Healing a village

TANANA, Alaska — The 4-H club in this Yukon River village began out of desperation. It was maybe four years ago when Cynthia Erickson, who owns the local store, found herself one night in the sanctuary of the Catholic Church with the body of a sweet 20-something village youth. He had shot himself in the face. She cleaned him up the best she could, she said, and then she went outside to throw up.

There were so many suicides leading up to that one. Six she could think of right away in Tanana and neighboring villages on the river: five men and one young girl. Alaska Native men have the highest suicide rate in the country. Her brother-in-law was on her list. He hanged himself, leaving five children.

There are dozens of theories about why suicide is so common in Alaskan villages. And there are as many programs and committees meant to address it. Maybe it’s lack of connection to traditional culture, people say. Or seasonal affective disorder. Or generational trauma. Or lack of opportunity. Or lack of purpose that comes with living on food stamps. Or the ready availability of firearms. Or brain damage caused by fetal exposure to alcohol.

After that night in the church, Erickson just wanted to heal it, she said, or at least heal what she could. While 4-H clubs are often associated with farm kids — Tanana has no agriculture to speak of — she opened a chapter as a way to keep the kids close. The 4-H slogan “Helping hands, healing hearts” always appealed to her, she said. She put up a sign and opened her house to children soon after that. They did beading, made jam, skipped rocks and sewed kuspuks, traditional overshirts worn by Alaskan Natives. Soon they began talking about problems at home.

Home for these kids is Tanana, 130 miles by plane from Fairbanks, and it can feel like a place from another time, with its few dirt streets and faded log cabins, yards strewn with moose bones. In mid-September, the birches were going gold, and fish wheels turned, scooping the last of the fall chum out of the river. Smokehouses along the shore scented the air.

This kind of rustic beauty attracted the Discovery Channel producers of “Yukon Men” to shoot and reshoot scenes here depicting isolation and survival, making the town famous. Everybody knows the television people, who zip by on four-wheelers and have their groceries delivered by plane.

It’s true the locals in Tanana are skilled at shooting, hunting, fishing and trapping, but in Alaska, this village has become an emblem of emotional survival and of tragedy.

Alaska leads the nation in rates of suicide, sexual assault, child sexual assault, substance abuse and domestic violence. Rural communities, most of them heavily Alaska Native, suffer disproportionately. Tanana, a mostly Athabascan village of 300, has had more than its share of suffering.

Erickson’s cousin Sabie Jervsjo, who works in violence prevention in communities along the river, estimated that most of the households in the village have been affected either directly or indirectly by domestic abuse, either physical or sexual.

People there still talk about the murder 20 years ago of the village’s alcohol and drug counselor. She was killed by her boyfriend, who tried to shoot himself afterward and failed. He’s still serving time, his face severely disfigured from the wound.

Last year the city manager was charged with corruption. And this spring two Alaska state troopers were shot dead in the middle of town.

Erickson started talking to the children four years ago about suicide. She began conversations gently. She asked them to think about how the people felt, the ones who killed themselves. What was it that broke their hearts? Then she asked the children to write.

They returned to her house with essays about alcohol-fueled accidents and a father’s suicide and a family friend who went into girls’ bedrooms at night. These were hard, unspoken things, she said, but the club gave the kids an outlet.

“Our story is no different than any other small community here,” she said. “But speaking out is part of our healing. We’re tired of all this, and we were going to start changing.”

She helped them raise money to take the 4-H club to Fairbanks last fall for the Alaska Federation of Natives convention, an annual gathering of Alaska Natives from across the state. They turned their essays into a presentation.

When it was time, Erickson led a group of 4-H children onstage before a stadium of hundreds of people, each child holding a sign listing something they wanted to change about their village: “Molestation, rape, disrespect.” “Bullying.” “My dad’s suicide.” “Family death.”

Standing at the microphone, she asked that the community pay more attention to its children. The convention stage usually hosts a parade of cultural presentations and speeches. Sometimes the audience can seem apathetic, but the room went for the 4-H kids. And then a line formed.

Conference goers piled cash on the stage. And when the children were done, other children and adults who had similar stories to share greeted them. Erickson felt as if the world were listening. She went back to the village full of hope. Years had passed without a suicide.

But then came the trooper shooting.

Sgt. Patrick “Scott” Johnson and Gabriel “Gabe” Rich, had gone to the village by plane, responding to a call about a local man, Arvin Kangas. Many rural villages in Alaska have no law enforcement. Tanana had a village public safety officer, an unarmed first responder. Kangas had been threatening him and the officer called the troopers for help.

When they arrived at Kangas’ house, Arvin Kangas’ son, Nathanial Kangas, 20, surprised them and shot them at close range. The Kangas men are in jail now, awaiting trial. The tribe banished Arvin Kangas along with another man who, people said, contributed to anti-government sentiment. Some believe that sentiment was a factor in the shooting.

