Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1919 — MANY NEW WAYS TO AID ALASKANS [ARTICLE]

MANY NEW WAYS TO AID ALASKANS

Washington.—. While educators have spoken of what education ought to do, and have propounded theories the burand life should be synonymous, one part <ff the United States has been ex-periencing—sueh-an—ideal in actual practice. In Alaska each schoolhouse is a social center for the accomplishment of practical.ends. Many of JJie. buildings, in addition to the recitation room, contain also kitchen, quarters of the teacher, and a laundry and. baths for the use of the native community. Every teacher is a social worker. Every district superintendent, in visiting his widely separated schools, must travel vast distances by sled over the frozen, trackless wilderness. Frequently he must risk his life on treacherous, tempestuous waters in a natiye canoe or small power boat. He must _en<lure the violence of the northern storms, the rigors of the arctic winter, and the foulness of the native huts in which he must often find shelter. Directed by Bureau of Education. This wprk is carried on under the supervision of the bureau of education, and the details of current operation are reported upon by William Hamilton. He tells that there are in Alaska approximately 25,000 natives in villages ranging from 30 or 40, up to 300 or 400 persons, scattered along thousands of miles of coast line and on the great rivers. Some of the villages on remote islands or beside the frozen ocean are brought Into touch with the outside world only once or twice a year, when visited by a United States coast guard steamer on its annual cruise, or by the supply vessel sent by the bUreau of education. Many of the settlements have no regular mail service and can communicate with one another and with the outside world only by occasionally passing boats in summer and sleds in winter. During eight months of the year all the villages in Alaska, with the exception of those on the southern coast, are reached only by trails over the snow-covered land or frozen rivers. In spite of the difficulties of the problem a United States public school has been established in each of seventy villages. In many instances the school is the only elevating power in the community. Tuberculosis, pneumonia, rheumatism, and venereal diseases prevail to an. alarming extent in many of the native villages, and in its endeavor to safeguard the health of the natives of Alaska the bureau of education maintains hospitals in five important centers. It employs physicians and nurses, who devote themselves to medical arid sanitary work, and provides medical supplies ■ and textbooks to the teachers to enable them to treat minor ailments and Intelligently to supervise hygienic measures. There are extensive regions in which the services of

a physician are not obtainable. Accordingly, it often becomes the duty of a teacher to render first aid to the injured or to —care for a patient through the course of a serioiTs illness. Supervise Co-Operative Store.’ Another duty of the teacher is to supervise the co-operative store which is owned and managed by the natives, who deal in everything but refrigerators. Strange to say, the government of the white man has to protect the native from the white man himself. To secure the native from the intrusions of the unscrupulous trader, the bureau of education has adopted the policy of establishing reservations to which large numbers of natives can be attracted and where they can obtain fish and game and- conduct their own industrial and commercial enterprises. The settlement at Noorvik, on the Kobuk river, in arctic Alaskans one of the most conspicuous successes of thia policy. With their advancement, in civilization the Eskimos living at Deering, on the bleak sea coast, craved a new home. Lack of timber compelled them to live in the semi-underground hovels of their ancestors, while the killing off of game animals made it -increasingly difficult to obtain food. An uninhabited tract on the bank of the Kobuk i river, 15 miles square, abounding ingame, fish and timber, was reserved by executive order for these Eskimos, ‘ and thither they Migrated in the summer of 1915. On this tract in the arctic wilderness the colonists, under the leadership of the teachers, within two years have built a village with well

lald-out streets, neat single family houses, gardens, a mercantile company, a sawmill, an electric light plant, and wireless telegraph station which keeps them in touch with the outside world.