On an otherwise uneventful Wednesday last week, three men sat on snowmachines on a raised patch of tundra looking out toward the frozen Kwethluk River. In front of them, dark clouds of smoke rose up from an area choked with willows and alders, the site of the old Moravian Children’s Home. Most of the structures that remained were being burned to the ground.
According to one of the men, Kwethluk resident Alexander Nicori, the largest structure that remains was too wet to ignite and will require a return visit.
“We tried burning the girls dorm. That didn't work. And then that shop, we just burned it down this morning. And then that church, we're burning that this morning too,” Nicori said.
On March 3, the men also set fire to the iconic three-story boys dormitory – a building that dates back nearly a century. It was a landmark on the Kwethluk River, roughly 3 miles upriver from the village bearing the same name.
In the charred husk of the dorm, relics remain: the metal frame of a tablet school desk, file drawers, snarled innersprings of mattresses, a deformed muffin tin, a backdoor staircase leading to nowhere. At the base of a tall chimney, black letter stenciling reads, “MM dormitory, Moravian mission, Bethel Alaska.” The buildings, what’s left of them, are still owned by the Moravian Church.
Just like the Moravian missionaries who established the site in 1926, the decision to destroy what remained of the children’s home came from the nearby hub of Bethel. Rev. Clifford Jimmie, president of the Alaska Moravian Church in Bethel, said that the church’s ruling body, or synod, had discussed razing the property for the past two to three years.
“The buildings are really in bad shape and the litigations of anyone getting hurt was getting so high, so we decided to either have somebody come down and take them down, but burning them was the first option, so we did,” Jimmie said.
Nunapitsinghak
The site was originally known in Yup’ik as Nunapitsinghak, which translates to “great, little land.” Interviewees featured on a website documenting the site’s history describe a complex mix of positive and negative memories. They range from the sense of belonging and discipline the home provided, to the pain of isolation and punishments doled out when residents spoke in their Alaska Native languages.
The experiences of those who lived at Nunapitsinghak are not only bound up in the disruptive forces of colonization. They are also closely tied to the fallout of influenza epidemics that predate the children’s home, and to the ravages of tuberculosis (TB) that overlap it.
According to the Moravian Church in America, in its early years the home also took in children orphaned by domestic violence as well as those “deemed unruly.” Up until its closure in 1973, the site took on the additional roles of boarding school and foster home, according to the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The first decades of the children’s home coincided with a time of severe TB outbreaks on the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta. According to the Alaska Division of Public Health, three-quarters of Alaska Native children surveyed from 1948 to 1951 from communities on the lower Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers tested positive for TB. Nearly a third of adults in the same survey showed signs of having past or present TB symptoms.
In the decades since its closure, the site fell into varying states of disrepair. Nicori and others in Kwethluk fondly remember Fourth of July gatherings there that would bring people from across the lower Kuskokwim region together.
"That was when the whole area got together over here to come out here do the Fourth of July carnival. The highlight used to be when men used to jump in a boat … and they’d line up six or seven, eight or nine boats, and then they go row all the way down to that bend down there,” Nicori said, pointing to a spot further up the Kwethluk River.
Kwethluk resident David Ephook remembered visiting his sister and brother-in-law, who were caretakers of the property after its closure.
“The last time I went up there was around 1973, summer. I went up there and gave them some salmon,” Epchook said.
But in recent years, many say that the site became a serious public safety risk. Kwethluk resident Peter Jackson said he went up to the children's home around a decade ago just to check it out.
“When I seen everything being torn down, written down on everything, no respect for the people that used to stay there. No respect at all, these younger generations,” Jackson said.
Rumors of occult activity, illegal drugs, and teenagers up to no good also swirled. Nicori, who took part in in the March 5 burn, said that the concerns in his community are real.
“Adults, grandpas and grandmas that been hearing about a cult thing, they just want us to do this a long time ago,” Nicori said.
Whether for negative or positive reasons, in both its painful past and in modern times, the Moravian Children’s Home has become a household name across the Y-K Delta. Soon, it will live on purely in memories.
It remains unclear exactly when the church plans to burn the remaining structures, or whether the local Native corporation that owns the land has plans for further cleanup or recovery of the site. Kwethluk Incorporated did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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