Heather Lende
Celebrating a life
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"Smells like an Indian house," said the young Tlingit man as he and a friend came through the sliding glass door from the porch. On the table a foot-square pile of dry, smoked eulachon (pronounced hooligan), a skinny herring like fish, rested on newspaper. Next to it was the remains of a sugary sheetcake. "Cake and fish" he said, and helped himself to both.
I was chewing my own fish, wondering if I should eat the fins and tail. It's actually better than it sounds. Much better than a similar dish my dad eats for breakfast - steamed kippered herring, or "kippers," that smell bad enough to drive a daughter to move, to say, Alaska when she grows up.
Anyway, the reason I was crunching the tougher parts of an eulachon and watching my host snap off the eyeless heads into a neat pile, was an obituary I was writing for the Haines paper of an Alaska Native elder who passed away a few days earlier. I needed her Tlingit name and the proper phrasing of her lineage. This house is the home of the local Alaska Native Sisterhood camp secretary. The cake was leftover from the fellowship meal after the ANS memorial service.
While my host's wife and son sounded out the Tlingit words I came for into English, he carved on a ceremonial paddle and kept me company. There was none of the usual small talk. "I have missed many years of my culture," he confessed.
On the television in the background Jane Fonda was yelling at her father in the movie version of "On Golden Pond." My host ignored it. He is learning the Tlingit language, he said, so that he can believe the stories of his people, not just know the plots.
When he was young, missionaries and the government prohibited Alaska Natives from speaking their language and living traditionally. Now he's a grandfather, and committed to re-learning a culture that he says is not lost, just hidden under his skin. "When I sing the old songs it's like my chest is opened up and my heart is showing," he says.
Meanwhile at the other end of the table, his wife and son have translated the deceased's name, but they're not completely happy with the result. "I'll write Taac, but it's really Taak'd" my hostess says softly, emphasizing the guttural ending sound. On a slip of paper she writes "Susan was of the Raven moiety, from Taac Dein Caan, (Snail House) her name was Naa Goolth Claa." But everyone here knew her as Susie.
Before I left, they gave me a pint of smoked eulachon. The spring fish are prized among Native families. The rendered oil is especially valued for both taste and health benefits.
This year the run has been amazing. Beaches are noisy with shorebirds. White gulls and terns circle sandbars like confetti. Spawned out eulachon litter tide lines.
Last May the annual eulachon run barely happened, and there wasn't much the year before either. No one understands why. Eulachon don't get the attention salmon do, because they aren't caught commercially.
This perfectly sealed jar of fish took the better part of a week to make - from dipnetting at high tide to smoking for three days, and finally canning. It is a generous and unexpected gift.
My hostess also told me where I could find Susie's daughter, and gave me permission to use her family name by way of introduction.
Cold rain blew in the sides of the porch when I knocked at the trailer door. When Susie's daughter answered, I introduced myself. She shut the door. In a minute, she opened it enough so I could explain that I was here to get some help on her mother's obituary. The door shut again. When it re-opened I said -- quickly -- that the paper would like to borrow a recent photograph.
When the daughter returned this time the door opened a little wider. She is beautiful and stern. She looks like she wants to throw me off the porch. But her mother had been a gracious lady. And she is her mother's daughter, so she doesn't.
She wanted to know whom I talked with and what they said. When I told her, she corrected a few things. Then she went inside and came out with the picture for the paper.
The next day there was a funeral at the Salvation Army for an elderly white lady. But after writing her obituary felt like I had. I also knew the family would appreciate my being there.
I listened as the young Native pastor read my story of her life. I was surprised and flattered.
She was raised on homesteads in Wyoming and Nebraska "her mother used to feed the Indians cornbread and biscuits when they came around." The pastor said, reading what her husband had told me. I imagined the door closing as the mother ran to the kitchen to fill a dishtowel with food while the Indians waited on the porch. They must have felt a little like I had the day before, standing on an Indian's porch.
I expected a bolt of enlightenment to strike, filling me with understanding about cowboys and Indians; white people and Natives; missionaries and Tlingits; the afflictors and the afflicted; biscuits and dried fish. The events of the last few days can't be just coincidence. But that didn't happen.
The service ended in a receiving line of hugs for the family. I kept wondering what it all meant, convinced there was more at work here than simply two funerals. The widower broke into my thoughts. "Thank you" he said, "I love you very much."
Hearts all around town were beating in public. I had my answer-love.
As Charlie Joseph, a well-known Tlingit orator, said, "one-way love will die, but love for each other will live for a long time."