Crafting shafts and plucking ducks...

Well Ladies and Gentlemen, life seems to be kicking itself into high gear, deadlines are swarming around me demanding attention, yet amidst all of this commotion I find myself having almost a sensory overload of new experiences. We had our last day of Culture week today and everyone that was there for all three days completly crafted a brass tipped harpoon. We had a village expert come in and teach us (myself included) all how to make them. We began with raw brass stock that we shaped over many hours with hacksaw and file until it satisfed our expert. I was almost like one of the students as I submitted my work for his review. He would inspect it and then diagram or tell me what I needed to do to improve it. It was an intriguing activity and throughout it all I am kind of confident that I know how to make a harpoon and I could teach it to someone else. I feel my studnets have a pretty good understandign of it as well and it kind of makes me consider, this is what teaching is, what has occurred over the last three days. I swear the most learning happened in these last three days than any other time of the year. My thought or goal this summer is to try and think of ways of replicating this experience, I can't just do harpoons every day, but what can i show the kids to try and involve them. WHen it is just you a piece of brass and a file, sure you can get all frustrated and try to go fast, but after you try it that way, you find that the way you were shown how before is actually more effective. It teaches patience, self experiementation, and then finally accomplishment as you complete your piece. I was positivly glowing after I finished my harpoon, I wanted to show it to everyone, "Look, I did this." It looked good and it was because I listened to a guide, by myself I probably would have went the way of frustration, procrastination, and incompletion. I feel I am on the edge of something here, but I am not quite sure how to follow through. I am ending the year on kind of a high note, I am having all of my students sign my harpoon and I am going to hang it up in my classroom for next year.
And if that wasn't enough I got invited to go pluck birds today which I followed up on. This was a peculiar situation out here there is a particular genderification of labor roles, men hunt and women clean. Is it archaic, yes, is it completly without merit, not really. Now before you all start pegging me as a misogynist let me try to make my case. Cohesion of a society is by far the most important goal in creating any type of community. Out in the tundra it is particularly important because you can't really survive for prolonged periods of time in the tundra by yourself. You need at least one, preferably more, companions to help you all get through the year. Gender roles developed, not as a means of submission or domination of a gender, but because this was the most practical way to survive on limited means. I'll go out and get more food, while you prepare the food I got yesterday. As long as I keep going out and you keep preparing we will get through year after year working together, if one of us breaks the chain, we both wont survive. Thatw as the origins now what we have today is something slightly different, an economic factor of survival was thrown into the mix and is almost as important as actual food. Survival has become more complicated one the one hand, however with the complications it has allowed for an ease of access of food. Hunting is much more productive with the advent of motors, shotguns, and rifles. We can go farther catch more and return in much shorter periods of time. This has created an imbalance in the spheres, hunting is vital for survival, but it doesn't buy stove oil to heat the house. As more women tend to work in order to supplement their family with an income they find themselves coming home to 20 or 30 dead birds that need to be cleaned. This I have found out is a huge chore, I was only able to clean two birds in about an hour and a half (and when they passed inspection I was given a C-). Granted my teacher was able to clean six birds in the time it took me to clean one. While food is essential for survival, the offset of food costs it provides is the strongest hindrance for allow change to occur. Having to clean all of these birds is a couple of hours worth of work after you day job could be pretty frustrating,(it is a good thing the bird you ar eplucking is already dead) however this discontent almost breeds change. There will be a new resettling of the dice just how they will fall who knows. Some of the women out here joke about leaving their men for men they have heard up north who help with some of the prep work. In every joke there is a grain, or for this case lets say a plume of truth. As each layer of feathers come off the question inwardly asked, is "how much more of this can I take?" When the answer reaches zero the phoenix of change is born out of the ashes of the former lifestyle. Call it the women's movement if you want but at the end of the day ladies and gentlemen we have to achieve a resettling or balance of our own that doesn't leave the other wanting. What is this idealistic partition of responsibilities? I'll be honest, I have no idea, I live alone out in the tundra, but it might start by asking yourself "What can I do to lighten the burden upon my companion?"