Hometown America Kwigillingok Alaska.

Welcome to awesome Alaska. We're talking about Kwigillingok (kwih-GILL-in-gawk), which is located in western Alaska. If you're going to visit us, you must fly in several different planes. You can't drive to our village because there are no roads.

To reach Kwigillingok, you must first fly to Anchorage, then catch another plane to Bethel, and from there hop en a small six-seater plane to Kwig (that's the short version of our town name).

Our village is near the coast of the Bering Sea (see map). Our latitude is 59[degrees]N, and our longitude is 163[degrees]W.

During the summer, you can go fishing in the Kuskokwim River, because Kwigillingok is at its mouth.

Iglooless

The first native people who set-dad in Kwigillingok never lived in igloos. Our ancestors did dwell in mud houses, but today we have houses just like yours [see photo].

We do follow our culture by speaking Yup'ik, the native language our ancestors spoke.

Long ago, our relatives wore traditional clothing such as atkuk, the Yup'ik word for a fur parka; piluguuk, animal skin/fur winter boots; and ellalliurcutek, rain gear made from seal gut.

Today, we mostly dress in modern clothing like blue jeans and sweatshirts. There's one part of our culture, however, that hasn't changed very much. We still eat subsistence foods we gather from the tundra, like naunrat (salmonberries), surat (blueberries), neqerrluat (dried salmon), and kinengyat (dried seal meat).

Alaskan Native Crafts

Do you like beautiful native crafts? Then you should check out Alaskan handmade clothes and baskets. Yup'ik women sew grass and fur to make fur hats, parkas, and grass items. To make the fur hats, ladies stitch together several shapes. When they're finished, they have created attractive, warm headpieces.

A fur parka is made in a similar way, but with more use of fur. The parka requires many different types of animal hides, such as fox, wolf, muskrat, beaver, wolverine, and otter.

Grass baskets [see photo above] are sewn with strips of dried and dyed grass. We hope to pass down these crafts to the next generation.

Yup'ik Throwing Parties

We have a girls-only party every so often in our village. We don't mean to exclude the boys, but it's our tradition.

Boys have a special party of their own. When a boy catches his first seal, the women in his family celebrate by throwing free stuff at a uqiiquq. All the women and children of the village are invited to this "throwing party." The boy's relatives throw soap, towels, shampoo, cups, plates, bowls, rubber bands, pins, matches, pencils, pens, Ziploc bags, toys, bandannas, socks, water bottles, and much more. You see a lot of women laughing, screaming, and racing to catch the tossed items. When the hostesses fling something out to the crowd, everybody's hands are up, and everyone is hollering. Sometimes a uqiiquq can be dangerous when there are kids around. They can get hit with heavy items if they're not alert.

Our Own Olympics

Native Youth Olympics, NYO for short, is a sport created by Eskimos. NYO is not like the Olympics you see on television--it's more like many different gymnastic stunts.

Two events in this sport are the seal hop and the toe kick. The seal hop for boys is like doing push-ups, but the students use their knuckles and the tips of their toes to hop forward. Their bottoms can't be any higher than their shoulders. The seal hop for girls is similar to the boys', but the girls extend their elbows. Both boys and girls have the same rules because we want to be fair to all students.

The other event is called the toe kick. When students perform it, they look like jumping rabbits or kangaroos. The athletes kick sticks with their toes while in the air. The person who jumps and kicks the stick the farthest wins.

Want to know more about the way the Yup'ik people live? Check out the Far-out Facts box below.

Meet the Winners

What is most interesting about your hometown? In our December 12, 2005, issue, we asked you to tell us. And you did! Hundreds of students wrote reports about their hometowns.

We promised to publish the winning entry. This was it--a report by students in their hometown of Kwigillingok near the Bering Sea in Alaska. As their prize, the school will receive a DVD player.

We received many outstanding reports, including these runners-up:

* Medford Lakes, New Jersey, by students of Thomas Moore, Neeta School

* Grosse Ile, Michigan, by Caitlin Hansen, Grosse Ile Middle School

* San Diego, California, by Audrey Pierik, Adriana Terzoli, Joseph Romano, Theresa Ludwig, and Emily Pehl, St. Vincent School

FOR OUT FACTS

* The Yup'ik-speaking people have lived in Alaska for thousands of years. They used to be called Eskimos by outsiders, but they prefer the name Yup'ik.

* The population of Kwigillingok in the 2000 Census was 338.

* People get around by walking, or by riding their bicycles on the village boardwalks. The only road, of gravel and mud, is from the airport to the post office. People use kayaks on the river.

by the seventh- and eighth-grade students of teacher Kathy Harsch, Kwigillingok School

* Use a word from this list to correctly complete each sentence.

Alaska Range, Anchorage, Bering Sea, Bering Strait, catch their first seal, countryside, Eskimo, Fairbanks, Gulf of Alaska, igloos, marry, mud huts, reach manhood, tundra, Yup'ik

11. Kwigillingok is a village near the coast of the--.

12. The people of Kwigillingok speak the native language of--.

13. The first native people there never lived in--.

14. Boys of the town have a special ceremony when they--.

15. Surat (blueberries), is one of the foods that villagers gather from the--.