logo.jpg (12169 bytes)LaVonne's Fish Camp

Arctic Circle Educational Adventures

(A Culture Camp)

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LaVonne Hendricks lived and traveled extensively throughout Northwest Alaska. LaVonne, a non-Native, worked 14 years as a public health nurse serving 26 Inupiat villages around Nome and Kotzebue. No longer nursing in the region, she continues to share the summers at her commercial salmon fish camp.

LaVonne started fishing and camping on the Kotzebue beach in 1973 as a way to be outside during the summer, to get away from the office and as a break from her public health nursing work.

Arctic Circle Educational Adventures (ACEA), a non-profit corporation, had its formal beginnings in the summer of 1986 when 10 Native Eskimo students described their culture to 5,000 tourists at LaVonne's Fish Camp.  The innovative program provided these youth with an opportunity to build self-confidence and self-esteem, to take pride in their culture, and to learn transferable work skills.  Operating through 1990, over 100 Eskimo youth described their cultural to 28,000 summer tourist at LaVonne's Fish Camp.

The program also encouraged an intergenerational bridge between these youth and their Elders by reinforcing the Elders values.  ACEA received the TAKE PRIDE IN AMERICA NATIONAL AWARD from First-lady Barbara Bush in 1989.

Today, LaVonne celebrates 25 years at her fish camp. It is her Koviashuvik a time and place of great joy in the present moment. The power of place, the Zen-like nature of the Elders, and the dramatic weather changes keep her ever in the present moment!

 

Modified: February 26, 2008