Make Prayers to the Raven; The Bible and the Distant Time

The grandfather used to say it's just like a war if there's a water raising fast, because there's no way we can't stop it. This is the world Raven made. At first it was a world of order and perfection, but Raven is a trickster. He took his creation apart and made it over as the imperfect world we have today, a world where rivers flood and people die. Each spring, Koyakon people watch the rising river with anxiety, remembering the destructive floods of past years. Older villagers tell a story from the distant time when Earth was covered by a flood. Only the animals were saved.

Raven, we beat Krah and Raven put all the animals on that graph by pears, just by pears that's odd, no calves or nothing, and that's the best way to start, that's the balance of the new we have. Guddon Sydney is both the distant time and the stories that have been passed down through generations of elders. These stories describe the beginnings of the world. Koyakon people know that they are like stories in the Bible, filled with wisdom and truth. All the animals are Noah's Ark by pears, and that's exactly what our stories is, but only it's on the raft. The story of Raven's raft was told long before anyone brought the Koyakon, the story of Noah's Ark.

Knowing this, Koyakon people say the one proves the truth of the other. She's like what you learned from Bible, nobody's so Bible, nobody in Earth is living now that's sort of first Bible, so it's the same thing, our belief is the same way. The Koyakon people live in the northwest corner of North America. Their traditional homeland is just below the Arctic Circle, in Alaska's interior, along the middle Yukon River and its largest tributary, the Kayukuk. 2,000 Koyukon live here today in 11 widely scattered villages. They belong to a large family of Native American peoples called Athabaskan.

Their neighbors to the north, the Eskimo, have a completely different history, language, and culture. These are times of far-reaching change for the Koyukon. Contact with the outside world is clear in every part of their lives. The traditions still flows deep, like the river, with its great fields of ice, grinding past the village each spring. The mixing of two cultures is striking in Koyukon religion. For while they still follow the beliefs of their ancestors, the Koyukon have also become Christians. The people have sought a balance between biblical faith and the older creed in which everything in nature has a spirit and must be treated with respect. Hundreds of ice running these to just keep us quiet, they just tell us to shut up and you're too smart to talk about big things like that.

And so we learn to respect ice or water or anything. And you're not supposed to even through sticks on it because there is a spirit. The Bible and the distant time, how have the Koyukon been able to bring these two seemingly different ways of believing together? Is it possible to become a Christian and still follow the older path of an American Indian religion? The struggle to find a balance between these two worlds is brought into sharp and sometimes tragic focus in the religious life of Koyukon people today. You know I was off balance for quite a while because ever since I remember I was living an Indian way, an Indian way of praying, everything, the language and then in 1950 we finally got priest.

Before that we learned a little bit about church and I start getting mixed up who is right. Am I supposed to go by Bible or the way I learned by my grandfather and the other old people and I was off balance for a long time I don't know what's way to really believe. Wilson Sam, an Episcopal lay minister brings his congregation together to bless the river and to ask the rivers blessings. The reason why we're going to have this is we want to give thanks to God for letting us use the ice. We ask you know the bliss, the water that we are about to travel on for the summer. We ask you to watch over our peoples that travel on it, guide them and give them grace through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. We ask the rest of the Lord, thank you to God. In His own old folks His always taught us He's to say,

He's got the whole world in His hand, He's got the whole world in His hand, He's got the whole world in His hand, He's got the whole world in His hand, He's got the whole world in His hand. He's got the wind and the rain. And in His hand He's got the wind and the rain. And in His hand He's got the whole world in His hand. He's got everybody here, and there's a man who's got everybody here.

And there's a man who's got everybody here, and there's a man who's got the whole world and there's a man. He's got the whole world and there's a man. The pack killer was our first priest in Houston, and he started preaching, and then I start killing him stories. And he really got interested and I said, I can't read the Bible, but quickly I heard sound pretty much like ours. And in one time I tell him, you know, Pat, I'm really off balance right now. I'm learning more about church, but I'm carrying my grandfather's way or our old people, and he said, you have to carry both. You have to carry both. Both often is right.

There's people who are given power from God to heal one another. Boy, I feel good. The comfort Catherine Adler receives from her faith. Also comes from knowing that the Godones in these stories are true. Changes in these stories are strictly forbidden. Me and my sister Flora, we got so tired of listening to the same story, and we kill each other. My sister said, listen, wake up this story that will have. And I said, I kill her, you know, in India. I said, gee, that's a good idea. I would hear a new story. And my grandmother heard us. I can't. Don't you ever make a story. He said, who told those stories? You know, that we're killing you.

We didn't make up those stories. So we really believe it because that's all we know is the Indian way. So there too, I found out we're not supposed to make stories. Steven and Catherine Adler live in Houslia on the Kayakook River, 250 miles west of Fairbanks. It is late May. Ice still clogs some of the creeks and sloughs. The Adlers check a fishnet for white fish and pike. Stories from distant time teach a way of proper conduct toward nature. These rules are called together Hootlani. There are hundreds of them, all based on a profound respect for the natural world. Animals, plants, everything in nature has a spirit, which might be easily offended, especially by someone who is careless, arrogant, or wasteful. For traditional Koyukan people, these rules are as wise and as binding as biblical commandments. We don't talk about animals like if it's nothing.

That's really Hootlani. Even water, you know. Finally, there's so many Hochlani. Did he used to tell me mom's best work is Hochlani? Because I see. Hochlani don't do that. Hochlani don't say that. Hochlani don't step over that and everything. That's what my grandmother taught me, my grandfather. Everything was Hochlani. He never let us talk about sky or moon or sun or star. I was 14 when my grandmother died. They never let me talk about those things. They always tell me, don't talk about something big, or don't talk like that. Your mouth is small.

