5-30 SS Eskimo Life

 Dawn Collias is an adventurer to say the least. Long story short, she was living in Boise many years ago with her husband and kids and went to the far reaches of Alaska to visit her parents. For whatever reason, she was  touched by the experience of visiting an Eskimo village. She must have mentioned that she would like to teach the Eskimo children. We pick up the story from there.  “The kids asked if I would be a teacher and I came home and told my husband that I knew what I wanted to do now. I want to go teach out in the bush. I wrote to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and said that we wanted to teach out in the Alaskan bush. We got a phone call from Bethel and she said we are ready to offer you and your husband jobs. I said where is it, I wrote it down, Alakanuk, right on the mouth of the Yukon River on the Bering Sea, 300 people, all Yupik Eskimo, I said okay we need 10 days to decide and she said no I need to know right now. So I got hold of him and he said what you think and I said we should do it. He said let’s go for it. Without any idea where we were actually headed, without pictures or anything. When we went in there in that village, there was no running water, the teachers houses had a gravity fed tank that collected water from the roof if it rained or you put water directly from the river into it, of course the river is where they dumped their honey buckets.