Letters from Alaska

A letter from the 800-person village of Emmonak, Alaska, pricked hearts nationwide this past January. Resident Nicholas Tucker, a Yup'ik Eskimo, wrote of widespread hunger and hardship brought on by unusually harsh weather and a rise in gasoline and heating fuel prices. Tucker recounted stories he'd collected from dozens of fellow villagers making impossible choices between the purchase of heat or food.

Upon its appearance in the Alaska Dispatch, the letter soon made its way onto blogs across the state and beyond. Concerned citizens responded, sending food and dollars to villagers throughout Alaska's most rural and isolated areas.

International relief agency Samaritan's Purse joined the effort last month, airlifting food into regions otherwise only accessible by snowmobile. Franklin Graham, the aid group's president, joined Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in visiting the remote towns of Russian Mission and Marshall to ensure people help was on the way.

But such efforts have not assuaged Tucker's concerns. The Vietnam War veteran confronted Palin personally during her visit, charging that all the deliveries of food and supplies amounted to only temporary relief: "I appreciate your help, but that's barely enough."

Tucker insisted that without a stimulated economy and jobs for his fellow villagers, the problems would persist each year. A video of the exchange captures Palin dialoging with Tucker for several minutes, at one point suggesting that some residents of rural towns may need to venture outside their home villages to find work in mining, fisheries, or oil production. Tucker appears less than satisfied, arguing that local culture inhibits people from leaving the villages for extended periods.

Upon returning to Emmonak, the 38-year resident fired off a second letter, this smacking more of petulance than prescience: "I am outraged. . . . I felt like Governor Palin treated Emmonak with most disregard and disrespect by not coming here where it all started."

Published in The Arctic Sounder, the letter dated March 5 recounts Tucker's inconvenience of having to travel to Russian Mission and Marshall to secure his personal audience with the governor, a trip that might have forced him to miss his nephew's Yup'ik dance that evening: "By the time I got home, I was already over a half-hour late and would have been over an hour late if I had been able to go-my oldest son's snowmachine had no gas."

Tucker goes on to suggest that all of rural Alaska deserves an apology for Palin's disrespect but resigns himself that such a move is unlikely: "I doubt if anyone will hear me cry out again."

Indeed, Tucker's latest correspondence is more likely to engender wincing than sympathy-an unfortunate distraction from the eye-opening plea for help he penned just months before.