At the potluck that night the police chief settles into a metal folding chair next to me. I comment on the number of people there who were aunts, uncles, nieces, cousins. Everyone pretty nearly is family. If a young person marries someone from another village, they are lost to the family. So, maybe a second cousin in the village is better.
Family is important.
There is little evidence of the scourge of alcohol and drugs in the adults I saw, but the Chief of Police says suicide and alcohol are terrible problems in the village. Even he, he says, drinks too much on occasion, although less now. Most of the people in the village stay in the village. It is not shrinking, but staying about the same size, year after year. They live on seal, salmon, reindeer, caribou, deer and berries gathered on the tundra.