[waves crashing]
[man chanting in Indigenous language]
[suspenseful music playing]
[dramatic music playing]
[chanting ends]
[pensive music playing]
[birds chirping]
[dog barking in distance]
There's our first fish.
[pensive music playing]
Yup'ik culture is living life with nature,
with God and God's blessing and bounty.
[Morris] God is everywhere.
God is everywhere, the God of the universe.
Ellam Yua, God of the universe, he's everywhere.
And he holds all of life.
The fish that we eat, it's clean, it's healthy.
The berries that we're gonna pick,
the rain is coming down so that we can have berries
that we don't have to go and buy.
We can just pick berries in the tundra.
And in the tundra, it's therapeutic.
The church is out there.
[Fisher] And when we're out in the wilderness, all we see is truth around us.
All we see is truth around us,
truth life, and gift of life, and the blessing around us.
Sometimes it can be harsh. The truth can be harsh.
And it's healing.
Just be out in the wilderness. Go out-- Out to be with God, you know?
You don't have to say anything.
[Morris] If I'm gonna go hunting out into the wilderness,
I need to know how to be quiet.
[pensive music playing]
I need to know how to observe and to listen.
If I didn't know how to be quiet in the wilderness,
the animals would not come and give themselves to me, to the hunter.
I am living in the footsteps of those who walked the path before us.
Everything that we have, we cannot say it's our own.
Even in our own, the wisdom that we have, it's not our own.
It was given to us by our elders because they shared verbally
and taught verbally of how we should live, sharing with one another.
Love being the Yup'ik word, kenka,
kenka, being the major teaching in everything.
[Indigenous hymn playing]
[Fisher] When we receive fish,
the berries, they help share that gift of life,
that gift from Christ, that gift of life.
It helps us to understand also the-- How more fully that Eucharist is,
the communion is, the meaning of that, to be connected,
to receive the body and blood of Christ, who is a source of life.
That's life in orthodoxy in the village.
[Indigenous hymn continues]
[emotional music playing]
So what are a bunch of Russian Orthodox monks doing in Alaska?
You know, what's that all about? Well, Alaska is halfway across the world.
But Alaska is also a place where the Russian Empire has hunters, traders,
there's a whole Russian-American company there.
And so a number of monks from Valaam Monastery
and the Konevets Monastery
were asked by the church to go over as missionaries
to take care of the spiritual needs
of these Russian-American company employees,
but also to bring the gospel to the natives over there.
Anyway, so they travel, and they leave in December of 1793,
and it took them nine months to cross from Western Russia, St. Petersburg,
all across Russia, Siberia, Kamchatka, to the Pacific Ocean,
boarding a ship, heading over across the Bering Sea,
which is a really rough area.
Um, it was very dangerous. And they ended up on the island of Kodiak.
[Oleksa] When the missionaries came to Kodiak,
they encountered Baranov exploiting native labor,
forcing men, even at gunpoint, to go out and hunt for him.
And Alexander Baranov is not pleased with their arrival
because he knows the jig is up.
The way they've been treating the Kodiak Alutiiq people
is no longer going to be a state secret.
And in fact, within six months, the monks are writing letters
back to the authorities in Siberia,
complaining about the criminal activities of the Russian-American company.
Forcing people to hunt for fur at gunpoint.
"You're gonna starve this winter. Your children will be crying from hunger
if you don't get out there and deliver the goods."
That was the policy for the years before the monks arrived,
and the monks became whistleblowers.
The Vala monks took six or seven months of just listening to stories
before they began preaching at all.
They were really heroic in the sense
that they identified with the Alaskan Native peoples,
they baptized thousands of converts,
and the people willingly came to the monks
because the monks were on their side,
as opposed to the oppressive, abusive,
and even criminal activities of Alexander Baranov,
Ivan Kuzkov and Nikolai Rezanov.
And it's taken now two centuries to uncover what really happened,
and to expose the misdeeds of the Russian-American company officials,
uh, which the Church has known because St. Herman canonized 50 years ago,
was already exalted as an intercessor and defender of the oppressed.
And the people realized that he's the one who kind of risked his own life
for their-- For their security, for their safety.
The other monks had done the same, but they had perished pretty much
in the calamities that occurred over the years.
Ultimately, the only monk that was left out of the 10 was Father Herman.
And he was not safe.
They tried to kill him three times in Kodiak.
So he moved to a nearby island, Spruce Island, Yelovoi.
[pensive music playing]
[Andrew] The exact date that St. Herman moved to Spruce Island
is actually unknown.
He moved here in his first winter, he spent alone.
He built a barabara, which is kind of a half-earthen dwelling.
And he spent his first year in seclusion.
The first challenge that any of us face
living in a remote place like this,
it's, you know, you have your physical hardships of survival,
but more important and more difficult
are the internal challenges
that a person faces living in a remote location.
St. Herman had already been fully trained.
He was practicing noetic prayer.
It is a prayer of the heart, continually repeating the prayer of Jesus.
He was experienced.
He was not young.
And so he already had that stability
when he came out here so he could focus his thoughts.
He had a focused mind and a focused heart.
