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Urbane folks will complain about this video. #1999088
05/19/10 12:52 PM
05/19/10 12:52 PM
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Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
Mira Trapper Offline OP
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This teacher has it right. The modern world is threatened most by it's own ignorance that makes folks to arrogant to understand the valuable lessons this gal is teaching.

http://alaskadispatch.com/dispatches/news/4735-after-school-special-butchering-a-seal


Standing in an Anchorage parking lot with a spring sun shining overhead, Yaari Kingeekuk cradled a green tarp with her tattooed hands and harms, lowered herself to the asphalt, gently placed the bundle on the ground and unwrapped the body of a seal.

"Huh," she said standing over the packaged body parts, including the seal's severed head.

Kingeekuk teaches a two-hour seal butchering seminar that's part of the Alaska Native Heritage Center's after-school program, offered to Alaska Native and Native American high school students throughout the Anchorage area.

Normally, Kingeekuk explained, teaching seals arrive with the head still attached, something she prefers since it allows her to skin the body from tail to ears, preserving more of the hide. Under the tutelage of her grandmother, Kingeekuk learned to hunt and butcher the marine mammals on St. Lawrence Island. More than two decades later, she's teaching big city teens the same tradition.

"When I do this I feel closer to home," she said as she demonstrated how to separate skin from the body, fat from the skin and muscle from the bone.

"OK, girls, guess what you're cooking?" she called out to her students as she pulled intestines from the seal's body cavity as if unraveling a rubbery skein of yarn.

"Ew, and I just ate!" squealed one transfixed onlooker.

"That's awesome!" another called out.

By the time the day was through, the students would have cut on the body, cleaned and braided intestines, rendered fat and boiled ribs, encouraged to jump in every step of the way.

Brianna Mike, a 10th grader at Chugiak High School, spends summers in Kotlik chasing seals with harpoons, but has yet to actually get one. And while she's watched family members butcher before, the Heritage Center show and tell was her first chance to do it herself.

"It's a fun thing to learn," she said, "because you don't really get to see this in the Lower 48. You only see this in Alaska."

But for Mike, who plans to go to nursing school before returning to live in Kotlik, the day's lesson was more than entertainment. It was also a chance to hone a skill she thinks too many Alaska Natives are quick to overlook.

"A lot of Natives won't do this," she said. "They just want to eat it but not know how to prepare it. They're too lazy to get it themselves."

Mike's older cousin, Melissa Okitkun, is an exception. The UAA senior was on hand as a teaching aid, working a side table showing students how to jar and boil fat, turning it into oil, which she said is used as a condiment like ketchup or ranch dressing. Okitkun, who grew up in Kotlik, hunts and butchers seals, and is in Anchorage studying civil engineering. Like her younger cousin, she agrees it's a good thing for Native youth distanced from their heritage either by family habits, time or geography to have a chance at a hands-on butchering experience.

"I don't think many of them go out hunting. If they're able to learn and get a good picture of what our ancestors went through, then one day they, too, will be able to go seal hunting and have it as a meal," she said.

Before long, Kingeekuk shouted again to the crowd.

"Who wants sushi?" she prompted, handing out slices of dark, raw meat. Among the takers was a 1-year-old Yupik boy whose foster family had brought him by for the experience, offering him his first-ever taste of seal. Several students also gave it a try, describing the meat variously as "chewy" and "fishy," and the fat as "funny textured" and "thick, hot and slippery" like "clotty blood."

Other students likened the boiled rib meat to roast beef in texture, but with a stronger flavor distinct to meat from the sea as opposed to a land animal.

Another student teasingly suggested we tell readers that seal oil tastes like fast food from McDonald's and that villagers ride polar bears in their spare time.

Joking aside, the students recognize that while harvesting marine mammals is part of everyday life for many families in Alaska, it may be unheard of for Lower 48 families with little or no connection to Native culture.

"They think we're weird," participant Frederick Walker said. "They just don't understand this is what we've been doing for thousands of years."

Walker, a junior at East High School who plans to enlist in the Marines after graduation, was keeping his hands clean. Walker has been in the center's after-school program, which also teaches dance, art and media and offers Native Youth Olympics training, for three years and has had a chance to butcher a seal before. On this day, he stayed clear to let newer students have a try.

Contact Jill Burke at jill(at)alaskadispatch.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and Stephen Nowers at stephen(at)alaskadispatch.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: Urbane folks will complain about this video. [Re: Mira Trapper] #1999101
05/19/10 01:09 PM
05/19/10 01:09 PM
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Indiana
CMS1972 Offline
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I'm glad that someone is trying to save their heritage. Life moves way too fast for most and is unnecessarily complicated I think. Good on the teacher!

