“Just a bunch of Natives, right?”

Just a bunch of Eskimos, right? It’s one of those pictures you’d stumble upon in a collection and say, ‘just a bunch of Natives’ and go on to the next photograph. In actuality it is historically staggering. This is the Kivalina City Council in 1900, four years BEFORE the Alaska Gold Rush in Nome. Kivalina is 80 miles north of Arctic Circle and in 1900, this ‘bunch of Natives’ was smart enough to ‘see the future.’ So they organized as a city — and Alaska was not even a Territory yet! And just in case you are saying “Yeah, well, you know, what’s the big deal . . .” look in the background. The writing on the blackboard is in English, lists at least three villages which were probably on the same civic trajectory, has a dollar figure at the top with math on a separate sheet of paper. Just because someone wears mukluks and eats seal does not mean he/she does not know what is happening, what will happen and how to plan for the future.

https://bit.ly/2RsZ6N1, https://www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi