Personal Space

Little over a year ago, I left the bush. It feels like a lifetime has passed. Time and distance have given me perspective. One of the most obvious differences between Western culture and Yupik culture has to do with personal space.

As Americans, we naturally have a need for increased personal proximity. This first became apparent to me during my visit to London several years ago.

“Tighten up!” was the most used phrase of our tour guide. As 40 of us walked in a group through the streets of London, it was imperative that we not get too spread out. In museums, we were expected to stand in such a tight group that we were continually touching each other. Our guide found humor in our American need to have space around us. On the Tube, on the sidewalks, in the small cafés, even in the tiny hotel rooms, personal space was not a luxury in which Londoners indulged.

As Americans, we are used to wide open spaces whether it’s urban sprawl, wide open countryside, or large, spacious homes. We like breathing room.

Yupiks bring a third alternative to this equation. Living on the tundra provides all of the wide open space that one could hope for. However, the personal space issue is muddied by the absence of an understanding of personal property. Ownership is not easily understood in the village mindset. This new way of thinking swallowed us whole from the moment our 4-seater bush plane landed on the dirt airstrip surrounded by marsh.

We had barely set our suitcases down inside of our house when there was a knock at the door.

“Can we visit?” a group of four 10-year-old boys seemed to chime in unison. This was an absolute first for me.

Before I knew what was happening, we had a living room filled not only with unpacked totes, but also with scruffy little native boys trying on hockey gear that they had never seen before. Wide smiles and bright eyes welcomed us to our new home with a familiarity that let us know that they had been here before. Over the next several days, elementary-age boys and girls frequented our home with a veracity I had never seen. It was overwhelming, to say the least. The knocks on the door with the voices calling, “Can we visit?” started early in the morning. When we told them it was time to leave, they always asked, “When can we come back?”

A quick walk through the village provided some explanation. Plywood shacks with barely a wood stove for heat. No running water in any of the homes other than the teacher housing. There were larger (3 bedroom?) stick-built homes which housed up to 12 family members, maybe more. I was never invited inside a Yupik home so I have no idea what they were like on the inside, but the outside definitely told a story. Loose dogs cowered when approached – obviously the victims of abuse. Broken down appliances, machinery, and snow machines littered the front yards.

One little boy (we’ll call him Michael, for safety’s sake) was visiting our house. He was quiet and always wore a filthy, stained hoody with the hood up over his head, hiding his right ear which was continually bleeding from an abscess or infection of some sort. He did his best to hide it from me and wouldn’t let me look at it because he was embarrassed. One evening, when it was time for him to go home so that we could have some down time before bed, he pleaded with us to let him stay. His big brown eyes glossed over as he said, “I can just sleep on the [coffee] table. I don’t even need a blanket.” It tore my heart to send him home, but I knew enough about cultural differences to know that it would not be acceptable to allow him to stay the night. I prayed for him to be kept safe that night as I watched him walk away. Who knew what he was even going home to.

On days when we said, “No visitors today,” the children would perch on our front steps as if to wait us out.

Our house, like most in the village, was built on 4-foot-high stilts. The entire underneath of our house was wide open. It’s where I put Nali’s doghouse to keep it out of the weather. There was miscellaneous junk stored under there from previous tenants, even a snow machine. But, to the village kids, it was a playland. Often, they could be heard banging around under there. Eventually, I would have to tell them to leave. They didn’t understand the concept of ownership – that this house was my property and they needed to stay away unless invited. That is not the Yupik way, but it was the only way that I knew.

As local children and adults meandered around my house on a daily basis, trash was dropped everywhere. Soda pop cans. Candy wrappers. Whiskey bottles. Chip bags. You name it – it was in my yard. Sarah and I would spend an hour picking up trash only to have more trash reappear the next day. Truth be told – we did not have a yard. Our property was community property, period. That included our front steps.

We also learned that we needed to keep our front door locked at all times to prevent people from just walking in. Once we had been there a week or two, we were considered locals, I suppose. That meant no more knocking. Kids would walk right in. Even the maintenance man would walk right in. Not a knock. Not a “Hello?” Not a warning. Just an entrance.

That was something I never got used to. I realized that I’m more American than I’d like to admit. I need my own space. I need my own property. It doesn’t make me a better person. It doesn’t make me a worse person. It’s just who I am.