November 15, 2008

Native American History Month

Saturday (Nova "Alien from Earth" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hobbit/about.html rewatched on Sunday)

I watched a PBS special today on a new skeleton which was found in Indonesia.

The skeleton is very old - a pre-modern or pre-human skeleton. It was a female adult but was size of a small child. It was 3 feet tall. The team that found the small bones called them "the hobbit".

Now you ask how can this ever relate to Native American History Month and Alaska in particular.

It is simple. My mother has many stories passed down to her about the "little people of the tundra". She has told me these stories and how small they were. The finding of one of these "small people" lends a lot of credibility to her stories.

My mother's stories highlight two different kinds of "little people. The Egassuayaq are about a foot tall and the Ircinrrat (Tundra people) are about 3 feet tall. The tundra's little people have been seen by many villagers and sometimes even outsiders. A lady contacted my mom once because she had heard that my mom had stories about the "little tundra people", she wanted to talk to my mom because her husband who is a gussack - saw one of the mischievous Ircinrrat while working on a remote part of the Alyeska Pipeline.