Alaskan Indigenous on Palin

By Darlene/Deennaa  –  former resident of my birth home Alaska

I am an indigenous native of Alaska – Indian.  There has been no mainstream news & even little more in Alaska about what Sarah Palin thinks and does against our Natives of Alaska.  I’m sure I’ll be waiting til hell freezes over to see it in the public arena anywhere.

She opposes tribal sovereignty – which also covers, under the Federal Indian Child Welfare Act(ICWA) the right to keep our own children.  Where is anyone telling this in national news?  She opposes our inherent (and by Federal Law) our rights to our traditional way of feeding ourselves by hunting & fishing – this being called the "Subsistence issue".

This Subsistence battle is one of long standing in Alaska government and politics and IS well known in Alaska.  Where do we hear of this in national news?  She is shown so obscenely in pictures of hunting OUR moose and  caribou and is praised for this, yet she is adamantly against the Federal Law that is our protection for the  Subsistence way of life we have known for ice ages.  Not only moose & caribou, but  her and her husband  want to  further pollute our beautiful state with gold mining ( she’s a gold digger in all senses of the meaning plus) and  more sports fishing to take away from  the indigenous peoples of Alaska who are in such dire straits out in our villages that if it were not for  Subsistence,  would  suffer malnutrition and more hunger than we already suffer.  Our people do not live in the same condition that Sarah Palin does.  They do live in Big beautiful lakefront homes near the city hub of Wasilla and Anchorage, Alaska.  The only way to most of our villages is by airplane.  Where do we read of this plight in mainstream lower 48 news?   I am so disgusted and rageously angry at this person who has nothing of the meaning of what she claims inside of her:  she has left out the "human" in the phrase human being.

Everything she stands for is for her and hers only.  American people are so dumbed down if they think she will make this country first.  She will make herself first and her country last.  Just for starters.

It is our opinion that in Alaska, she is just another "Outside" transplant.  Read the history of where those people in the Valley (Matanuska-Susitna Valley) of which Wasilla, Alaska is hub – read the history of their origins.  They are transplants from the lower 48 for the purpose of making a claim on our lands here.  Her family is a part of that.

I have hated Wasilla for what became of it and for what it now is.  It is near blasphemous to me.  On the western edge of the city there used to be a little cabin.  It had become a little museum and then a little library and then torn down.  That little cabin was built by my mother’s grandparents who came from the village of Chickaloon, Alaska.  This village also was built by my near ancestors who had traversed from Copper Center, Alaska, where the infamous Kennicott Copper mine Co. raped the land of my forefathers there.  We are the Ahtna Dene peoples from Copper Center, Alaska.  We walked all over this rugged land where it fed and nurtured us until this very day.  My mother, grandmother and aunts and uncles would walk from Chickaloon to their little cabin in Wasilla – a very long walk which took days and days to get to.  You see, Wasilla was our summer fish camp.  Not that Palin alone finished our Wasilla (which by the way is a Dene name), but she did do ruinous things herself to Wasilla as you have read about in the news.

It is my opinion that this woman is incredibly dangerous for Alaska, the USA (lower 48) and the entire world for the possibility of her inheriting the presidency if these two liars are elected.  She is dangerous on so many levels.  The world is too complicated and layered for her scant and next to nothing knowledge of it.  She is a charming deviant and narcissist.  No mistaking it.  I despise her for her intents towards my native Alaskan peoples and their already impoverished conditions out in our villages.  The sell-outs we always have among us, but the majority of our peoples will truly suffer the most under her tyrannical time in office.   I am sure the majority of american people do not know and are not aware of the ugly statistics of the indigenous Native Alaskan people and the conditions under which too many of us live.  Always the highest of statistics of every social ill that befalls a genocided people.  Yes, genocided.  We are one and the same as our lower 48 American Indian brothers and sisters.  Just transpose the Alaska Native Land Claims Act(ANCSA) with the Treaties made with all the lower 48 Indians.  You have the same scenario.  Our only difference is that because of distance, our broken promises (ANCSA) came much later – 1971 to be exact.  Not that we did not suffer under the Territorial system before that because we most certainly did.  The terrible reality is that so little has changed for our people.  If life was supposed to get better for us then why haven’t the ugly statistics of our condition of life gone down?  No, they go higher than ever.  To me one of the worst is our youth suicide rates.  It is abominable and so grievous to us.

To give you a clearer picture of how we indigenous peoples of Alaska have survived into modern times, I suggest the book by the Canadian Judge Thomas Berger called "A Village Journey" and one other written by Harold Napolean of Hooper Bay, Alaska – a REAL Yupik eskimo man(not a very watered down Todd Palin type) – Harold’s book called "Yuuyarag: The Way of The People".

This is getting long.  I don’t know that any politician alive will be good for us.  There is no proof for it in the history of this country.  Only words to get our votes, then nothing.  Palin will be – IS – one of the worst to come along.  Afterall, she is a product of what america was and has become up to this point in the short history of this country.  To us, that is not being negative.  It is just a point of view from a stark raving reality.

All the best to you and tsen’an (thank you)for the invitation to speak and I remain, still a subscriber to your site.