The citizens in the Alaska community of Barrow have decided to return to their traditional roots and change the name of their town to something you will never be able to pronounce.

Courtesy of Yahoo: 

A slight majority of voters in the largely Inupiat city of Barrow approved efforts to change the community's name to Utqiagvik (oot-GHAR-vik) in their local election Oct. 4. The vote was tight, with 381 in favor of the name change and 375 against it. 

"Basically, it reinforces the cultural identity of the people," said Mayor Bob Harcharek, who is not Native. He noted that early day missionaries set up schools in the area where students were forbidden to speak in their native language and were punished if they did so. "It caused some social psychological problems." 

Barrow City Council member Qaiyaan Harcharek, the mayor's son, introduced a local ordinance in August that began the process ratified by voters. The younger Harcharek is Inupiat on his mother's side. 

"We are now in an era where the reclamation of tradition is critical to the perpetuation of identity as Iñupiat," he wrote in an email Friday to The Associated Press. "The people of Utqiagvik voted to regain our traditional name. Hopefully, it signifies the beginning of a decolonizing revolution. Regaining our traditional names is just one step towards that healing!"

As you can imagine this decision is not going over well with folks who run businesses with the name "Barrow" over the top, nor with many of the non-native residents.

However it is hard to blame the people of Utqiagvik for wanting to get back some of the heritage that was beaten out of them by the early missionaries.

As I have shared before what happened to the native children in Alaska was horrific and essentially constituted the wholesale destruction of an entire culture.

The children were torn from their families, and sometimes sent as far away as Arizona, to be "properly" educated in the ways the white man.

As a result many of the children returned to Alaska villages unable to speak the language, knowing nothing about how to survive in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, and stripped of any sense of self worth.

Alcoholism and drug use became an epidemic, and many of these villages still have no recovered.

So yeah, Utqiagvik (oot-GHAR-vik) is hard as hell to pronounce. But tough shit, learning to do so is really the very least we can do to show respect for a people who have managed to survive frigid temperatures, famine, pestilence, and of worst of all, the arrival of the Christians.

This is the film my daughter is currently working on.

From ADN:

As "Everybody Loves Whales" ended a second week filming in Anchorage, a consensus began to emerge among the onlookers, extras and hired hands orbiting the $30 million movie production.

Drew Barrymore is smaller than you'd think.

But the flock of workers that follows the production as it moves from location to location across the city? The entourage of trailers and equipment carts? Bigger than expected.

"It's almost like an anthill," said Amy Anderson of Anchorage, who is working as a medic on the set. Only when the cameras roll does the commotion stop, she said. "The entire ant farm just freezes in time."

My daughter is one of the ants.  She is working as a production assistant and is helping to build sets and move props from one location to another. 

I wish I could tell you really cool stories about drama happening behind the scenes, and which actors were really cool and which ones were prima donnas, but my daughter signed a non-disclosure form so I am being kept in the dark just like everybody else.  Well mostly.

However I can share the fact that my little girl is working her ass off and really raking in the dough, which is GREAT news because she stills owes me a rather large chunk of change for paying to have a new transmission installed in that RV of hers.

And I am going to need that money pretty soon for........oh yeah, we have to wait for that announcement.

By the way here is some footage  from 1988 of the three trapped whales that inspired this film.