we don't have to have -- have to import all these skills… So it's going to be a long, hard struggle, I think, to get our kids to think differently because we raised them differently, you know. That's the challenge I see.

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