My sister, Flora, used to see I just was my mother's biggest their side. We thought they mean really small mouth. And here, you know, we're not big enough to talk about big things. It is a watchful world. Success, even survival, depends on a person's ability to stay in a state of grace with nature. People do not live by cleverness or skill alone. Animals must give themselves to the hunters. The weather must be kind. The river and ice must favor them. The coyocans say it all depends on luck. But luck is given only to those who show respect, who follow the rules and humble themselves before the higher power of the natural world. For the coyocan, there are sins against nature, just as there are sins against men.

Morality extends to all the world. You're just getting yourself fat luck by not respecting the animal. Like that white fish we caught last night this morning, we just cut the head off. And, you know, do what we wondered with it. But last night, I wouldn't cut the head off until it's overnight. It's dead. It's really dead. Not cutting him while cutting his truth while it's alive. That's our way of praying for our land. It is respect. Many older coyocans have found a comfortable balance between the old ways and the new.

But if they have found the best of both worlds, it is not always so for their children and grandchildren, caught in a confusing web of choices and cultural conflicts. Sometimes, the pressures are too much to bear. When we use a dance song for the old country, we just cut the head off. Yes. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

Oh, sure. I forgot there. And did you fly from Makers? Oh, is Makers? Oh, you know. Yeah. Oh, you're nothing wrong with us flowers. Yeah. If you come from Makers, that's how I start dancing. Oh, you put the hat on there. Oh, you put the hat on there. Oh, you, uh, snap. And that's something to tell. So, what time? So, what time? So, what time? So, we did work. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So, I need to bring the dance. The village is like a great extended family. When someone dies, everyone gathers to help. Her men are comforted by friends. She is not a good one. She is a good one. She is a good one. She is a good one.

She is a good one. She is a good one. She is a good one. She is a good one. She is a good one. She is not the only mother here whose child has taken his own life. How I used to think about my boy. How is he good to speak? No, don't drink. How many times I used to say? Don't drink your boy's. Please, not to taste me. I have a lot of people who are here. I am good. I am good. Raven, he made a human. So, did this live forever, or years and years, hundreds of years? And then, pretty soon, he said the same thing. You know, quite make it too easy for a piece of it. nothing will happen. So he make it so he just die and then, you know, you never come back alive. It's been many months since Ermine Olner's son died. People gathered then for a funeral

and a burial in frozen ground. Now, on Memorial Day, surrounded by the new life of spring, they replace the temporary cross with a permanent one and add a fence and grave cover. For a time, spirits of the dead remain near the living, reluctant to join the other world.

Bits of the food they loved are burned in a fire to comfort them and to ease their loneliness. Ermine Olner offers tea and moose meat. The spirit of her son is nourished with the sacrament of smoke. What's going on?

Family members clean and groom the graves of their loved ones and repair flags torn by winter gales. People cook meat and fish over open fires and burn food for the spirits of departed relatives. There's a lot of accidents happen nowadays and for me because we're breaking too many of our beliefs. Just like breaking laws.

Do you think that we should keep up most of our belief about hatani, you know, not make fun of people or animal? Maybe there's too many things that's not right going on and there's an accident. Now that doctors start to help people from dying of natural death, there's accident because things are so mixed up and breaking too many of our beliefs. That's what I believe. Heaven is not remote. It is not far away. It is here on the land and along the river where the footprints of the living are impressed and ground where ancestors walked and where the spirits of the dead drift forever on the wind. It didn't take us too long because we had a lot of help.

We're done. I was doing this for a good body of mine. You're a lot younger than me but you're really good friend of mine. It was easy for me to talk with him. So I missed him too and so really thank you that you all give to us and that you could really help us and that show our respect and care and show it that we care about the sun she lost. After a communion with the dead, there is communion among the living. People of Hoseley are gathered at the home of Irma and Freddie Nolaner to feast together once more on their best traditional foods, moose, wild birds, and fish. Sharing food from the land is among the most cherished of customs. It brings people together, expresses their connection with the land that directly sustains them and reassures them that no one stands alone, even for a moment.

I learned a little bit about orphan people and in there I never see anyone saying any respect of a tree or an animal. How to respect an animal and that's what I found different is that I never see any place where white people respect anything the way we do. Just like you would say, Supreme Court, that's a really big law you have to bring to Supreme Court. That's the way it is with us and their respect, their belief we have. It's a big thing. But it's not recognized.

People think, well, it's today, you know, it's nowadays. Whatever belief we have, I guess these are things we can get by without it. But it shouldn't be, really. We should have tried to keep up what we know. The blending of two religious traditions has not come without struggle. There is special promise, however, in what the Koyukan people have done. They have combined the wisdom in two great religious traditions, Christian and Native American. They have kept human beings and nature together in a single community, bound by principles of moral conduct. They have approached the earth as they would another human, with humility, restraint and respect. When I see things that's not right, it's hurting me inside. That's not the way my grandmother told me, you know, things like that.

Because I have different belief, I mean, I have a belief that our people left with. And we really shouldn't do away with it. We should at least try to teach our kids what little we know. In spring, the sun no longer sets. It slides along the northern horizon, through the long hours of quiet twilight. The days of summer, the days without night, will soon begin. The days without night, will soon begin. The days without night, will soon begin.

Major funding for this series was provided by KUAC TV, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Arco-Alaska Incorporated, and KUAC-Cladsona, limited. To learn more about KUAC on Athabaskan Culture, read Richard K. Nelson's book, make prayers to the Raven. So we asked me to come down and buy a six-packer here.

Well, I don't think my prayers are on. Tell me. Sure. Thank you.