Erickson was out of town when it happened. She struggled to find the words to explain it to the children.

“We’d been trying so hard to be healthy,” she said. “We’d been trying so damn hard.”

In September, Erickson organized a healing ceremony for the village, posting a sign outside her store. Enough time had passed, she said, for the shock to wear off and the grief to settle in. Carrying on is an imperfect art, she told me, but the children of Tanana are better at it than most.

She spends time in Fairbanks, but she is most at home in Tanana, in her old Suburban, with a yellow Lab in the front seat. It’s been almost 30 years for her and her husband, Dale, in the village, selling fuel, operating the store and running a bed and breakfast. Her cellphone is always ringing. She can whip up a massive bowl of macaroni salad for church, coordinate somebody’s flight out of town, strip a few beds and fix the gas pump in the span of about 15 minutes. She’s always keeping an eye on a kid or two.

The day of the healing ceremony, two grade-schoolers she nicknamed Bitsy-boo and Cuppy-cake sifted through a pile of Legos on her living room floor. There was an older girl on the couch, staring at an iPhone. Her parents weren’t in a position to care for her, she said. She had run away many times. Erickson was worried about her. She keeps the ones she worries about most the closest, she said.

Erickson is not a counselor. She’s a mother, a religious woman, a believer in hard work and common sense. Some of what she does doesn’t sit right with others in the village. Her critics say she should work with the local government. But she would rather be on her own.

“To me, my heart is with the children. I feel l can make a difference with the youth,” she said. “I don’t want to go to a meeting and argue.”

Trooper Kamau Leigh showed up on a midafternoon flight. He was there to be part of the ceremony and read a letter from the commissioner of public safety. Before that, he took a ride around town.

Leigh is based in Fairbanks, but his territory covers an area as big as Texas, he said. Thirty or so communities. He was new to his position and hadn’t yet spent much time in Tanana. Often, he said, when he lands in a village for a routine visit, the town turns ghostly. That was true that day. As he bounced down the wide dirt streets, he saw nobody, just the occasional mutt. He passed the house where the shooting took place. The lights were on inside. Other family members still live there.

He could have been one of the troopers responding to that deadly call, he said, but he was on leave, caring for his wife, who had been diagnosed with cancer. He watched the funeral of his co-workers on a television in the ICU. The shootings rocked his agency, he said. That’s the tough thing about working in villages. A routine call can escalate in a heartbeat. And your backup is a plane flight away.

“You always have to be on your game,” he said.

Children started showing up in the Tanana school gym around dinnertime just as a rainbow came out over the village. Erickson and Jervsjo put out a meal of hot dogs, salads and beans.

Erickson is no stranger to loss. She is half Alaska Native and was raised in Ruby, a small community a four-hour boat ride down the Yukon. Her parents owned the store. Her dad was a bush pilot, and her mother was a health aide. She had seven siblings, three of them adopted. Her oldest brother died in a plane crash. Her sister, once Ruby’s postmaster, was beaten and shot to death. Her youngest brother drowned. Her adopted brother died when a nighttime dispute in Fairbanks turned into a shooting.

Violence, suicides and accidents are just a part of rural life, she said.

“If you don’t live in the village, you don’t understand it. I can’t begin to explain,” Erickson said. “Compared to the urban world, we’re faced with death almost daily … The kids are just in the background. It doesn’t even faze ’em.”

The crowd at the school was modest. Mainly it was children, some teachers, a Catholic priest, an Episcopal minister, a couple of evangelical missionaries and some village elders. There was a party on the other side of town, Erickson said. Many adults were there instead. There were no officials from the city. Or people from the television show.

Pictures of the slain troopers had been set up on a desk in the middle of a basketball court. Some boys held up an American flag. A girl who might have been 10 sang the national anthem in a voice just above a whisper.

The 4-H children lined up across the floor, and each of them quoted a word from a Bible verse about forgiveness and good overcoming evil. An elder prayed in Athabascan. The Episcopal minister offered some words. The priest asked the children to head to the front and be blessed, washing their hands in a bowl of water. Leigh read his letter. One of the missionaries took up a guitar. As he played, adults lifted their glasses and wiped their eyes. Leigh, standing in the middle of the gym floor, began to weep. Some children noticed. They approached and wrapped their arms around his legs.

Once the program in the gym was complete, everyone headed outside. Erickson and Leigh lit paper lanterns that inflated like tiny glowing hot air balloons. There were seven lanterns, one for each of the children the troopers left behind and one for each wife left to raise a family alone.

As the lanterns caught the wind, the children ran along the bluff by the river, following as they lofted into the twilight over the Yukon.