Edward Hoffman: The Once And Only Chief

I wish, and to let one guy who was there, I don't know what the hell he's talking about. I study law myself, you know. I throw years of law school, and yet you flourish. Might as well get the hell down there and let somebody else do to talk. Just because you send it to Steve, and everybody else, and you appear to do all the talk, and that's a bunch of baloney. I'm not finished with you yet. Yeah, I'm not finished with you yet. I see you gave a few remarks a while ago,

which you should have kept your mouth shut. And you know, it's hurting everybody's pride out there. You, for people, and sitting up there, you think you know it all. Point all over my eye. You don't say that to me. I'll be going to talk and tomorrow, when all the senators are here, and we'll find out who the hell is the boss? Instead of these three, I have four people. I don't know what the hell they talked about. They should get the hell officer off the bench there. I used to, when he was looking, I used to go down there, and he stepped about that big, you know, I used to give a smoke to him, cigars. For that time, I was getting used to him, and then finally caught me one day. So, while I said, I'm going to fix you. So, he gave me one of them big, long Canadian cigars. He's really going to make you sick, boy.

I just enjoyed that. I smoked it right to the button, you know. Well, I said, you must have been smoking long time. I said, good many years. He said, I'll let you go now. He said, you could smoke all you want. He never bothered me after that. And many a time, you know, we used to fight around here, and my dad, he used to put me in the cellar, and we used to go in down in the cellar, pitch dark, you know, and the cooler up, cooler for about a couple hours, you know, and then come back up again, you know. He said, now you'll be good boy. Been a couple hours after that. I was fighting again out there, back in the cellar, I wouldn't. Now, what sort of things did you have to? What sort of things did you do to get yourself into trouble that would happen? Well, fighting out those way in support of this fighting, you know. Fighting with the people, nothing more mostly of a people that would come from the different villages, you know. We get into a big fight, you know,

because when I started, we started school in 1920, and it was all kind of people here, and we used to, we said, time we go up then, we go out and fight, you know, so that teacher grabbed me by the air, brought me in and took a big, they got these big rulers, you know, the thick rulers, I took my hand out to you, but it's so hard, I got some mad at her, she was holding hard, I just ripped her, I ripped her, she ran into the bowl. How long did you have to spend in the cellar for that one? Well, I didn't get spent, that was in my bed, I didn't get nothing for that. I just told her my children, what we do in 15 minutes, that's on our own. I've been here in lots about this, this night came very good, you know, this south, which would buy a brand new one. I was coming down at noon today,

and I heard Mr. Cooper, I'm going to take him first, and I'll take you last. Mr. Cooper was bragging about success, he was for success in about two years. But you know, I talked to a bunch of people up in over an anchorage, you know, some cuts of you, not slow and lost the people, quite people, and as the most in anchorage, said that Cooper was against subsistence. Now being, you and him is running for governorship, he changed his mind, he turned Christian, you know. And we're just a minute, I'm not finished, Mr. Cooper. And then, you know, you know, that's a bad thing to do. If you, when you speak, against subsistence, regardless of what you say now,

it's going to come on you at the election, not only from battle, but all the other villages. There's a big piece in the tender times today, I wrote about you. It came out today, today's issue. There'll be one in the thunder drums, maybe tonight. The same speech now can down subsistence. You have, you have no right, or kept your word when you said you were for, for, like, you know, when you was against subsistence, then all of a sudden, two weeks ago, you turned a subject iron for a statistic. Now, you know, that's not the way to treat the people of the state of Alaska. Two weeks ago, and not that this, this city council meeting, or Mr. Quiddham said he was boss. He was going to be boss or he was city manager. And I got thinking about it and it was the more I thought

about it, the angry I was getting. He said, P-A-T-C should not, should not come in and tell the city council what to do. But the P-A-T-C did, when they had their meeting, we didn't tell the city they wanted to advise from the city council and with a meeting like that, you know, that's pretty bad for a city manager. He was elected, the council was elected by the people. Therefore, the council is his boss. Why am you today you know, I'd like to talk about the city of Beto, the city of Beto is trying to run and rescue more people and take their land away from them which I don't like. We're here today to kick the city council out of the management

