Transcript: Reverend Dr. Michael James Oleksa, Ph.D.
[Oleksa:]
Then a few weeks later some builders, carpenters came, and they took all this lumber, and they built a big, pointy, angular structure in the middle of the village. The locals wondered what this was all about. It might as well have been a spaceship from some other planet. And then the teachers arrived. They were rather peculiar, too. The husband with the big handle-barred mustache, and people used to use buttons for money. This guy had to be very rich.
[Lindberg:]
Lots of buttons.
[Oleksa:]
Buttons on his shirt, on his vest, up his sleeves, on his coat, up his shoes. The word “Yup’ik” really means the “real people.” They’re aware that there are other folks around, but they’re not quite real. So the “real people” are looking at these newcomers scratching their heads and still wondering what is going on. A few days later—oh, and then there’s his lovely wife with a hairdo in the 1890s style, everything on top of her head, something like Homer Simpson’s wife Marge, a dress that dragged on the ground behind her, a bustle that made her posterior rather large. The “real people” were wondering if that was real. And then a few days later Mrs. Fat Fanny comes outside with this clanging thing and makes all this noise. Nobody knows what it’s about. I would say at this point it introduces on a community-wide basis a lot of confusion. Who are these people? What’s going on? And then they ring the bell and nobody shows. The kids don’t know they’re supposed to go to the strange pointy building on the hill. So the teachers write to the commissioner of education, “These people don’t care about education. We ring the bell all day and no one comes.” So both sides are kind of frustrated at this point.