He was here to practice prayer, to come closer to God.
And then the unexpected event,
when people began to give him their orphans,
and evidently, he discerned that this was God's providence.
And so he accepted that.
People remember St. Herman as someone who was lively and had a sense of joy.
[Hochmuth] But my mom remembered him.
They referred to him as small grandpa. Yeah.
[both speaking in Indigenous language]
He made cookies for the children.
Those are the stories that I heard growing up.
[Oleksa] They called him Grandpa
because, of course, the last 20, 30 years of his life,
he had a long white beard, [chuckles] and they didn't have that many elders.
But calling him Grandpa, Apa, was a sign of affection,
but also of reverence, because elders are the respected,
they're the encyclopedia you go to for information.
It's only the elders who have lived long enough
in the traditional tribal culture to have become a real person.
The ancient name for the Alutiiq, Sugpiaq, means real people.
The Yupiq, the ending "piq" or "piaq," means "real."
The Inupiaq of the North Arctic Ocean, the shore, the real people.
But you don't-- You're born as a potential real person,
but it takes a lifetime to actually become one.
-It takes a while to become that kind, -[pensive music playing]
that patient, that hospitable, that humble.
I just know he had love in his heart for all of us.
Yeah, he's remembered by a lot of us.
I keep him in my bedroom. [chuckles]
So I always say good night to him.
[Andrew] Father Herman writes a beautiful letter
back to his abbot Nazarius,
and he goes on to kind of give a rather poetic description
of wild Alaska
and that at the same time of being so far in this distant land,
that he's keeping fondly in his memory and heart
the brothers back at Valaam Monastery.
And then he names Monk's Lagoon, New Valaam.
And the landscape, if you look at pictures of either place,
it does look very similar.
So he hasn't been lost in the sense of isolation.
I think he loved the beauty of the spot.
And today, we marvel at Monk's Lagoon,
and of course, there's something more than just the trees,
the moss, the forest, the waves, the birds, and the fox.
There's a special kind of grace there,
but I think he was seeing that place as a place of beauty
and finding inspiration in that.
[Oleksa] His prayerful presence on that island sanctified the island.
There's this sense, this palpable sense of sanctity
that one man saying his prayers in the wilderness has given us, really,
as a spiritual inheritance.
[Hochmuth] I always feel so good when I go there.
It's so beautiful. You could just feel the peace.
Mm-hm.
-[Carlson] It's holy. The place is holy. -[Hochmuth] Mm-hm.
[Carlson] All his prayers, you know, you feel them.
After all this time he's been gone
and you still are able to experience and witness his prayers.
[Oleksa] After his death, they built a chapel over Father Herman's grave.
It had become a pilgrimage site.
People went there to pray, to ask for his intercessions.
"Father Herman pray to God for us, my child is sick."
[Andrew] He just shone and by his personal life,
not necessarily even going anywhere,
living in Kodiak and then coming out here in Spruce Island,
but living the gospel in a way that changed other people's life,
and that they could see the life of Christ reflected through him.
-That's the legacy that we have today. -[pensive music playing]
It's this internal gift that St. Herman gives us.
[Hochmuth] I'm so proud of him.
He came and bring orthodoxy to Alaska.
Because of his love and speaking and trying to protect us,
and all the persecution he went through,
you know, and then his sacrifice, his journey, just crossing all of Russia,
and here this little guy just... [speaking Indigenous language] you know.
[both laughing]
[Oleksa] He remains alive among his people
as a living presence whose intercessions continues to heal
and comfort them in time of joy and in time of sorrow.
[Hochmuth] "From this day forth, from this hour,
from this minute, let us learn to love God above all else."
St. Herman of Alaska.
[dramatic music playing]
The most moving aspect of his life to me, we are familiar with his miracles.
We've known people whose lives have been changed in a miraculous way.
But when we think of St. Herman,
we think of someone who is warm-hearted, simple, and loving.
[pensive music playing]
[Andrew] Of course, it's kind of a cliché,
but they call Alaska the last frontier, right?
It's a frontier where-- That's always open
because there's like basically an immeasurable amount of land.
There's this, like, elemental power.
On one hand, the image of chaos,
but then on the other hand, it's an image of power and God's power.
And I've had many experiences being out in the ocean,
and you just get the sense that you're in God's hand,
in that mighty expanse.
You're in something much greater than you.
And I think that part of life where we're no longer controlling
and calculating every facet is very attractive,
especially in the world we live in.
A freedom to be not in control.
We have one impulse, I think, to always be in control.
And in some ways, that's needed
to control circumstances and the environment.
But I think it's part of that great mystery of life
we can experience in Alaska to be not in control.
And that's similar to, I think, to the experience of God.
It's something unexpected.
When grace comes, it's often not when we've done all the things
that we think we should have done to receive grace.
It's at a time when we didn't expect it.
So I think also, again, going into Wild Alaska,
something that's bigger than us, um,
touches on that when we're in something that's of a greater power than ourselves.
Um, we then discover who we are, not when we're completely in control.
[bells ringing rhythmically]
[Gray] He's an amazing fellow.
He's described as being big, husky, strong, an imposing figure.
