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Teacon's Full Interview

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Category: Children of the Spills

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Teacon Simeonoff

Akhiok, Kodiak Island, Alaska

Born in 1974

My name is Teacon Simeonoff.  I am currently in Akhiok, the Native Village of Akhiok, which is the south end of Kodiak Island.  I lived here most of my life. I moved to Old Harbor, which is the next village up towards Kodiak, for about ten years now, and I’m back here.

I was born in 1974, so that would make me 15, more or less.  Gee. When we first heard about it, we were in school, and I think we had the, what’s it called, internet.  We’d just started internet in the schools here, and it was really slow, so we were as a school trying to watch it, or basically listen to it on the internet, listen to the radio.  It was pretty confusing for me being from a small village, how it could eventually affect us on Kodiak.  I didn’t really understand the depth of the oil spill then.

In school, I can remember, a lot of people on the radio or on TV, on the news, saying which places it was going to affect the most and eventually affect Kodiak Island.  At that time I thought Alaska was so vast and something happening so far away couldn’t really affect us.  We as kids didn’t really understand the scope of what a disaster it can be.  And we were trying to figure out exactly how much oil spilled in the Gulf [of Alaska] and our teacher was trying to help us do the math of how much oil would have to spill in order for it to reach Kodiak.  It was a learning time, but at the same time we were just kids, we didn’t understand how something so far away can reach us.  The truth being that it did reach us.  I can remember in school before that happened that we were talking about, like, sea-going garbage and the flow that the Gulf [of Alaska] has from the Japanese current.  That really opened up our eyes to see how that current flows from Southeast Alaska up north to Valdez and then down towards Kodiak.  That basically showed us how the current works and how the waters flow. As kids growing up, we used to find glass balls on the beaches and we used to wonder where they came from, and our teacher told us that it was coming from Japan and we wondered how that got to Kodiak Island from Japan.  

Now after the earthquake in Japan, the teachers are now talking about the debris from Japan that’s in the water now eventually coming here, you know, to Alaska.  And they’re now talking about the flow again. Basically going back to what happened with the oil spill, how the flow of the water came around to Kodiak.  And talking about the earthquake and debris that is in the water now eventually coming, going to get here within probably a couple years. 

And that summer I was supposed to go fishing with a friend but we couldn’t because his boat was rented by VECO to do oil spill clean-up.  So a lot of us teenagers didn’t have a lot of fishing that year.  It was pretty hard, not only being a teenager wanting to go fishing, but watching all your relatives not being able to fish either.  My family, my dad’s family and his brothers have a setnet site here, near Akhiok, and it was pretty hard for him to not fish.  It was a year that we had a lot of fish coming in and they were pretty depressed because they couldn’t fish them with all the oil coming around.  

So that summer instead of fishing we ended up working for VECO, mostly tying pompoms and getting booms ready for the local high fish areas, to run across the streams and the rivers and sometimes the whole bay, just try to stop the oil from getting into there, not only the fishing areas but also the subsistence shellfish and uutuk [sea urchin] areas.  The memory that comes back the most is working for VECO. When the adults were working for VECO, they would find a mousse ball or dead animal covered in oil on the beach, once they moved that animal or the mousse ball from that area of the beach, us kids would sit on that part with a bucket of water with joy soap and just wash all the rocks underneath that area.  And that’s basically the most memorous memory I have.  It was the most boring, most tedious.  I remember a bunch of us kids sitting around in one area cleaning rocks and all of us talking about being mad at people for not being awake or being at their jobs they are supposed to so that they could prevent this from happening.

A lot of the Elders were afraid of getting subsistence foods that year, especially, getting fish. Then fish. We didn’t know what to do, didn’t know if it was okay to get it or not to get the fish. Even now after, after so many years after the oil spill, we’re still finding fish that are deformed.  And that comes from the, I think it’s a four or five year cycle of the fish, the fish cycle.  That fifth year, the fish aren’t as plenty, but you notice on these years you find more deformed fish.  Not really normal for years after that oil spill. We were finding mousse balls on the beach and dead animals coming up that were full of oil.  And a lot of people weren’t sure if it was from the oil spill or from something else, but it sure shook a lot of people.  I think it was probably three years after the oil spill, the people more willing to try it at first, then slowly other people started to get back into it.  Getting ducks, clams, sea urchins, chitons, black gumboot chitons, and seal, sea lion.

I have a lot of memories of it, and when the fishing is bad, when the prices aren’t good, we tend to blame it on that year.  My dad is a fisherman, my uncle’s a fisherman.  I haven’t fished in quite a while. Mostly I do art right now.  Traditional Native art.

It’s a lot different now.  Before the oil spill, I could remember, when people went out, to get subsistence, they got enough for the whole village, and the whole village was able to get whatever they needed from people in the village that were able and willing to go get it.  Now, its really hard when those people go out, they get subsistence food, to find people that are willing to take it even now. 

But a lot of the Elders were really depressed a lot.  There was pretty big spike in drinking in the villages that year.  It really ruined a lot of lives in the villages from a lot of people started drinking here.  I can remember a lot of lives being taken because of drinking and that time being the start of it. The vast amount of money that VECO paid out for clean-up was basically just fueling the fire that it started.

Here in Akhiok there has been, you know, a lot of anger towards the oil spill and the aftermath of people being lost to drinking as a result of the pay they did.  I guess probably about ten to twelve years after the oil spill we tried to have a, what’s it called, intervention, or tried to have a Native talking circle about what happened then and the aftermath and tried to heal from it.  Even now people are pretty reluctant to heal from that effect.   And the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico really brought a lot of memories back and a lot of that anger.  It’s kind of hard to tell now.  A lot of the people that were here then have moved away, so I think the memory of it is still here, but the people that are left here don’t show it very much.

If there were people that could assure us that the subsistence lifestyle can heal, and that it will come back and be healthy and strong again.  I guess that would have helped a lot of people and hopefully would have kept them from drinking so much.

The places we used mostly for subsistence, we tend to protect more now. Because there are other places that we don’t subsist anymore because of the oil spill and the lack of clean-up in those areas, and, and the places we did try to protect, we tend to be more protective of those areas now.

I would say to [people in the Gulf Coast], try not to hold the anger in.  To really talk about it and keep the communication going between others in their community and in other communities.  And to have patience that they would eventually see the lifestyle come back.  And I think, probably form a committee to keep tabs on the things that are left behind, the cleaning equipment, the places they didn’t clean, just keep track.  And keep talking about it in a healthy manner.  And just have hope in the future that everything will eventually come back to the way it used to be.