Making Saak Eix̲í Connects Kids to Culture

We're making chalk. [SPEAKING HER LANGUAGE] We are in Haines today, and we brought the Hayukhatengi Kudi students, families, and all the staff up here to make sock-eh-hee hooligan grease. [SPEAKING HER LANGUAGE] Woo!

I wanted to bring our students out here and their families really because We are often stuck in a box in classroom learning in a Western education system, and I feel like our kids don't get opportunities to get out on the land as much as we should. They should be out on the land learning by seeing and doing and touching and just experiencing that kind of life. Being on this trip is so fun. It's difficult to put into words. Let's see.

When I signed him up for preschool, I just thought it would be just about the language, and it's so much more than that. That we get to have a preschool trip to come out and be in the most beautiful place in the world. Yep. It's just priceless, a priceless experience for my family and for Charlie. We get to learn our traditional ways and traditional foods and the language.

And I think the other big part is just being with community and being together. [SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE] I love the process. I love the science behind it. I love learning processes, especially a process like this that not a lot of people know how to do anymore. You fish for maybe 3, 4 days and get truckload after truckload of fish, of the hooligan, and you pour it into the pit.

You let it sit anywhere from 7 to 14 days in the pit. Takes 3, 4, sometimes 5 hours to heat up the water. Once it's boiling, you add the fermented fish, maybe 3 wheelbarrows full of the fermented fish. And you, at that point, stop stoking the fire and you start stirring and chopping. And so chopping just means you're getting it up on the stick and you're chopping it to the point where the meat is falling off the bones.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Once all the meat has fallen off the bones, you let it sit. And cool for hours, 3, 4, 5, 6 hours. As it cools, it separates and you get the oil up on the top and the mash and the water down at the bottom. Skim it all over into one side so the oil gets nice and deep, and then you start skimming the oil off the top. You filter it right into a bucket.

Hooligan oil making is always, always my favorite. I love the springtime days and I love the taste of fresh sock eeghee after you're done with the cook and it's cooling and you soak a cracker in it, nothing compares. You can never recreate that taste. [Speaker:WOMAN] [SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE] [Speaker:WOMAN] Okay. [SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE] [MUSIC] [Speaker:WOMAN] It gives them an experience to just broaden their horizons, but in a more special and connected way to our ancestors and to the way that things used to be.

My husband's dad learned a lot about their heritage from performing at Perseverance Theatre, and his grandma was it was kind of instilled in her to not use the language, and so that wasn't passed down. She taught her children that it was safer not to, and so it's very important to me and to my husband that Henry helps to get that back. One of the most special moments I've had as a mom is watching Keet'kios, my son, read books to my mother in the language, who didn't have the opportunity to learn when she was growing up, and Now it's intergenerational healing, and I get emotional every time I talk about it because it's, it's just like the most special thing I've ever witnessed. It's heartwarming. It's hard actually to come up with the words to describe how it feels to have everybody out here.

This is a process, like I said, that not a lot of people know how to do anymore, and for them to observe this and to just be out on the land, it It just brings so much joy in my heart.