But his other contemporaries also call him gentle, kind, humorous, magnetic.
And this individual has changed the history of Alaska,
let alone the history of orthodoxy in Alaska.
So initially, St. Innocent was parish priest,
young fellow, newly ordained in Irkutsk, Siberia.
That was gonna be his future. That was his vocation, he felt.
It was just a simple life of a priest and a pastor.
The stories that he had heard as a seminarian
and as a young priest coming back from Alaska,
uh, that it's a wild place, very rough and rugged,
uh, the temperatures and the winds and all, and the people that were there.
So initially, when he heard this, he had no desire to become a missionary.
And then another story kind of was circulating amongst the folks in his town,
-[pensive music playing] -from folks who'd been there,
that the folks living in the Aleutian chain
have a tremendous spirituality, a tremendously deep spirituality,
one not unlike our own Orthodox spirituality,
which was really a surprise to him
because that was very unlike the stories that he'd heard
about the folks living in the Aleutian chain before that.
And so this idea of them having this tremendous spirituality
resonated with him.
And as time went on, he realized that there was a call,
a deep call to go to Alaska.
But why? He had everything he had hoped for
all of his life there as a parish priest.
But this call got louder and louder.
And eventually he came home from church one day
and came to his wife, Catherine, and said,
"I'm really feeling that God is calling us to go to Alaska to become missionaries."
So he and his family are living in Alaska,
and he's got this entire parish of the entire Aleutian chain,
many hundreds of miles.
And so how does he get from island to island?
Boat and kayak.
He's traveling all up and down the Aleutian chain.
He's learning the language.
He's learning the culture. He's learning the ways of the people.
He begins to translate the gospel into the language for them.
He's baptizing hundreds and hundreds,
and they say even by the end of his life, thousands of people.
And so I can imagine the work that he did,
the stick-to-itiveness of doing this work of God.
[Johnson] St. Innocent's vision was a vision of love.
We love the people, we hear their stories, we speak their language,
and we teach the faith.
And it's going to maintain a unique Alaskan context,
which means it's gonna be a little different in a Yup'ik area
versus an Aleut area
versus down here in the southeast where it's a Tlingit area.
[Ebona] The Tlingit people have been in this country, in Southeast Alaska,
for well over 14,000 years.
And they became part of this land
in surviving in this country.
[pensive music playing]
The water, the trees, the land around them, the animals.
They viewed everything spiritually.
So later in life, St. Innocent was assigned to the church in Sitka.
[Ebona] He spent a lot of time learning the language
because he felt that was the best way for him
to be able to reach out to people in the communities.
He just spent a lot of time in the villages
to get to know the people
and be part of the culture of the Tlingit people.
[Davis] I was born into the Russian Orthodox Church.
My mother was Russian Orthodox.
My father was Russian Orthodox. My grandfather was Russian Orthodox.
I'm with the Raven tribe, and I'm the chief spokesperson for the Coho people.
I'm very happy to be a part of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Being, not part, being in the Orthodox Church.
[singing in Indigenous language]
[inaudible dialogue] [singing continues]
[intriguing music playing]
[Gray] In his old age, St. Innocent was summoned back to Russia
from his post as the Bishop of Alaska.
He was chosen to become the leader of the whole Russian Orthodox Church.
So this obscure priest from Siberia ended up changing history.
By the time he returned to Russia,
he could barely walk due to the years of being crammed in a kayak
for countless hours.
And he was almost blind from the sun reflecting from the sea or the snow.
He gave and sacrificed everything out of love for the people.
200 years later, he's still loved and remembered by people all over the world.
One of the refrains throughout his life that he often mentioned was,
the path of a good man is directed by the Lord, and he delights in his ways.
[bird caws in distance]
[Oleksa] Yakov Netsvetov was born on St. George Island in 1804,
the first Aleut seminarian to attend school, theological school, in Russia.
And in 1827, at the age of 23, he came home and was assigned to Atka.
And on the map of the Aleutian Islands,
it's about the middle of the Aleutian chain.
He was transferred to the Yukon Delta.
He set up his headquarters at a town known in Yup'ik as Ikogmut,
and now today in English called Russian Mission.
He traveled in an area probably the size of Pennsylvania and Ohio combined
on the Nushagak, the Kuskokwim, and the Yukon.
[pensive music playing]
This is in a territory where the temperatures dip well below zero
for half the year.
And by dog sled in the winter and by kayak in the summer,
it's really extraordinary how he managed simply even to navigate 18 years
in that region and spread the faith using the Yup'ik language, which he had learned.
They began worshiping in the Yup'ik language
and forming Orthodox communities throughout the region,
all of whom are still there to this day.
[chanting in Indigenous language]
[Michael] Our people weren't forced to embrace orthodoxy.
It just started to grow in them.
You know, I could see, like, why our elders before us
grasped orthodoxy so well.
Because everything kind of felt-- Fit like a perfect glove.
[Oleksa] So many people believe today that Christianity was somehow imposed
on the Alaskan Native people or on Indian tribes in general.
And the missionary history in some parts of the country is rather sad,
we have to admit.