and the mayor, kick them out and let the nation go to under the city. It's going to take us a little time but take our being done. It's just like I had a piece of land over there, a fish camp right in the corner across my place. The city came in and could fool do if you never asked me one question or not. Not even a question. When I came back from up river, the smoke out was gone. So I wrote the letter to the city that I was going to assume. Well, you say, you can't take it, you can't. We can't, you cannot sue us because the state opened that property. I said, how come the state opened that property when all this land prompted to meet people? That that's why I want I would like to see as soon as possible we could help to clear take over the city

management. If we have to take over everything, we take them over to and let them go on the sidewalk and then they'll say, maybe the cost of only the disaster while let's start with that. Hey, I'm just going to be talking about the grab down parts. I'll already do run that part with where we stop from blind village. We have not viewed up from country that the different organizations accept that they're fighting for themselves. But I heard you say to one of those that you know to fight all the babies. If you had to know to fight all of them, very good faith being here at the meeting today, and I don't think you call a member wrote them for us. They would call them be a meeting here and that. Well, I need to hear a pardon. Well, we said it to all the village camp with the traditional camp, but we needed a word to the village. Here's the guy, can we hear him? He's got the man's house, huh?

Well, maybe that's how the village camp will make a big lie out of it. No, there may be a problem in the camp getting it from the other and Jesus to the rest of the people. But do you have time to keep the village as well as the different houses of camp? All right, I've got to get, I'm going to answer a bit. That's for an adventure, my question over there. I love how they need to hold and start a home site. I've been in the home area from New River. Things got away from me, and I want to know who gives you the authority they can sustain or get all the village corporations. What is up to you? We just have to tell you to tell you to talk about it. And if you can ask the same thing, I think it's something that doesn't provide a decision of taking out some federal land when it happens. And so you should probably talk each other afterwards. Because I think there's something that you can talk about in New Jersey. Well, one more question. See, they took people. If they don't hear it for much, think of you and they say, very good. That's what I do, when he talked about, I don't know.

Lord, I'm down with grain. I will talk, when I left this place in 1939, I left here in 1930, 30 B. I think. And I went to work over Niac and I stayed over there till 1938. And I went down to water mousse, a platinum. I put in the air down there. And then the rest of the time I stayed, and that's something. Well, them days, we was only working for about. Well, I worked before that under river boat here for $2 a day, 18 for me, some 12 to 18, 24 hours a day for $22. $60 a month. That's all we was getting. Yeah, but what is lucky to do is $60 a month? Well, that time $60 a month went a long ways. All we spent it on, pop a ice cream. One night, we broke, go back and get work out of a button.

But only thing that saved us, we had good grubbed. All we wanted to eat, you know, complain about the food coming. And the river boats, river boats. The river boats. It's going. Turned weird. All the way to McGrath. Somewhere. Some bets on the McGrath. The boats used to anchor out across some standard oil. That was the original. The first boat to the Tupper was used to come in there. Back of that island, it was. That was the channel. Back of that island. So where were they getting their supplies from? We brought it in with the state, with these boats, I'm talking from the states. Tupper, they called it. OK, that will come in from the states. Yeah, twice a year. So most of the buildings can't afford to have a place. Because if there's no money around them, a mid-secret Cooper will be in today

maybe today some time. And I will try to convince him to give the buildings just a little something, so we can pull out the liquor and the trouble that you hear really is. It might be pretty hard to do, but it might be not. Well, we should have done this long pub about 10 years ago. But it would be really better this way because you could offer your sisters and brothers, children, you know. And they're coming up here and look at their whole, what their dads or their moms are there. I'm talking about the sons and daughters of my dad. And I think it would be a good experience for them that we just hear.

