Joseph "Joe" Beetus

Joe and Celia Beetus were interviewed on November 15, 1992 by Wendy Arundale in Fairbanks, Alaska. When we made this tape, Joe and Celia Beetus were visiting Fairbanks for the Athabascan Fiddling Festival. I picked them up downtown on a Sunday afternoon, and we drove to the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Because it was a quiet place to work, we taped sitting around one end of the big conference table in the Institute of Arctic Biology's library, a place where we've taped together before. The tape began with Joe talking about his childhood growing up in the Allakaket area. He talked about several of the places where his family camped, activities that they undertook, and the general outline of their seasonal round. He also talked at the beginning of the tape about how he and Celia had raised their family with everyone going to trapping camp in the winter. This pattern continued until l957 when the school was established in Hughes, and the children were required to attend. Toward the mid-l950s, Joe began hiring Wien Alaska Airlines to fly his family and even some of his dogs to camp. It was the easiest way to get his large family, which by then included eight children, to camp. Joe and Celia both recalled incidents from the time when their kids were growing up, but Joe's contributions also included memories of several of the old-timers from around Hughes, some of whom Steven Attla also remembers. They include Joe Hoagland, Ernie Wingfield, and Les James. Joe also talked some about Wilfred Evans who had a store at Alatna. Joe also commented on how he learned to sing, what singing means, and how many of the "high words," the special vocabulary used in songs and speeches on formal, ceremonial occasions, have been lost, even to people of his generation. Celia talked about her own growing up in the Allakaket area. Her family, like Joe's, spent a lot of time in camp. She talked about various camps where they stayed, some like Tsaalatna, in the Old Man or Kanuti River area. She also talked some about her family's fish camp below Allakaket. She recalls how she and Joe were married by Bishop Bentley in a group ceremony with Martha and Abraham Oldman, and Henry and Sophie Beetus. Such ceremonies were not unusual, for the bishop would make a trip up the river almost every year by boat, holding services, baptizing babies, and marrying couples along the way. Toward the end of the tape, Joe makes a very heartfelt and eloquent statement about what he feels agency employees and park visitors should know about Native people and the land. He points out that subsistence is integral to Native people's way of life. His very basic question, "How would Native people make a living without subsistence?" addresses more than just how would people put food on the table and wood in the stove, although those issues are very basic to his statement as well. He recognizes the need for some regulation, but he also sees the need for a greater understanding of and meaningful involvement of local users. Although legally, parts of the land may belong to the federal government, in cultural and emotional terms it is still Koyukon land and Joe makes a strong case for treating it as such. In concluding the tape, Celia echoes Joe's sentiments and concerns for how their children and grandchildren will make a living if the land and the right to harvest its resources is taken away from them.