But in the case of Alaska, over and over again,
we have the people requesting the missionaries to come,
giving them a fair hearing, in a certain sense,
listening to what they have to say,
and then, without objection, accepting baptism at their own request.
And I think this gives us the firm foundation
in the faith that exists to this day,
that it was the Native people who heard the Gospel
and received it with joy.
Now, what in the Gospel attracted them?
I think it's important to mention this in the context of Father Yakov
because he was evangelizing people
who had never heard of Jesus Christ at all.
[pensive music playing]
Alaskan Native people
believe, essentially, that all life is a mysterious and sacred reality,
not just in humans, but in animals.
The animals are sensitive and, in many ways, wise.
The hunter can never surprise the animal, or outsmart it, or overpower it.
They only get the animals who allow themselves to be caught.
The animals must sacrifice themselves to keep the otherwise
pitiful and pathetic humans alive.
This is the traditional belief that goes back thousands of years.
When the story of Christ was told to them, it was obvious, I think,
that they accepted the sacrifice of Christ in the same way.
God himself comes to offer himself, to sacrifice himself.
This made perfect sense to the Alaskan Native people.
And Father Yakov, being Alaskan Native himself,
understood this perfectly.
And St. Yakov built his ministry on his knowledge of the cultural
and spiritual beliefs of the Alaskan Native people.
[dramatic music playing]
His wife died. His son died unexpectedly, tragically.
His house burned down.
He owned nothing.
At the end of his life, after all this heroic effort,
he was slandered and called to a church court in Sitka.
Things couldn't get much worse.
And then he was forgotten for a hundred years.
Even now, we're not quite sure at what spot was he actually buried.
But we hope that in the near future, we'll be able to find Father Yakov.
[intriguing music playing]
It's precisely because he endured so much.
He is a testimony to all of us, a challenge to all of us,
to be faithful even to the end, as Christ taught us.
This heroic, extraordinary missionary, St. Yakov Netsvetov.
Then in 1867, when the Russians left,
you would have expected the native people to throw everything related
to the Russian regime into the Pacific Ocean,
burn down the churches,
and anathematize anything that had anything to do with Siberia or Russia.
But exactly the opposite happened.
So clearly something else was going on.
The missionaries were able to present Christianity
as the fulfillment of what the people already knew, already believed,
and already understood about themselves and their world.
[chainsaw buzzing]
[Andrew] Holy Fathers, and this will be a little simplification,
speak of this Logi or Logos of each and every creation that God made
was made with purpose and intent.
And it's like a stamp or image of the Creator is in every creation,
and it sings back and reflects back that image to the Creator.
[pensive music playing]
[Oleksa] For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son.
There are two words for world.
The one is the oikoumene.
The oikoumene, it's the inhabited world,
all the human beings of the planet, the oikoumene.
And the other word for "world" is "cosmos."
God so loved the whole creation that he sent his son.
Why?
Human beings are the one creature God made in the beginning
that has not just a material life like the animals, flesh and bones,
and not just a spiritual dimension like the angels.
Human beings are the only creature that has both.
We were meant to be the connecting link between heaven and earth,
between God and man, between the creator and the creation.
And we were to do that by being part of the created world
and loving it and offering it back in humility,
and thanksgiving, and gratitude to God.
We were meant to see the world as God's creation
and work with him to fulfill his will and his plan for the whole creation.
And that's exactly the vocation, exactly the role Adam and Eve refused.
-They rejected it. -[intriguing music playing]
They break the link.
They fail to do what human beings were meant to do,
hold the whole thing together.
So now we have two parts, heaven and earth, creator, creation.
The problem is that the creation by itself has no life in it.
The source of life and of all life is God.
And so in a certain sense,
the story of the Bible is God's effort to reconnect.
His desire to reconnect, to re-sanctify,
to restore, to sanctify this world which he so loves.
Whether it was running water or plants growing,
We were taught at a very young age
to try to respect all life.
[Oleksa] I think intrinsic
to the traditional Alaskan Native way of seeing the world,
children are taught from very early age that living things,
all living things, are alive
because there's somehow a sacred or mystical presence
in that animal, that plant, that makes it to be alive.
There's a word for this in Yup'ik. It's called it's yua.
The thing, the presence that makes that thing to be alive, it's yua.
The life in the animal, whatever makes that animal to be alive,
it's yua, is the same as the life in us.
It's what makes the animal alive, it's what makes us alive.
I believe that Father Yakov,
in preaching Christianity to the Yup'iks in his day,
simply named the yua, Christ.
[pensive music playing]
Meaning the life of everything that's alive, in every leaf of every tree,
every flower, every bird, every animal.
The source of all life is Jesus Christ. He's not just in a book.
And he's not just a character who walked in Palestine 2,000 years ago.
The life that animates, that enlivens everything is Christ.
Being in communion with him puts us in harmony
and in communion with all the yua in the whole world.
In the beginning was the meaning for the whole thing.
The meaning of this tree is Christ.
The meaning of this mountain is Christ.
It's here because it's part of the creation as Christ,
the Logos, created and designed it, and upholds and sustains it.
It's sustained by Christ.
