Scouting, Volume 47, Number 1, January 1959 Page: 4
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Photo by Reverend Gordon Olson, Cubmaster
The Minto native village council sponsors
Pack 365, one of the few native packs. The
boys wear smiles and uniform parts they own.
Larry Barrett, met my plane at Juneau. About thirty-five
miles of road run in and out of the capital city; all
other travel Barrett does must be by boat or plane. In
the winter, boats don't go, and mountains and an almost
constant blanket of fog make air transportation hazard-
ous and uncertain.
Council-wide meetings aren't possible, and district
operation is confined to key towns. Service to other
villages is by occasional visits of some Scouter who
happens to be going that way.
Barrett and I made a chartered flight to Hoonah,
forty-five minutes across the strait from Juneau. (In
Alaska, they measure distance by "flight time" rather
than miles.) Hoonah is one of Alaska's most poverty-
stricken villages of about 600 Indians, with a mud main
street and unpainted shacks. The Salvation Army spon-
sors Troop 20 with Captain Bill Lynch Scoutmaster for
twenty-one boys. We presented fifteen badges at a court
of honor that afternoon.
We got a kick out of learning that the supply of Safety
Good Turn automobile bumper stickers sent the troop
would completely cover the town's one motor vehicle,
a broken-down surplus jeep bearing the proud label,
"Fire Dept."
Sitka is a fishing town with a sizable native commu-
nity. Only two native boys belong to the two Explorer
posts, a troop, and a pack. There is another post at
Mt. Edgecumbe Indian School on a nearby island.
Barrett gets to Sitka about once a quarter for a round-
table type of meeting for all Scouters, the only firsthand
help most of them get. Four or five council executive
board members living at Sitka also meet with Barrett,
and thus council business is transacted in bits and pieces
in many meetings of a few men at a time.
We took off from water and landed on the airstrip at
Haines in the work horse of the Alaskan air lanes, the
"Goose." Barrett and I were the only passengers and the
airline said that because of "no business" they wouldn't
operate the return flight. Luckily, the town's leading
citizen, Scoutmaster Carl Heinmiller, arranged a char-
tered plane to take us back to Juneau. Haines is just
about a 100 per cent Scouting town—seven hundred
people and almost every boy in Scouting. The Presbyte-
rian Mission is the sponsor and there are sixty-one boys,
thirty-nine of them natives.
Before leaving: Juneau, I discussed Scouting with
Michael A. Stepovich, then territorial governor. I found
him concerned about the need for help to enable Scout
Executive Barrett to get around the council and to work
in the more remote villages.
Scouting in Alaska enjoys marvelous cooperation.
The government workers, military personnel, and mis-
sionaries are the mainstays of Scouting and all of them
go far out of the way to help in every possible way.
In pre-state days, Alaska was under the jurisdiction of
the Department of the Interior. The natives where
aided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Alaskan Native
Service. The name, Native Service, was suggested by na-
tives themselves—they don't mind being called natives.
The service has operated 118 schools in the native vil-
lages. Trained Eskimos or young Indian men and women
who have gone away to college are employed as teachers
wherever possible.
Scout Executive Clark Lethine, who has since become
a deputy regional executive in Region Eleven, and Dis-
trict Executive Jerry LeBarron met me at Anchorage. I
learned that one of the three districts in the Western
Alaska Council, Westward District, has an area the size
of Texas, and the district executive operates a one-week
camp 1,700 miles from council headquarters, a little
closer to Tokyo than to Anchorage.
I traveled with LeBarron to Dillingham and Bethel.
An Eskimo chap who had been a Boy Scout piloted our
plane to Dillingham. We met with a group of parents,
and the chamber of commerce agreed to sponsor a pack
and a troop and named a steering committee to get it
under way. This is a concrete example of the problem—
it is doubtful if a district representative or staff member
has been back since or will be for a long time.
Bethel Chamber of Commerce sponsors Troop 658.
LeBarron presented the troop flag at a parents' meeting
and they were interested in adding a pack and a post.
The organization had to wait until this fall because
Bethel, like all native villages, becomes a ghost town
around May 15 when whole families move to the fishing
grounds.
At Bethel, I had my first close-up of muktuk, the
meat of the white beluga whale which is the mainstay
of the Eskimo diet. Chunks of it are strung up on lines
to dry. I confess I found none of the native food tasty
or even palatable.
My visit in Fairbanks and surrounding area was brief,
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 47, Number 1, January 1959, periodical, January 1959; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth329273/m1/6/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.