B U L L E T I N Taft Portrait of a Graduate - The Taft School

GRETCHEN SAGAN
An exquisite basket made of baleen
March, visiting rural villages to purchase
Native art objects. The only way to
travel from checkpoint to checkpoint as
a race bystander is by plane, snowmobile,
or dogsled. Susan and her traveling
companions opted for plane travel in a
ski plane flown by Alaskan pilots Terri
Smith, a foundation board member, and
her husband Terry. Susan traveled the
race route with founding board member
Alice and her son, along with
another friend and his son.
The ceremonial start of the
Iditarod race was in Anchorage. “I left
32 inches of snow in Nantucket and
flew to Anchorage where there was
none!” she laughs. Since there was so little
snow in Alaska this year, they trucked
snow into the streets for the ceremonial
start. The actual start of race was held
later in Fairbanks. In fact, a whole new
section of the course had to be created to
provide a snow-covered route this year.
The Iditarod mushers travel 1,100
miles over mountain ranges, completing
the race in anywhere from 10 to 14 days.
Stopping points, mostly for the dogs to
rest and be fed, can be 60 to 90 miles
apart. Since mushers can’t carry all their
supplies on their sled, the checkpoints offer
tents for sleeping, hay bedding
outdoors for the dogs, dog food, plus
many veterinarians who check every
single dog (as the mushers also do).
Entrants usually keep a schedule such
as six hours mushing and six hours resting.
Interestingly, there is no doctor for
the mushers themselves who are lucky
if they can sleep for one or two hours at
each stop since dog care and dog rest
are the priorities.
Finding
Native Artisans
Flying to different checkpoints on the
Yukon River, Susan and her colleagues
met Native artists all along the race route
in very rural villages where the population
ranges from 100 to 650 people. She
says that when they arrived in each town,
the word quickly got out as to whom they
were—no trouble finding the local artists
as a result. In one village, a woman
they nicknamed “the mayor,” an artisan
Northern Exposure
herself, had listened to a radio scanner
so she quickly knew Susan’s group was
flying in. The names of the villages they
visited evoke a Native Alaskan culture
that the rest of the U.S. knows little
about: Kaltag, Unalakleet, Shaktoolik,
Koyuk, Grayling, Eagle Island, and
White Mountain.
Susan and Alice purchased objects
from the families of artisans they visited
who sold the foundation beadwork,
skinwork, and carved ivory. The foundation
believes in paying fair and generous
prices for the beautifully made works,
knowing this is often the only source of
income for many rural Native people.
“They can’t go to K-Mart and buy a new
pair of mittens,” Susan emphasizes.
“They’ll make them out of skins—there
is no fabric store down the street.” Rural
Native houses might be built of plywood
and look as if they’re barely standing up,
but ironically, she says, they often have a
satellite dish outside.
“As you travel and meet the Natives
they have artwork in their pockets,” Susan
states. “They’ll pull a hand-carved object
out of their pockets and say, ‘Do you like
it’” She equates the rural Alaskan stores
that sell everything from milk to snow
shovels to eyeglasses, with Vermont
country stores. “There might be a little
table with unbelievable artwork under
glass. Someone will have made a polar
bear carving from fossilized ivory and
traded it for diapers,” she says. It’s a practical
way to buy what they need and can’t
make themselves.
Hunting
and Gathering
Alaskan Native people still hunt and gather
Susan points out. They hunt and subsist
on whale, walrus, moose, caribou, seal, and
fish. The whole animal is used where possible.
The village of Shishmaref in the far
north is known for its fossilized ivory of
mastodon and wooly mammoth. Before
Taft Bulletin Summer 2003
37