FROM THE EDITOR - The Wild Bush Yonder
A new film celebrates the aviation exploits of village pilots, including the Alstrom family of Alakanuk.
Family history: Alice Alstrom Henderson gives her uncle Frank Alstrom a hug during a visit to Alakanuk.
We flew without runways, without a lot of things," says Frank Alstrom in a film clip from "Unraveling the Wind," a 27-minute documentary that's now making the film-festival circuit. "Our map was in here," he said, tapping the side of his head.
"On the surface," says Bea Adler, who wrote the film with Mary Katzke, "it's a story about the need for locally trained pilots and how it has spurred an economic renaissance in remote Western Alaska."
This issue of First Alaskans takes a look at the need for local pilots and their increasing numbers – thanks in large part to efforts by Native nonprofit companies and community fishing groups that receive a cut of Bering Sea fisheries profits.
A new batch of Native pilots has big boots to fill, but they're already playing an important role. They're boosting rural economies and reducing costly turnover for airlines.
They're also bringing a rare instinct for the region's rough weather.
Native pilots have a highly developed sense "to know when not to fly," says Scott Bailie, former Bethel station manager for Hageland Aviation in another interview on the film. "That's the biggest key to flying safely."
He notes that Hageland's Native pilots speak Yup'ik, so they can put rural travelers at ease with preflight briefings in both Yup'ik and English, and they treat traveling elders with traditional respect. "And the pilots are people of status themselves in their villages," he says.
"So we have pilots in their villages who get the call, and off they go," says UAF professor Oscar Kawagley, an elder who advised the filmmakers and appears in several clips. "Decentralization! I love that!"
The four women who put the film together have formed a small company called Storyknife, and they hope to make "Unraveling the Wind" accessible to Alaska teachers on DVD as part of future curricula and to the public via their Web site, www.storyknife.com, where some film clips are now available.
The film group also includes director Deborah Schildt, Orianne Reich and Alice Alstrom Henderson. Her twin uncles, Frank and the late Fred Alstrom, took to the air in the 1920s. The Alstrom brothers were flying out of Alakanuk, where a second and now a third generation have become Bush pilots. The filmmaking research brought pride and pain for Alice, who lost both of her parents in a plane crash but gets bright-eyed as she relates her family's arial exploits.
Another film in selected showings around Alaska is "Yuut Yaqungviat," the name of Jaccqueline Cleveland's 26-minute movie and the flight school in Bethel she documents. It features the rural push to develop Native pilots. Supply-and-demand drove that mission: Pilot trainees would come from the Lower 48 for a year or so and then go home, creating an endless cycle of training new pilots.
Alex DeMarban develops all of these themesas he tracks Native pilots through Alaska's history and its aviation business (Page 24). Also inthis issue, Matt Nevala sits down for a chatwith 'Earthsongs' radio host Shyanne Beatty (Page 20). And in the cover story, three experts on 8A corporations share their surprisinglysunny outlook for government contracting in 2009 (Page 30).
Don't miss a word of it!
Quyana,
—Mike Peters
Editor