Four Quarters of Light (30 page)

I laughed. ‘But not old enough to be an elder, I hope, Patrick?'

‘Maybe,' he answered enigmatically, but this time I was sure there was some devilment and a vague hint of a smile behind the word.

We were by now almost back in the centre of the village and more people were thronging around the food tables.

‘What part of Ireland was your mother from?' I asked, assuming from the earlier reference to her that she had died.

‘I do not know,' he said coldly, and then, with some passion that I knew veiled other emotions, he announced, ‘She has gone,' and abruptly walked off.

I was totally confused by Patrick's mercurial behaviour. Obviously he had sought me out for whatever reason, yet now he had stormed off for no reason I could understand. I wondered if there was any point trying with him.

Later, I made my way back to the washeteria for the dedication
of alternative energy, a ceremony that had been organized by the young Gwich'in adults as a statement of how they saw the future of the wilderness. To a community that lived by subsisting, alternative energy produced by solar and wind power was an obvious extension of their normal way of life. As one villager explained, ‘Nature will give you what you require, but you have to work with it. We do not need to gouge open the earth and tear it apart for a few barrels of oil. Look out there, what do you see?' Before I could answer he continued, ‘Silence and beauty, a world at peace with itself. Now close your eyes and look again.' I did as he asked and held my eyes shut as he spoke. ‘Now you see roads and trucks, airfields and oil platforms, storage depots and processing plants, turbines and engines, and people everywhere. And what do you hear? Noise, noise everywhere. It is the earth screaming, and it is my people dying in their hearts. If we stand by and allow this thing to happen we will be killing our own souls.'

I had opened my eyes as the man was speaking. He wasn't looking at me as the words spilled from him, he was looking out across the land. There was a quite stoic composure on his face, though to me his despair was Job-like. All of us need these wilderness places in order to re-harmonize the soul, cleanse the spirit and detox all the clutter and contagion we take into ourselves without knowing. As I stood beside this man and felt his prayer pass out over the land, I knew his words were not romantic rhetoric or sentimental indulgence, they were a war cry and a warning. And they were coming at me off the land itself.

I could only pat my friend on the shoulder in an act of sympathy and solidarity. He turned to me with the same stoic stillness in his face and nodded. Then we both walked quietly to where the dedication ceremony was to take place.

It was warm and bright, and most of the village was in attendance. The old chief was there, having been helped into a chair, and Evon Peter gave a short speech about the importance of alternative energy as a way forward for the Gwich'in. This was why he particularly wanted the young adults of the tribe to dedicate the installation. I looked at the dozen or so young people
gathered in front of the building. All of them stood behind a large red banner with a yellow motif outlining the silhouette of a male caribou, which formed the backdrop to a raised, clenched fist. I was stunned by the militancy of it but could perfectly understand the sentiment behind it.

Chief Evon introduced the group by name, adding personal details about each of them, but he reserved special praise for my friend Patrick whom he described as a true Gwich'in who honoured the ideals and lived the life better and more fully than anyone in the village. Such was his standing that Evon good-humouredly hinted that Patrick might one day be chief. True to form, Patrick stood motionless and unmoved, but I was convinced he was intimidated, not so much by the praise heaped upon him as by the announcement that some of the Gwich'in youth would give short speeches about their lives and why being Gwich'in was important to them. There would not be enough time to hear them all speak at this ceremony but Evon promised that the rest would continue back at the village – except Patrick, whom he required for some other duties.

Only the first few of these family honour speeches had been delivered when thunder rolled over us and a sudden downpour forced us back into the hall sooner than expected. The impromptu nature of the storm and the consequent rescheduling of the event allowed me a little time with Chief Evon. I casually asked him what had happened to Patrick's Irish mother. He informed me that he understood she had lived in Arctic Village only for a short time and had left when Patrick was a very young baby. His father, with the support of the tribe, brought him up alone. The chief then became confessional as he continued. ‘To the Gwich'in this was a very sad thing to have happened. The family and the community are of central importance. For a mother to leave her child would be most unusual. She might leave her husband, particularly if he was a poor provider. She might take the child and live somewhere else in or near the village. But to leave and never return like she was dead or is a ghost! This is not the Gwich'in way. Such things do not happen.'
He looked at me. ‘What I am saying is that such things do not happen within the villages. But often, when families leave to live in the cities they have many problems and they break up. In the village environment a mother would never desert her young child. She would share her troubles with the tribe and they would do what they could to help. The Gwich'in are one family.' He paused again. ‘I must go now.'

I thought this over for some moments and it began to dawn on me why Patrick would not make the honour speech like the others, why he was such a fine hunter, and perhaps why he had chosen to stalk me. I decided there and then to reverse the situation and hunt him down.

I found him outside the community hall. He was wearing a sleeveless jacket over a white T-shirt with the same caribou-andfist symbol emblazoned on it; the back of the jacket had the word ‘security' printed in bold letters. A few of the other older teenagers wore similar jackets, though I could not understand why a security team was required. Patrick was gently shooing some of the smaller children off the steps that led up to the hall so as to allow the ceremony to continue indoors.

‘I have two small boys about their age,' I said, as if our conversation that morning had not happened.

‘You left them in Ireland?' he asked, accepting my casual remark.

I explained that I had brought them to Alaska with me but that I had left them in Anchorage with their mother. He nodded at this, then immediately changed the subject, asking me lots of questions about Ireland – what it looked like, how many people lived there and what type of animals we hunted. I answered him as best I could without going into too many complicated details, although he did seem really surprised when I said it was a large island though smaller than the Yukon flats. I had no proper answer for Ireland's shortage of wild animals, which perplexed him.

