Letter From Shungnak

(SHUNGNAK, ALASKA) - Napoleon Black is a small man, made smaller by the vastness surrounding him. He was standing, quietly, sipping hot coffee. Before him, vapor still rising in the cold air, was a pair of lungs, a pool of blood and a bit of hair. Around him were the tracks of hundreds of caribou. One answered his rifle and stayed behind.

The Irony of The Blooming Desert
Our No-Win Water Policy

Three-quarters of a century ago, the United States embarked upon a policy, the results of which would mock its own intentions. Because it has been an obscure policy-or, more accurately, a policy which dwells in that special kind of obscurity reserved for the very obvious-it has managed to continue virtually unchanged into the present day, despite an accumulating burden of poignant and bitter ironies. As one looks closely at the policy and its results, one begins to see striking parallels with our Vietnam experience. Those who were to benefit from the policy have become the losers. What was conceived as a reform measure ended up creating a powerful and corrupt order, which is largely dependent upon the United States government for survival. A landscape -or, at least, some of its most exquisite natural features-has been destroyed in order to "save" a region-at-large. What was supposed to be a great benefit to society has, in some respects, turned into an enormous liability. And there is no end in sight.

Islam As Raison D'Etat

What is this religious fervor that is gripping the Islamic world? Institutional Islam has toppled a government in Iran, threatens a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, executed a former prime minister in Pakistan. Interpreters say that the huge influx of wealth from petroleum has transformed Islam's sense of itself and of its international importance. I have read in newspapers and magazines that Moslems are filled with a new confidence, a greater feeling of self-assurance, a vision and a hope. Are we, as some observers have written, on the threshold of a resurgence of Islamic power, of a new Golden Age for the followers of Mohammed?

The Public Humor

Perhaps the most apt way to describe the public humor of black Americans prior to the mid-1930's is to say that it was nearly always masked. Not only in the literal sense of grotesque, corked on blackface facades used in the minstrel shows that took the United States by storm in the early 1800's, but also figuratively and psychologically. As an old blues tune put it:

Got one mind for white folks to see,

‘nother for what I know is me;

he don't know, he don't know my mind.