Diversity and the Natives

Somehow I was expecting to find a bunch of white men with beards and pickup trucks up here and nothing else. Boy, was I wrong. I've found more than my share of men in pickup trucks, but this has turned out to be the most diverse area I've ever seen. If I gave it some thought beforehand I probably should have figured it would be a melting pot mainly because of the native populations and the area involvement in wars. So, I probably should have known, but somehow my instinct just told me it'd be a bunch of cowboys in shacks, as if the land was empty before we got here. We all know that's never, ever the case unless we're talking about the Antarctic.

Because of my misconception I thought I was going to come here and miss ethnic foods. In and around Boston you can eat any kind food you can think up. If not ethnic food in Alaska, I really don't know what I was expecting to eat here. Isn't all food ethnic food when it comes down to it? (I should clarify that. All food made by a person that didn't come out of a box, bag or frozen tray - although those foods are probably as modern American as you can get.) I've had some great food since I've been here, most notably Vietnamese (The owner at the Vietnamese place told me she'd give me a discount next time I come in because I went there two days in a row because it was so good.). I think the different types of food offered in an area can really be a sign of the overall diversity. I was expecting McDonald's and I was given anything and everything I can think of. I'll have to find out if any of the native tribes have any food specialties.

I find native culture really interesting because it's neat that so many different groups of people all over the world found ways to live efficiently off of the land. There are so many different types of areas to live on this planet and natives adapted to all of them. Their nomadic lifestyles made so much sense and unfortunately today we've gotten as far away from that as we possibly could, with no hope of ever returning. White man has paraded through most of the land so far and brought in a "better" way of life. ha! This is the only place I've ever been that I can really feel the influence of the native people, probably because it's so big and wide open and is probably a bit closer to what it used to be than any other place I've been. Sure, Anchorage has Walmart and any other giant store you can think of, but drive 5 minutes outside of the city and you're in the wilderness. Being in Alaska and having gone through the Yukon makes me wonder what the Northwest territories and Nunavut province are like. The best part of that whole deal of the Nunavut province splitting from the Northwest Territories, through some Canadian act that must have had something to do with the natives, is that the name Nunavut means 'our land' in the Inuit language. That's just great. It's like they're saying "leave us alone, Canada."

Speaking of living off the land, I was at a performance recently (which I'll go into in another post because it's funny how things turn out sometimes) where the performer asked who in the audience has ever lived off of a wood burning stove or barrel stove (I may have gotten that name wrong) as their sole source of heat. 1/3 of the audience raised their hands! He was talking about living in the middle of nowhere with no plumbing, heating or electricity, which is horrifying to most people I know (except for you, Marty). In all these little towns I'm encountering it isn't at all weird to live off the grid for whatever reason. And I'm all worried about a toilet. Jeesh.