On the bank of the Nushagak River, New Stuyahok mirrors many Alaskan communities. It’s only accessible by air and boat. Unlike my home, Anchorage, “New Stu” is surrounded by pure wilderness. A Google search shows the community surrounded by miles of river, tundra, and small coniferous trees as far as the eye can see. Houses dot the landscape, held together by unpaved roads and well-worn paths. Two hundred eighty-one miles from Anchorage and 3,630 miles from Washington, D.C., it’s fair to say that day to day life in New Stuyahok looks substantially different than the life of any Washingtonian. That’s probably why I was all the more impressed when on Wednesday afternoon, I was able to sit in on a group of students meeting with Senator Sullivan, all of whom traveled to D.C. from New Stuyahok.
The students, who all seemed to be around high school age, were shy at first. But encouraged by their vice principal and the Senator, each began to come out of their shell, particularly when the topic of home was brought up. Tentatively, the students talked about their pastimes, their enjoyment of subsistence hunting and fishing—bringing out the Senator’s own love for his time at his family’s fish camp in the Interior. From here the conversation moved to the Senator’s job, and the importance of his time in Washington even as his heart resides at home in Alaska. Even as Senator Sullivan talked, my attention lingered on the students. I loved watching their sideways glances. Their hidden laughter. Their not-so-hidden shyness. I loved all of this because it all was authentic. There was no hidden agenda. No “ask” on their lips. Just a genuine curiosity at the room around them, and the Senator in front of them. And with it, a tentativeness upon approaching everything he represented – the power, the position, the connections, the responsibilities. The students were like flowers exposed to a sun they were unfamiliar with. They were receptive to his warmth, but they were also unsure what opening up should look like. As the conversation went on and they seemed to grow more confident in the presence of the Senator, the students seemed unsure how to express their newly found confidence. Unsure to what extent they could appropriately be themselves in front of someone so powerful, their sudden proximity to power silenced the students. It was a feeling I was familiar with, a feeling I suppose common to all people exposed to such a foreign environment. A place so distant from everything familiar— so far from home. After all, home is familiar. Picturing things from the students’ perspective, I can only imagine how far home seemed. Home did not reside in the concrete and pavement, nor in the marble and sandstone of the lifeless buildings now surrounding them. Home resided with each other, with family, with their community, their elders. Home could be felt in the sidelong glance and in the quiet smirk, with the tilt of the head and the phrase left unsaid. And though their shared mannerisms followed them everywhere, they were still left with the insecurity of the new situation in front of them. The process of opening up—of finding a place that I can feel comfortable doing so, a place familiar to me—is one I’m still looking for. Their insecurity is like mine. I’m not on my first trip outside of Alaska, but this is my first job in the Senate. While I may be more familiar with the marble, sandstone, and relative abrasiveness of life in Washington, working in the Senate is a whole different world. For most of the students though, this was the first time they had been away from home.[HS(1] Washington held no tangible piece of home outside of the artifacts hanging behind glass at the National Museum of the American Indian. Opening up in the midst of the culture shock, I should have realized, probably presented a challenge. Personally, I’ve always found the best way to break through one’s insecurities is to head straight for them. To own them, accept them, and when needed, push through them. In their meeting with the Senator, the students stepped up. Starting the meeting in silence, they ended it in laughter and pull ups on the Senator’s pull-up bar, typically used by the Senator to keep in shape for his service in the U.S. Marines. Despite any potential fear they felt or anxiety they held, the students were themselves by the end of the meeting. They joked, they asked questions, and they were curious. I couldn’t imagine a difference in how they finished the meeting and how they would leave from school at the end of the day. I left the meeting chuckling, but I also left the meeting all the more determined to continue opening up - maybe not to the level of doing pull-ups in the Senator’s office, but in my own way. Learning from the experienced staff around me, and charging forward in finishing the tasks assigned to me. Making the most out of each opportunity placed before me, and opening up to the sun and working to grow.
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Photo used under Creative Commons from Mike Juvrud