Re: Urbane folks will complain about this video. [Re: CMS1972] #1999127
05/19/10 01:41 PM
05/19/10 01:41 PM
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st. lawrence county ny
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CLT Offline
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Good for them,it is there heritage.We need some teachers like that down here.I noticed rendering the fat was mentioned,wouldn't mind getting some seal oil to mess around with.
Once again good post Mira...


Re: Urbane folks will complain about this video. [Re: CLT] #1999557
05/19/10 07:31 PM
05/19/10 07:31 PM
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
Mira Trapper Offline OP
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Originally Posted By: clear lake trapp
Good for them,it is there heritage.We need some teachers like that down here.I noticed rendering the fat was mentioned,wouldn't mind getting some seal oil to mess around with.
Once again good post Mira...



Our heritage was no different. We used every portion of lamb , pork, cattle or wild game in the Scottish traditions here for 200 years. Nothing was wasted till the latter parts of the last century.

Last edited by Mira Trapper; 05/19/10 07:35 PM.

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Mac Leod Motto
Re: Urbane folks will complain about this video. [Re: Mira Trapper] #1999568
05/19/10 07:42 PM
05/19/10 07:42 PM
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Alaska
akpawpincher Offline
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Wow,
That is one of the most politically incorrect things I've seen and read in a while.

Awesome!


Trapping and predator hunting since 1984: "So that others may live."
Re: Urbane folks will complain about this video. [Re: Mira Trapper] #1999569
05/19/10 07:42 PM
05/19/10 07:42 PM
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st. lawrence county ny
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CLT Offline
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I believe we have all become wasteful.At least once a week I throw something away out of the fridge that should have gotten eaten,lunch meat is a big one.I and my wife have been trying to be more careful.I want my kids to be thrifty and not wasteful.The way things are going in the world I fear that it is important to teach them that.I respect people who utilize as much of the animal as possible when it comes to hunting and trapping and there is no reason why that should not be applied to everyday life.


Re: Urbane folks will complain about this video. [Re: CLT] #1999620
05/19/10 08:27 PM
05/19/10 08:27 PM
Joined: May 2010
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Alaska
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drasselt Offline
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Yes we do waste a lot and while it's true that many hunter/gather cultures utilized many more parts of say an animal (for example bones for beads, needles, fleshers etc.) it is also true there was sometimes waste on a grand scale. In order to ensure survival it was best to kill more than enough, as opposed to barely enough when the 'gettin was good'. Think of a buffalo jump for example. Pretty hard to stop the flow of buff at a given number so if more animals were killed than could be used or salvaged, well that's just the way it was.
The point being there will and has always been waste but the least waste possible is the most desirable in the long run.


you can vote your way into socialism, but you will have to shoot your way out.
Re: Urbane folks will complain about this video. [Re: drasselt] #1999799
05/19/10 10:01 PM
05/19/10 10:01 PM
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
Mira Trapper Offline OP
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strangely people are demonized for utilizing seals but the folks in the Europeon Union have no problem killing 450 to 500 thousand muskrats and throwing them into the garbage pits in Netherlands and other countries that banned fur sales.

http://www.highnorth.no/Library/Trade/GATT_WTO/re-th-an.htm

In the EU a rough approximation is that 5 million animals are trapped annually. This includes at least 1 million muskrat, of which at least 300,000 to 400,000 are caught annually under the Netherlands muskrat eradication program funded by the state. Those who campaign against the trapping regimes in third countries have not publicized the EU figures or the methods used.


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: Urbane folks will complain about this video. [Re: Mira Trapper] #1999898
05/19/10 11:07 PM
05/19/10 11:07 PM
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Alaska
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drasselt Offline
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nice example of 'feel good' greenie 'logic'.


you can vote your way into socialism, but you will have to shoot your way out.
Re: Urbane folks will complain about this video. [Re: drasselt] #2000060
05/20/10 06:33 AM
05/20/10 06:33 AM
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Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
Mira Trapper Offline OP
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Originally Posted By: drasselt
nice example of 'feel good' greenie 'logic'.



It isn't greenie logic as much as it is hate mongering folks who make money of animal deaths as in the fur market and in despising women rich enough to afford a fur coat.


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: Urbane folks will complain about this video. [Re: Mira Trapper] #2000270
05/20/10 12:23 PM
05/20/10 12:23 PM
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Alaska
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perrydog Offline
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They didn't say anything about taking a shovel and the flippers out back and showing the kids how to make stinky flipper...

I worked with a guy that grew up eating a lot of seal, probably well over 75% of the red meat in his diet. We had cooked up some pork chops. He commented that he really didn't like pork chops, they had no flavor. If you have eaten seal, you know they definitely do not lack flavor! If you like that flavor, great....if you don't.

YMMV

phil

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