Everything exists in the moment because God wills it to exist in this moment.
Creation is happening in this moment,
and then it's happening again in this moment.
And it just happened again in this moment
because God, by his will, sustained it each moment at a time.
So creation is not just a past event. It's a momentary miracle.
[dramatic music playing]
[Morris] Ellam Yua, the god of the universe, is everywhere.
And he holds all of life.
[Andrew] All the creation in their own way
sing in a continual doxology to God.
We kind of participate that if we've lost that center in ourselves
where it comes out from us, we can at least be around nature
and be part of that as the creation sings its doxology back to God.
[Oleksa] I believe that our traditional people,
traditional Native American people, tribal hunting gathering people,
saw the world in this practically miraculous way.
That it wasn't the same old, ever.
It wasn't the same river two days in a row.
It wasn't the same sunrise two days in a row.
It wasn't the same mountain two days in a row.
And when something grows, it's equally miraculous.
It could have just never have appeared at all.
Nobody planted those berries that we're about to pick.
They could have never have existed at all. They exist by the will of God.
And the Logi in them is Christ.
In every blade of grass,
in every salmonberry or blueberry on the tundra,
in every fish that they harvest, in everything that they eat,
everything that they do,
to be able to see the world in this extraordinary, miraculous, newly created,
newly sustained, newly sanctified way, and to love it.
[people singing in Indigenous language]
The river here is our source of food,
um, travel.
We have villages that, in the summer, they'll come here by boat.
In the winter, there's travel with snow machine,
four-wheeler, or vehicle on the river.
And it really is a lifeline for the communities.
The river dictates what we do.
We live right along the Kuskokwim River,
and my uncle had recently stopped by to visit,
and he said that living along the river is cleansing.
[pensive music playing]
That the flowing water cleanses a person.
In order for a flowing river to be cleansing,
it needs to be clean.
[Oleksa] The Great Blessing of Water made great sense from the very beginning
because they had a custom in January,
the same time when we celebrate Theophany, of returning the--
Some parts of the animals that they had harvested
during the previous year were put through the ice
as a gesture of gratitude and respect for the sacrifice
that the animals had made in feeding the people.
Now, they see the priests go to the river
and put the cross into that same spot, in that same hole, through the ice.
For Native Alaskans, this is second nature,
to go to bless the river [chuckles] on the Theophany,
the river out of which we pull all our fish,
on which we travel.
[Hoffman] We are healthy when the river is healthy.
One cannot be healthy without the other.
You are a part of your surrounding
in a way that you weren't otherwise.
You begin to appreciate your place in your environment.
We as Yup'ik people
want to continue to reside
and raise our families and remain in this place.
Yup'ik people belong here in a way that they wouldn't belong elsewhere.
This is where we want to be.
We want to be able to live...
Continue to live off the land,
provide for our families from the land.
So it's because we can hunt, and fish, and harvest
that we remain.
It's so wet down here.
[clears throat]
[Askoak] Yeah, you heard about soul food. [chuckles]
The food that we grew up with, we use as our,
the things that connect us with nature, with everything that,
with the season, and with being able to survive,
and just being one with
everything that God created.
In the old times, they gave us...
Or everything that they caught...
uh, they always attribute it to the gift from God.
If you caught something, instead of saying you killed it,
you would say that it was provided for you,
that it gave itself for you from God.
So the people had this respect for nature.
They had to be respectful
with one another and with respect to nature.
[woman on radio] ...everybody, and good luck the rest of the season.
[man on radio] Yeah... [speaking in Indigenous language]
He was American. They take the time out.
[Fisher] Subsistence, the word "subsistence" means,
you know, providing food
so that you can survive the winter, survive the year,
and help families survive the year.
So it means subsistence could translate to:
[intriguing music playing]
"I am going to be living for the next year.
I have life. I'm sharing life with that family.
I'm sharing the gift of life with this other family that's not even related.
We share and we give,
uh, of what abundance that we have."
Myself, growing up subsistence hunting,
I learned and learned from my uncles,
that we need to give thanks for the catch that we have.
So when we catch something, we give thanks to God.
You know, that thing, "I'm going to go get my fish,"
we don't do that, you know, we don't say that.
We say: [speaking in Indigenous language]
So difficult, so hard to say that.
It's a hard thing to do.
We were blessed with our catch.
If we're blessed with fish, we get fish.
To be Orthodox,
is to fulfill the words of Christ's command,
love one another as I have loved you.
That's it.
And in the Yup'ik culture, you live that out.
It's where your back's breaking, your muscles are sore,
and you're still smiling.
You see the rack of fish cut up, drying.
In the smokehouse, you see the smoke coming out
and the rows of fish,
and you smell that aroma,
that fish camp smell,
and you smile.
[Fisher speaking in Indigenous language]
A person who doesn't share, who doesn't give,
will not have anything
and will not have abundance, bounty, and blessings.
[Hoffman] We subsist with the knowledge and the intention to share.
We want to have the resource continue to be there.
It's not that we're gonna go get a moose, and then we're done.
We're gonna get a moose, hopefully, every year,
so it's very cyclical.
