First-Year Reading Experience – 2006
Q & A with Seth Kantner
Provided by Emily Cook, Milkweed Editions.
Milkweed: How long has your family been in Alaska?
Seth Kantner: My dad came in 1953, at 17 or 18, to attend college in Fairbanks. He traveled and lived around the state before settling in the Brooks Range where I was born and raised. My mom came to college in Alaska about 1960. She was working on a master’s—in mathematics, I think—when they went north.
MW: Where were you born?
SK: I was born there in the winter of 1965. My brother, Kole, was fourteen months old. At that time we lived in a somewhat traditional sod igloo, maybe 12’ by 12’—no door just a tunnel out, skins over it, I think, dirt floor, caribou hides to sleep on. But a woodstove in the middle. Things froze on the floor. The wind blew a lot and sucked the heat out that tunnel. It had a roof that leaked during thaws and was too low for most white guys, lots of mice and all--but spruce floorboards almost everywhere.
MW: Where did you go to school?
SK: School was at home. We were too far from anywhere. After dinner my mom wiped off the table—that meant Kole and I had to get out our school books. We only worked at night, only after Freezeup and icefishing in the fall. October to February, March at the latest. We wanted our school year done by the time the sun came back and got yellow. High school was harder; sometimes we studied in the day, sometimes summer. I was good at skinning animals; not something that really impresses anyone at college.
MW: Did you and your family try to live in self-sufficiency when you were growing up?
SK: I don’t think we tried, we just lived that way. A lot of things like trees and meat and furs were handy—jobs and money were a ways off somewhere. Now, self-sufficiency is a strange word when you have internet around. Sure, I still hunt when we need meat, and try to save all the bones and head and hides and tongue—not to waste. We pick a lot of berries, catch fish, geese, etc. From there things stray pretty quickly to Carnation, Chevron, Goretex—same as everybody else.
MW: You are a photographer as well as a writer, how did you get interested in photography?
SK: My parents taught us the basics of photography. As a family we took about one roll of slide film per year—(more would be a waste!) Here, in the Northwest Arctic, I don’t like taking photos of people. Locals have been bothered enough by white outsiders and their endless studies. I mostly photograph animals.
MW: I understand you moved to what we would call a more traditional house not long ago? When was that and where did you live before?
SK: I’ve traveled, but always soon ended up back along the river, at the old place. Nine or ten years ago I moved to Kotzebue, an Eskimo town of 3,000 on the Bering Coast, a hundred miles north of Nome, fifty miles above the Arctic Circle—something like that. First community I’ve really lived in. Before, I’d spent summers here for years, but never in town, always in a tent down at South Tent City, and before that across Kotzebue Sound. The first five years living here we continued to live summers in a tent, until my daughter was one or two. Since then we’ve rented a house. I’ve still spent far more summers in a tent than a house, but the memories are getting fainter.
MW: How do you make your living?
SK: People think I make a living by having a wife that works. I actually make a living in a lot of different ways. I’ve commercial fished for three decades. I sell wildlife photographs. I write stories, build caches and sod igloos and jobs like that if asked. My schedule is tied to the seasons, and is very erratic—I’m up at the old igloo or camping for photography as much as possible. And, this last year I caught the treasure hunting fever, searching for fossil ivory, so that’s a problem, too.
MW: Readers learn a lot about meat preparation in the book. In the interest of getting a complete sense, how long will one caribou feed one person?
SK: That depends. If you bone-out the meat, the way say a sporthunter might, you get not much. Locals tend to save all the bones––even favor the bones. The wisest elder I know jokes, “leave the meat if you have to, save us the bones.” With bones you have soups, roasts, rib meals—and it all cooks better because a lot of the fat is in the bones. Caribou meat is not marbled the way beef is.
The next part depends on how much else you have besides meat. If you eat meat breakfast, lunch and dinner—no company—I guess maybe a month. Otherwise more, or less. My dad used to shoot sixty or so a fall when he was feeding our family and a dog team. Later, when I fed fish to my dogs and my parents had a snowmobile, maybe seven caribou in the fall to last until May and first goose. Now, I shoot five or six a year—and we eat caribou most nights.
MW: What’s your favorite most mouthwatering dish?
SK: I like a bear roast (from the right bear, eating blueberries) cooked slow in the Dutch oven, no water. Little oil in the pot to get it going, maybe just Montreal flaked steak seasoning. Or salt, pepper, worcestershire. The same goes for a muskox or caribou roast. (The roast has got to have a bone in it.) In a way hunting is more complicated than people think. You want to kill something. Why? I don’t shoot anything anymore until I think about why, and about how I’m going to deal with the meat and skin. Hunting for me is only with a rifle, only when we need meat and that animal is in season to be fat and tastes good.
MW: On page 35 of the book, Cutuk says, "I was proud of Abe, proud of his omniscient knowledge of the land.” Your experience as a hunter, trapper, and fisherman must mean that you have learned to read the land in a way that many of us haven’t. Who taught you how to read the land in this way?
SK: I learned most land things from my dad. He learned from old-timers—a lot from an old “medicine woman” living with a one-legged husband north of here, in a sod igloo, up the coast. They didn’t speak much English. He lived with them; she taught him to hunt--more about real hunting, I think—and she taught him other stuff too. He thought highly of the old Eskimo ways. He didn’t go hunting—he waited at home, outside, working on this or that, always looking up, eyeing the land. He waited for caribou or moose or bear or other animals to come right into the yard. Then most of the time he wasn’t interested in shooting. We ate all kinds of meat, had all kinds of furs, but often he wouldn’t even slap off a mosquito.
MW: What's your approach to the issues of conservation in Alaska?
SK: That’s hard. I wrote the book, guess that’s one approach. Could be I write every word out of greed—I like the land and animals. I see cell towers and pavement coming north. I just don’t see that stuff in paradise. I wish I didn’t have to worry.
MW: How has your relationship with the natural world shaped you?
SK: It has made life confusing. It’s a little tough to take television and Fords as anything besides threatening. I think what I like best about the land is its impartiality. Humans make some mean decisions about each other. And laws. Out on the land, it’s more taking care of yourself.
Contact the First-Year Experience Committee
Webpages: Samantha Hines, Social Sciences and Outreach Librarian
Last updated: 30 May 2006