Friends,

First, the weather.  After September was very cold, October has been very warm.  This will probably be the third warmest October on record.  And if there is no snow before Halloween it will be the first time since 1938 that there has been a "brown" Halloween.  The river started to freeze last week.  Everybody said it would soon be frozen over.  But then it warmed up and now there is very little ice remaining.

Ducks can walk on water!

Last week I mentioned the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN).  Thursday evening we volunteered to help with "Quyana."  That is pronounced coo-ya' na.  It means "Thanks" in one of the Native languages.  It is a festival of Native dances.  The different tribes have their own regalia and dances.  When they sang all tribes sounded the same to me.  Some groups had children as young as two dancing.  Many groups had people in their 80's.  

The tan outfits were often leather.

I liked these drums.

Most groups closed their time with a "group dance."  All people in the audience were invited to come up and join the group.  Sometimes about 100 people joined the performers.

Here are children having a part in the dance.

I liked this groups headdress best.

Half the groups performed Thursday and the other half Friday evening.  There were seven groups each evening.

I sat in on the AFN convention session for a little while one afternoon.  They were applauding gains in Native rights and considering other issues to pursue.  Some things they discussed while I was there was use of migratory bird feathers in regalia, the right to hunt sea lions for use in arts and crafts, and laws to protect subsistence living.  The Alaskan Federation of Natives is the main group working for Native rights. 

While I was doing that Elva was looking at the arts and crafts.  Furs were probably the most expensive items.  A wolf hide would sell for around $800.  There were many carved figurines.  These were well done and probably took a lot of time to finish.  But they were expensive.  If a carved wolf a couple inches long was made of walrus ivory it might cost $200 to $300.  They had some things made of moose ivory, or moose bone.  They also had silver, a few gold things, dresses or tops, fur coats, jewelry, billfolds, shoes, muskox knitted into neck warmers, paintings, etc.  

Thanks for reading.

God's blessing to all.

Larry and Elva