The approach that we bring is this sustainability.
[Fisher] You asked earlier what subsistence is.
Subsistence is loving your neighbor.
Subsistence is loving your family.
You love them enough to feed them,
to provide for them, to work hard.
To provide for not just yourself, for the community.
It's-- As an Orthodox Christian,
you're not set apart from your neighbor.
That, you know, you're not set apart from them.
If you see them hunger,
if you see them needing wood or other things,
you provide help, provide for them.
[Hoffman] Without subsistence,
we wouldn't be the unique people that we are.
I've been trying to be tired because I didn't want to squeeze fish...
[both laughing]
My grandpa was a starosta
in the church, and, um...
mm, in those days, they had to make their own nets.
Um, at one time, I went to see him just to sit by him during the summer.
It was nice and warm out, and he was making his net.
And while he was doing that,
he was whispering something.
I went to his--
I went close by, and I listened to him.
And his words were: [speaking in Indigenous language]
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
And simple life that he lived,
and you could feel that grace, special grace,
that was given to him by simply being the servant of God.
[Fisher] The presence of elders, the honor of elders,
was a big part of living in the village.
[pensive music playing]
Because what they taught, and the wisdom that they have,
and the teachings that they shared
were vital to our existence.
[Martin] They made us hear.
They made us listen.
It was like a textbook of life that,
but the one that you don't see,
but it'll be the one that you remember inside, in your head.
They received all the word, Orthodox word,
through the missionaries of God,
of the scriptures,
and they put it in their heads.
My aunt, who raised me,
was my greatest influence.
And she taught always about God, talked always about God.
I represent my apa and my grandma, the people who raised me,
who rooted me through their daily teachings,
not so many by, not by books or anything like that,
but by action, by example,
by being prayerful.
Now, their dedication,
their simple... simple trust in God,
even with no words at times,
through their example, they were able to teach us
that even today, after they're gone, we still remember them.
They are the number one teachers of our culture
because they've lived their lives
in a way that taught them to balance
any type of chaos that comes up against them.
Just as the church tries to teach us how to handle,
you know, things that come against us.
We take even things like alcoholism.
We're taught to have a path
so that we can overcome
and create that balance in our lives instead of creating more chaos.
My uncle used to say:
[speaking in Indigenous language]
Um... Meaning...
the next generation people are faster than
us now living.
We didn't understand.
He would say:
[speaking in Indigenous language]
"The time will come, and you will see."
Now that modern world is coming,
the people are fast, moving faster,
the town is faster.
-Things are coming. -[melancholy music playing]
Deaths are fast, and suicides, fast.
And our culture, way of life, can't keep up with them.
It's a struggle.
It's a struggle for us.
[Fisher] If there's a tragedy in the village, everybody feels that.
Everybody knows that person.
If someone passes on,
whether it be an elder or a young person...
everybody is impacted, young and old.
[speaking in Indigenous language]
[all] Amen.
[Martin] The elders saw life as not being easy all the time.
Fulfilling...
but sometimes, on a more personal level, it's harder.
It's hard to deal with life, this changing world, and everything.
They practice their faith every day.
We miss them, sometimes.
We miss the older-- Older people, sometimes.
I wish so and so would come up from his grave or her grave
and teach us things, these things, some things.
Give us a word of advice, or show us what to do.
[Morris] My grandfather was prayerful. He lived his life in prayer.
Literally in prayer.
And I thought his life was the most boring,
the most boring life on earth.
I used to think, "Doesn't he have better things to do than to pray?"
There's life going on, life outside going on in the world,
and here, my grandfather is being prayerful.
But now that I'm older, I appreciate and I hope to,
you know, never forget those things that I saw,
that I witnessed with my own eyes.
And I just witnessed my grandfather
when he was praying for the peace around him,
and I was thinking, wondering where that came from.
How can you be praying like that with peace all around you
when your two sons are on the floor, drunk and fighting?
I was like, "How can that happen?
How does that happen?"
But I saw it with my own eyes.
The peace that passes all understanding that God gives to us,
that he can give to each and every one of us.
And it's available for us.
But it's not, you know...
He-- God gives us free will.
Could I ask you a question?
Okay.
When did you decide to become a priest?
When I was in high school.
When you were in high school?
Oh, man, how long did it take you to really decide
to go in to be a priest?
I...
Maybe 12 years?
Mm-hm.
[exclaims softly]
[loudly] When I was in seminary,
the more I learned about the priesthood,
I didn't want to be a priest anymore.
But they...
But the more they got to know me,
they said, "I think you'd make a good priest."
-Yeah. -So I listened to them.
Yeah, I don't think you're gonna regret it.
[both laughing]
[Fisher] It's a great blessing.
It's a gift.
It's a lot of good things, a lot of blessings there.
You get acquainted with many people,
and you become family to many people in that community, in that village.
[indistinct chatter]
You get to be a part of their lives, a major part of their life.
The spiritual guide, the people that they trust,
the person that they trust.
But it also can be difficult.
[Trefon Jr] We're supposed to work together,
the men, the women, the elders, the children.
And it leads back into the center of life, the center of God.
