We In Pieces Quotes

“All the guts spilled onto the meat so I can’t eat it no more. And another tuttu got hit in the back, and nobody takes a tuttu that’s hit in the back.”
― Elizaveta Ristrova, We In Pieces: Tales From Arctic Alaska

“We’re facing a huge threat from a project the federal government is now considering for the Beaufort Sea—” “Who’s we?” someone interrupts. As long as you have a drop of Iñupiaq blood, even if you look completely white, you can say “we” without having the rest of us raise our eyebrows. Everyone knows Vik doesn’t have a drop of Iñupiaq blood and has been on the Arctic Slope all of eight months. Vik, who doesn’t realize the significance of having said “we,” turns to look at the speaker and says matter-of-factly, “Everyone who lives here and anyone who cares about life in the Arctic.” One of the elders mutters something in Iñupiaq, and Gill translates, “We—in pieces.” “What does that mean?” Vik asks. The elder rattles off something else in Iñupiaq. “She said that the Iñupiaq people aren’t one anymore,” Gill translates, “That they’ve been divided by taniks and money.”
― Elizaveta Ristrova, We In Pieces: Tales From Arctic Alaska

“Apparently, you didn’t attempt to talk with the people of Kusoq, who now have to travel over thirty miles and more to get their tuttu—caribou. Why? ‘Cause the tuttu migration got altered by the development of Prudhoe Bay and the connected oil fields. Let me tell you, you open up the Refuge and you open up the Beaufort Sea for offshore drilling. There can’t be offshore drilling without a land base and that land base is the Refuge. And your Assembly is opposed to offshore drilling.”
― Elizaveta Ristrova, We In Pieces: Tales From Arctic Alaska

“If the drilling can’t be stopped, why not benefit from it? The Borough would be glad to see some benefits from the oil buried under the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which covers a fifth of the Borough’s taxing territory. And the Borough isn’t the only one. Except for a few environmentalists, most Alaskans are disgusted with Congress’s prohibition against drilling in a piece of their state. These Alaskans see it as another example of the U.S. treating Alaska like a colony—allowing liberals in Washington to make decisions about land they’ll never set foot on. Of the few people who have set foot in the Refuge, most are Iñupiat.”
― Elizaveta Ristrova, We In Pieces: Tales From Arctic Alaska

“Neither the State nor the Borough can draw revenue from most offshore drilling, since their taxing authority stops three miles from the coast line. But the State is more likely than the Borough to benefit from it, since the oil companies will have offices in State’s big cities and create jobs there. And the State doesn’t care a jot about whaling.”
― Elizaveta Ristrova, We In Pieces: Tales From Arctic Alaska

“That law that created the native corporations was the idea of tanik American corporations to undermine tribal integrity.” “What do you mean?” Bertie asks. “Everywhere else in the U.S., tribes have their own government, their own land, and their own money.” “They have a monopoly on casinos, you mean,” Bertie says cautiously. “Whatever it is. Our tribes in Alaska don’t have nothing. It’s the native corporations who have all the land and the money, and they’re the ones making decisions.” “But don’t you think they’re making decisions in the best interests of their shareholders, the native people?” “They’re just making money for their shareholders like any other corporation,” Mandy says. “And they hire taniks in Anchorage offices to carry out their business. They don’t care about whether people up here are taking their dividends and drinking them away. I hate to say it, but I got to agree with Luther. It’s a long, slow genocide, all done under the corporations’ laws.”
― Elizaveta Ristrova, We In Pieces: Tales From Arctic Alaska

“A tanik history teacher burdened with white guilt had assigned Britney’s class a project about family culture and history. The students are supposed to interview their parents and grandparents about what life was like back in the old days of Harow and write a report. Britney sits down next to her dad while he’s watching a ballgame and asks if she can interview him. He opens a beer without looking at her and says, “Not now.”
― Elizaveta Ristrova, We In Pieces: Tales From Arctic Alaska

“Iñupiaq with a “q” refers to the language or one person. Iñupiat with a “t” refers to the people. There’s no such word as Iñupiaqs.”
― Elizaveta Ristrova, We In Pieces: Tales From Arctic Alaska

“Chuck got himself elected to the School Board on a platform of bringing the Iñupiaq language back to the schools. It became a fifty-minute class, held twice a week, until it was done in by the frenzy to meet the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act.”
― Elizaveta Ristrova, We In Pieces: Tales From Arctic Alaska

“After a teenage identity crisis, Chuck decided that he was Iñupiaq, and that he had to preserve his family’s Iñupiaq heritage.”
― Elizaveta Ristrova, We In Pieces: Tales From Arctic Alaska

“Sometime later, radiologists from Lower 48 universities came to Alaska to measure radiation levels in villages where caribou and reindeer were the main source of food. The results, published in 1965, suggested that an Alaska Native who ate caribou or reindeer had a radiation body burden 22 times higher than the average Lower 48 resident.”
― Elizaveta Ristrova, We In Pieces: Tales From Arctic Alaska