"Hello, My Name is Gussuck!"

I have an urgent plea for the U.S. Government. I read in the Anchorage Daily News this morning that several Alaska Natives in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta have recently committed suicide. Due to strong Russian cultural influence over several thousand years, the Alaska Natives tend to do things as a group. I learned this while working with many villagers years ago as their boss, putting out forest fires. Pertaining to suicide, it isn't the first one or two, it's the five or six or more behind it which is of grave concern.

It has to do with their food supply. Salmon is their main staple, and King salmon is their creature comfort food. If a village is not eating well (particularly if they don't have their King salmon as primary creature comfort), the kids sacrifice themselves because they think their village will eat better without them. They get all screwed up and swim the Kuskokwim River lengthwise. Or sniff gasoline.

The problem is, Bristol Bay fishermen are taking the villagers' food supply before they can catch it upriver. The villagers enjoy their ethnic subsistence foods--many will not eat white man's handouts. Something needs to be done before the Alaska Natives commit collective suicide. They will never tell you what they're doing.

To turn this outcome around, we need to kneel down and say to the villagers, "Hello, my name is Gussuck!" It means "great white A--hole".