You know, that's-- That's the true, uh...
image of Yup'ik's-- Yup'ik's history.
You know, bringing that back, trying to, you know--
Once we were changed how to live a different way,
those circles were broken.
[pensive music playing]
You know, there's these many different difficulties
that we face as clergy.
One being suicide.
Suicide, [stammering] it's devastating.
Devastating to a community.
[stammering] When tragedy happens,
and you're there as one of the first called.
Sometimes, as a clergy, you see things that
any other person, that only the police would see.
We are led to disrespecting our elders.
We are led to leaving kids to OCS.
We're, you know--
Not every family, but, you know, it happens.
Abusing elders, and abusing children, and abusing women,
you know, it's not the right living because your true self--
It's a fake living, you know.
It's like-- It's like we're in a dream.
It's like a bad dream.
[inaudible dialogue]
But how do we get out of that bad dream? Well, we come back to God.
[Fisher] The Church brings us hope. God brings us hope.
You know, we need to have that pastor, that clergy there,
especially in the communities, to send that message
that our God is a God of forgiveness,
you know, that they're welcome in the church,
no matter what they may have done.
You share that message of hope.
You share that message of hope for eternal life,
hope for prayer, hope that God is merciful.
And we do have a forgiving God.
[dogs barking]
[Trefon Jr] If a person can come back who is lost
and to actually continually to reflect on their life.
That's the point of being a real person,
is to admit that you are doing the best you can,
you know, we are all sinners,
and try and help some other people along the way.
[inaudible dialogue]
[Fisher] Those who are broken, those who are broken,
God, our Lord Jesus Christ, comes to meet us
and helps us heal together.
That is a gift.
That heals me as well.
[Askoak] The prayer that was really strong with my mom and my dad,
and we say, begin with: Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,
thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
It's a simple, simple prayer,
but if you really think about it,
what is trouble?
When we put our trust in the mercy and the love of this loving God,
who showed his mercy and love for each and every one of us?
[inaudible dialogue]
[Larson] My mother was a Matushka.
She was very faithful and hardworking.
They didn't have a big house with lots of furniture,
and they just were grateful for what they had.
And the subsistence lifestyle...
she had to do most of the work,
with the fishing during the summer
because my dad would be gone for long periods of time.
Because there were only four or five priests to serve this area,
and he always had to travel.
So she always had to do the hard work.
But she would never complain.
My mom was a midwife,
and we had this window in our bedroom.
When someone would knock on that window,
and my mom would wake up,
and if I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep,
she'd have to bring me with her.
I'd go into this house,
and there was a woman in labor,
and I'd have to sit quietly on the chair and wait.
Life was hard in those days,
and we didn't have a lot of help or support from,
you know, like the hospitals
and the schools that we have now.
She told me...
that we need to be compassionate about others.
We need to have compassion on others
who didn't have much, you know...
because that's showing love to other people.
And I think that's why my friends always used to be, um...
happy to be at my house
because my mom treated them like her own children,
you know, making sure that they weren't hungry
and, um... unclothed.
[Morris] I used to be one of the kids that used to sleep at her house,
with Lily, and my friend, my cousin.
And every morning, literally every morning,
she would be up early in the morning to make pancakes, and, um...
we would-- Lots of kids would get up, and we would eat,
and then she would already be done with chores.
She did everything early in the morning while her family was sleeping.
She was a very prayerful lady.
She was very humble.
And she-- I never ever heard her say anything bad about anyone
in the times that I was around her, and I was around her quite a bit.
Grandma's house was always my, um...
You know, they had me, like, babysit or watch me.
So I would go to Grandma's for a couple days, if they're traveling.
And it was--
I was so fortunate. I was--
Because she was like, naturally...
you can feel the love from her.
I mean, it was just natural love from her.
[tense music playing]
[Larson] One time, I was very scared because a man came in
and he was very, very angry,
um, hollering at first because he thought
that one of my brothers had checked his net and took his fish.
My mom didn't say anything,
would just watch him while he was yelling.
After he said all of the things that he needed to say,
my mom said, "Why don't you sit down and have some tea?"
And he got very calm.
[pensive music playing]
And he even--
I think he apologized before he went out.
Some ladies would come in very sad or have something.
You know, you could tell by their expressions
that they have something,
like, they're stressed about something or being very sad.
And they'd sit and talk for hours.
After they'd have tea and talk...
Um... it was like...
that stress or that sadness was gone when they left.
A lot of women have shared their dreams
with me and my sisters.
Most of them are about my mom leading them to the church
or reminding them to pray.
The last time I saw her, she, you know,
met me halfway to say farewell to me.
And during the hardest times of my life, my personal life,
she came to me in my dream.
And she told me to never look away from the church,
to always be prayerful,
that that's where the inner strength comes from,
through the prayers of the church
because the people in the church help us to pray,
through singing, through their prayers.
She reminded me that.
She lived her faith.
She walked it.
She practiced what she believed.
She was prayerful, just lived her life simply.
She never wanted to waste a day doing nothing.
She used it.
She used the day that God gives to us.