‘What will you teach your sons to become?' he asked.

This, I thought, was going to be difficult to answer. The
Gwich'in learned everything in a family context; school was a separate kind of learning for them. I tried to explain that my children would choose their own course in life when they were old enough. But it did not convince him. He sat silently thinking about this.

‘Have you ever been to Anchorage or Fairbanks?' I asked.

‘No,' he replied. ‘Only to Venetie a few times.' He explained that his father had been to the city and to America but that he would never go to these places. He would stay here always! Then he asked me how long I would stay and why I had come. He hardly seemed to take in the answers before asking me more questions about Ireland, then about my wife, and about my own parents and grandparents. I laughed to myself. I had come to hunt him down and here I was answering questions as if he was the author researching a book.

I asked him which season he preferred, the winter or the summer. ‘The hunting season,' he answered. And which animal did he prefer to hunt? He looked at me with genuine puzzlement and shook his head slowly. I realized immediately that hunting to him was not a matter of choice or preferment; hunting was something you did out of necessity, and there was a time for hunting every species. Had his father taught him? ‘My father taught me everything,' he replied. I noticed his tone was getting less dismissive when I brought up family matters. When I asked if he was still alive, he told me he was but that he was out at the airstrip. I assumed he was waiting for a supply plane.

‘Chief Evon says that one day you might be chief also,' I said, changing the subject.

The statement seemed to pass over him entirely, and he answered flatly, ‘I will never leave!' I wasn't sure what exactly he meant, but it seemed to bring an end to our conversation.

‘We should go in now,' I suggested, and we both climbed the steps into the hall.

The rest of the young Gwich'in speakers were already assembled. In turn, they introduced themselves and explained who their parents were and what they did. Then they related
stories about growing up in the wilderness, and all of them addressed the importance of the Arctic Refuge as a home. Most of the young women were at college and would invariably end up working in the cities; only one young woman declared her intention of returning to work in the villages. She had studied and was in her final year as a social work student. But her story was not as cosy as the others. She spoke slowly, often looking at the floor or fixing her gaze on an empty space at the back of the hall. She did not display the same outgoing self-confidence as many of the others. Indeed, her demeanour reminded me of Patrick, though she seemed more withdrawn whereas he was sullen but more assured. At first I thought she was just unused to public speaking, but it was more than that.

The young girl didn't just pause to reflect on what she was saying, it seemed that the whole weight of what she was about to say was too much for her. Many of us in the hall shifted about uncomfortably, embarrassed by her discomfort. Then she lifted her eyes from the floor and declared with a faltering voice how she had been raped when she was younger. The embarrassed fidgeting stopped. The whole room sat in suspended silence. Slowly, and with great effort, she explained how she had been assaulted at university, by another native person, and how she had left her studies for several months and come home to her village. It had taken her a long time to learn to live with what had happened. But even as she spoke it was obvious she was still having great difficulty dealing with it. Yet here she was, perhaps eighteen or twenty, opening up to the community of the village, and as she spoke so haltingly I could understand that she believed her own community could help her and eventually take the pain from her. She concluded by stating that she knew many young Gwich'in would have difficulties going into the world outside and that is why she wanted to return and work with her own people. When she finished and handed the Tok on to the next speaker, it was obvious that the strain of her confession had taken a great toll on her, and I was convinced that this was the first time she had spoken of the trauma to anyone bar a few very close friends and immediate family.

The next two speakers were young men who spoke on the different ways in which the Gwich'in had to take control of their future and assure the future of the Arctic Refuge. There was militancy in their voices, and in its way it inadvertently added to the poignancy of the young woman's tale. As they were speaking, I noticed Patrick take up a chair and seat himself at the speakers' table. The reaction on the face of Chief Evon informed me that this was an unexpected event.

When the last of the speakers returned the Tok to Chief Evon, he simply announced that there was one more person to speak and he introduced Patrick as the finest example of truly living the Gwich'in way of life. A young man, he insisted, who was an example to everyone, young and old. A hunter whose skills and knowledge of the wilderness were without compare, and who used his skill in the service of his whole community. There was never a hungry mouth in the village when Patrick went hunting. But the accolades were lost on Patrick.

He stood and spoke softly but directly, first giving his name followed by the simple declaration that ‘I am Gwich'in, from Arctic Village'. Then he continued by stating to the assembly what he had told me, that he had lived all his life in the village with his father, who taught him everything he knew – how to track and hunt, how to skin and tan hides, how to read the sky in winter and in summer, how to survive hundreds of miles from the village in the depth of winter. He could sew and fashion clothes from a skin. He could make baskets and he could cook. But as he mentioned cooking I knew he meant that he knew all the rituals associated with preparing animal food. As he continued in his soft, almost self-effacing tone, I had the impression that Patrick was neither speech-making nor self-promoting. He was stating the facts of life in a Gwich'in village, and behind the facts was the rhetorical statement, what more do I need? Also, he was implicitly demonstrating that he had everything he required for himself and his village yet he took nothing from anyone. Unlike the oil industry! I was sure Patrick was unaware of the implications of his speech, and I am sure it took as much effort for him
as it did for the young woman. Yet I knew also that Patrick needed to make this honour speech in the same way she did – to locate herself and to give herself an identity the rape had stolen from her; to be part of something that would love her, define her and nourish her. When Patrick ended his short speech by saying ‘No matter who comes or who goes I will stay, for this is my home!' I sensed he was not so much throwing out a challenge to the oil industry as exorcizing the long-buried pain associated with his mother's desertion.

I had to admit that these speeches had more effect on me than all the arguments about the disastrous footprint of the oil industry in the Arctic. They were living testimonies and had the power of living reality over mere facts.