And maybe they can talk about it in the school, you know. And make an article, article in the newspaper, at school newspaper, of their trip to mid-year December. You know, and I think it would be pretty, pretty important, you know. Let's come on up here. First. First. First. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. And I'm honored to toggle that 300 up and down a Kussman quim and I know how it is, you know, the slick ice and it's pretty hard to be. And they put out a good race. And I would like to prevent these trophy from the Kussman Quim Valle, N speech Association, to the first prize. One big thing, went up to the chair to person order sharing the meeting, and then the

senator told me he came back and then the chairman said, well, we got to have a little break. He says, I see the big chief and the little chief of the Kudzka Khurveri, I covered it. So they stopped and we call our name. He stood up and gee, he told us, stood up and boy, everybody was clap, a lot of the serial wave of their heads and everything. It was interesting to listen to them guys, you know. I'll be talking tomorrow when I get to talk down there. I get the picture of us when we went to the school kids in 1921 when they first opened the school. And I'll talk about that after a while. I have to picture with me and we'll talk about it. And this ship jibboons of life, we went to school together, quite a few of these old type Peter Borschka and Willie Rabbit on all them guys that passed away.

So I'll be talking a little bit more about it. I think it'll be interesting for me to tell the story in front of everybody. I got a good one now, you know, every year me and my dad and this denny parent that's a need as uncle. We use the kitty, we use the, we bring kamos and a booty-boos in from the states and we get them bread, you know, we get them bread, you know, and we butcher like this one this time we had a butcher, our meat, a bit crooked, so we butcher the meat and we started home in the evening, you know, we started the moon was shining and shining, you know, and maybe about 2030 below, we were all wrapped up, and we come down, we was coming down, we got

opposite of, there's an old home village on this side of the river, a new home village and across the river, so we got about a thousand feet away from that place and I happened to glance over there at the graveyard and up pops a big ball of fire, you know, maybe six to eight feet in diameter, it rolled down the bank, it was traveling, it was traveling on top of the ice, about four feet and we kept it going, you know, we didn't know what tell it was, we kept it going, we got there, we got about a hundred feet and our dogs, they just stopped, reared back, stopped short, you know, and by golly, when they stopped

a big ball of fire past us, you know, went right up the bank into the other graveyard and disappeared, and I told my partner let's get out of here and get out of here fast, but first I had a Martin Capra, you know, it was cool, I had to tie it up and I don't know how, how I lost it, I looked on top of my head, there was no body cap, it disappeared. He got to eat that, they fell out of my head, you know, and fell in the snow a little ways, I like to be today, you know, I would think about that, I don't even know how they have, they cut the hell out of my head and they were no feeling, you know, when they

put a hat up, he would feel it, you know, and boy we got, we got there hell out of there fast, too, I tell you, boy that's one of the big experience we had, you know. Yesterday I turned on a radio and I heard that they were going to have a reunion up here and for the last four or five days all they wanted me to do, give them the speech and they were going to get one today. I was old enough to see what my father coming that place for a few children, not my family, but on all the families, got big water tobacco in their mouth, they see my dad come in, they swore that's why he looked in their mouth, he was no tobacco, they swallowed everything, but he went out, they were like, keep it all up. But I I have to tell you, my last, now I got a picture that's true, but when we were

going to school up there and you had a big fat school teacher who knew, who came here looking to help daddy, he just got surprised, it's just down like daddy, tell me about All right, she was about three acts and is white, you know? I'm a very nice person, very nice girl from the front of our teacher. She's a good person. And then we had a small school house, you know? And every day I think what's going on for ten days, she comes with a lie of every day she turns her butt to her butt in my nose. So I was getting tired of that. So this morning, the 12 days she came in, I took them, I didn't pretend you put a pencil pen in, but she came by stuck her butt to get my nose.

I proddered her right. Boy, she jumped her and he was he the way that she jumped, but five steps on her nose. Never bother me again. Yeah, you look at her and you're just like you remember? Yeah, you look at her, you look at her. What kind of clothes did you see had on? I guess I found out for a baby. Any words I'm not in. I'm not in. I'm not in. I'm not in. I'm not in. I'm not in.

I'm not in. I'm not in. I'm not in.