Atukan Akun & What Really Counts

The Aleut tribes of the Pribilof Islands sing a song: Atukan Akun or “We are one”. From summer 2004 till winter 2009, I had the opportunity to live as an active community member in the village of Saint Paul, to be one of the one.

During this unique time of my life I was eager to learn every Unungan word and dance step to the drumbeat’s rhythm of Atukan Akun, but more importantly I recognized the privilege to embrace its message of unity in my daily life

In January 2013, still gleaning my naturalist skills, I walked and monitored the shores of another Island.

Counting Harbor seals out at Hungry Point, here on Fishers had become routine but with the same stillness and even remote sense as in The Pribilofs-I cherished many sacred moments of “oneness” with nature, with the universe, with myself.

Just like the moment I spied a tiny piece of white fabric in a sand drift and unearthed a sailor’s shirt from WW ll.

I was eager to ride home and warm my feet, but that stillness and oneness had nudged me and declared to back track and return to a small spit of beach  and scrub line before leaving.

Later in May, while gently hanging the shirt that had probably been buried for nearly 70 years, some encrusted sand fell away from its hemline and I discovered a last name: Kushigian.

Somehow in their own precise way, these “Atukan Akun” moments led me to find Julia Kushigian, daughter of First Class Officer Jack P. Kushigian all these years later.

The other week I invited Julia to Fishers Island, back to Hungry Point where even this time with a Connecticut newspaper jotting notes and a Long Island television film crew looking on, there was indeed a still sacred moment reminding me that we are indeed all One.

With a simple exchange of gifts I presented her with a long lost shirt and in return I received a stronger sense of family and a unique friendship.