[Morris speaking in Indigenous language]
[Askoak] And we see how simple the people are,
um, and how their simple, saintly lives,
uh, that they live somewhere hidden from us.
[Fisher] The elders would teach about love all the time.
Always, always about love.
Kenka, kenka.
That word, kenka, uh...
had permeated every teaching.
And that source of teaching of kenka is Christ.
If those elders were not connected to Christ,
they wouldn't have been able to teach that.
[inaudible dialogue]
They were Orthodox. They were real people.
I believe that...
that more of that message needs to continue
because our elders are not here forever.
They're passing,
and there's some communities that suffer because they don't have any more elders.
I grew up singing, um:
[speaking in Indigenous language]
That means, "Lord, have mercy on us."
We prayed all the time in church.
[Morris singing in Indigenous language]
For every prayer...
[Morris singing in Indigenous language]
And I think that is the most important prayer
because we're so contradictory as human beings.
We're all the same, and we all need mercy.
[pensive music playing]
Ah. When we see ourselves...
um, created in the image and likeness of God,
and to see it in others is very important too.
The people that you see, you show respect and kindness,
uh, and this is a simple way that you can see
that God is in everything and in everybody.
It's easy to look at yourself
and see your faults and everything and to live.
But this is why we have confession,
go to confession and to, um...
So that you can see your real self.
We're here--
In our Yup'ik tradition,
that word "Yup'ik" means real person.
[giggling]
[Fisher speaking in Indigenous language]
[Fisher] I'm a real person, a real human being.
And what is a real person?
We grow up hearing the teachings of our elders,
that we need to care for one another.
We care for our elders.
We respect one another.
We respect one another's property.
We give.
We provide for.
Um, it's a hard question to answer because, um...
uh...
Maybe it's not that hard.
Just trying to find the right words to explain.
It's who you are.
A person isn't a person until another person comes
and acknowledges their person.
You know, the two people-- [stammers]
One person can be alone,
but they can never feel like a person.
When another person comes, um,
we have that-- That sense of who we are.
We have an identity, you know.
We see ourselves in another person...
[inaudible dialogue]
...to know who you are.
To be Yup'ik, Yupiak.
In that understanding, you know, in ethnicity, I'm Yup'ik,
but you could be Yupiaq. You are a real person.
[inaudible dialogue]
Apa!
[Andrew] Everyone welcomes the presence of a humble person,
a simple, humble person. Hmm?
So, "Yeah, you saw that. That's me. That's okay, you know.
I can improve."
And in these lives, I think, as we mentioned with St. Yakov,
these terrible hardships that he went through,
that he endured, that purified him...
Um...
Also help us to rethink what makes a saint.
Matushka Olga gives us a beautiful example,
staying in her native village,
making socks, giving them away,
being normal, being generous,
being hospitable.
Uh, the idea that saints can't have faults or shortcomings...
You can still be holy.
And in fact, sometimes, if you really look at it,
you'll love someone who has more faults than someone who has no faults.
It's really hard to love someone who doesn't have any faults
or who hides all their faults.
Um, and that's, I think, indicative of a complexity,
a lack of simplicity.
[Indigenous hymn playing]
[Oleksa] I suppose all of this actually begs the question,
what does it mean to be canonized?
What does it mean to be glorified as a saint?
Well, first of all, we're all called to be saints,
to do everything to the glory of God,
and virtually, nothing just for yourself,
for your own selfish needs or purposes, or honor, or glory.
Matushka Olga certainly fit in that category,
but so did St. Innocent.
He was a high school graduate. [laughs softly]
Father Yakov went off to the boonies
and never expected any glory in this world.
Father Herman retired to the woods
and never expected to be remembered.
So when we look at any of our saints, we see how humble they are.
They simply do what God gave them to do.
The path is not theirs.
St. Innocent says, "The path of the Lord is directed by the Lord."
But not all people follow that path.
We go off on our own way. We want to have it our way.
So to accept God's path and God's will,
and to do, however humble it may be, what God has set before you,
that's the path to sanctity.
It's nothing extraordinary.
-Matushka hardly ever left her village. -[pensive music playing]
What did she do?
She helped women in childbirth.
She made socks, and caps, and mittens.
She went to church. She said her prayers.
She sang church hymns and Christmas carols.
She did nothing extraordinary, but it was what God gave her to do.
When we set aside a day to remember a saint, it's simply that.
It's not for them. It's for us.
It's an opportunity to look at a person's life and say:
"I can do that.
[dramatic music playing]
I can be that kind of wife. I can be that kind of husband.
I can be that kind of starosta.
I can serve God in whatever way
he's directed and given me the chance to do.
And if I do that, then that's all God expects of me."
So the saints are those who are given to us as an example to say,
I think especially in Matushka Olga's situation,
you can be forgotten for decades,
or St. Yakov's situation,
you can be forgotten for centuries,
and that doesn't matter because what people know about,
or think about, or value on earth is not significant.
You did what God gave you to do.
And now we can hold her up as an example
because it says to all of us:
"You also have your God-given purpose in life.
Find it and do it, and that will be your salvation."
[dramatic music intensifies]
[music fades]
[man singing in Indigenous language]
[emotional music playing]