Qatayat–Gulls Qatayat nernertutaartut!–Gulls will eat anything! Glaucous-winged gulls (Larus glaucescens) and Mew Gulls (Larus canus) are familiar residents of Kodiak’s shores. These opportunistic scavengers eat almost anything. They range throughout the Gulf of Alaska and Bristol Bay, where they are particularly attracted to human settlements. Each spring, gulls lay many thousands of eggs on inaccessible […]
Maraq–Bog; Swamp ARapagka nag’art’lliik mararmi. I lost my (2) boots in the bog. The Alutiiq word maraq can be used to talk about any low lying, wet piece of land–a swamp, bog, marsh, or even a muddy meadow. The rainy Kodiak Archipelago is unofficially full of such places, but if you consult a map of […]
Matarngasqat; Matarngat; Mataryat–Indians (of the Lower 48) Matarngasqat Camani amlertut.–There are a lot of Indians in the Lower Forty-eight. When Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean in 1492, he mistook the Bahamas for India and called the indigenous people he encountered Indians. The term has since come to mean an indigenous person of North America, […]
Uguaq–Ugak Island PaRaguutakun uguaq kiturtaarpet.–We always pass Ugak island on the boat. Ugak Island lies at the entrance to Ugak Bay, on the far eastern edge of Kodiak Island. Exposed to the open ocean, Ugak Island is small and mountainous. It is just 2.7 by 1.7 miles, and yet rises to over three hundred feet […]