Greg Schuessler writes: Patricia Lekanoff-Gregory remembers when a delegation of American Unangax flew to Russia’s Komandorski Islands to meet their kin in the early 1990s.
Lekanoff-Gregory has traveled to the Komandorski Islands five times since her father’s journey. She’s hoping to go again in the coming months to help teach Russian Unangax traditional hat making.
While some other Native communities that straddle the Russia-U.S. border have protections that allow for direct visa-free travel between the countries, no such arrangement exists for the Unangax.
While the Iron Curtain divided Europe during the Cold War, the so-called Ice Curtain split indigenous communities straddling the U.S.-Russia border. During the Cold War, Russia’s Unangax in the Komandorskis were among the indigenous groups cut off from their kin in Alaska.
That all changed in 1989. The Iron Curtain fell, and the Ice Curtain melted. Alaskan and Russian Natives started traveling back and forth to each other’s communities.
About 17,000 people in the U.S. are Aleut. According to a 2010 census, there are only about 500 Aleuts in Russia.
Bringing Russian Unangax to cultural camps held each summer in the Aleutians is “a primary focus for us,” Gamble said, “because it’s a way for the folks in Russia to experience these camps and take what they learned back to Russia.”
But now, Unangax leaders say, escalating tensions between Russia and the United States have hampered their efforts to reconnect across the border. Visas are taking longer to process, taking four to five weeks rather than two to three, and Gamble said he has heard reports that Russian Unangax doing work funded by his Anchorage-based association are facing government scrutiny and even harassment. Efforts to reach out to Unangax leaders in Russia were unsuccessful.
Russian visas for American citizens cost at least $160, and to visit the Russian Unangax, Lekanoff-Gregory will have to fly from her home in Unalaska to Anchorage before heading south to Los Angeles, then across the Pacific and north to Russia, where she will catch a flight to the Komandorskis, which are only 500 miles west of her home.
Another effort to reach across the border hampered by deteriorating relations between Russia and the U.S. The National Park Service has recently granted more than $80,000 to Iñupiat residents of the Alaskan village of Little Diomede — a tiny island in the Bering Sea separated by just 3 miles from Big Diomede, which is part of Russia — who are looking to reconnect with their relatives in Russia.
The Iñupiat residents of Big Diomede, who are related to those in Little Diomede, were moved to the Soviet mainland in 1948.
Igor Krupnik, an anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution, said that it would have been easier to bring the Diomede residents together several years ago, before relations between Russia and the U.S. soured. It takes time to navigate the now rocky relations between the two countries, and time is something in short supply for the Diomedes’ Iñupiat.Delores Gregory, Lekanoff-Gregory’s daughter, is active in traditional dance and has always wanted to visit the Russian Unangax.