Selawik resident Diana Ramoth is 67 and takes care of her 87-year-old mother. Sometimes that means helping her clean, sometimes — hunting with her son for caribou or moose to feed the family. Ramoth said she gets no assistance with caretaking and has to do everything herself.
“We would like some help,” Ramoth said.
The need for affordable food, clean drinking water, housing, expanded healthcare services and gathering spaces for Elders were the topics brought up during the listening sessions the Alaska Commission on Aging held in Kotzebue, Selawik and Kivalina, said Yasmin Radbod, rural outreach coordinator at the commission. The commission — an 11-member advisory council within the Alaska Department of Health — meets regularly to better understand the needs for senior services in various regions of the state and to find ways to fill those gaps.
“We talked about the money that was required to help Elders, whether it’s getting heating fuel or grocery shopping, or someone to care for them, — even if it’s just ... being available to sit around and have a cup of tea and learn from their history,” said Clyde Ramoth who is Diana Ramoth’s brother and Selawik city mayor. “We care for Elders because they cared for us.”
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Among various concerns brought up in Northwest Alaska, “food security, Elder nutrition, was a hot topic,” Radbod said,
In many Alaska villages, food is delivered by plane, and groceries cost a small fortune. To support the vulnerable senior population, some agencies offer them daily congregate meals, often hosted in schools, where Elders eat together with students — a model that can also foster intergenerational connection, Radbod said.
In Kivalina, there are no meals in a group setting, and holding them in a school, located 7 miles outside the village, would pose a transportation challenge.
[With weeks of no bus service in Kivalina, parents are expected to get kids to school 7 miles away]
Selawik’s senior meal program, also previously offered at the school, has been discontinued several years ago, Mayor Clyde Ramoth said. Residents expressed interest in the restart of the program.
“Not every Elder is getting those needs met on a daily basis,” Clyde Ramoth said. “If that would restart again, our Elders would have their meal... A simple sandwich and whatever else is on the plate goes a long way, in cold winter months especially.”
Receiving home-delivered meals would also work, especially for Elders who want to stay inside during storms and cold months or who — like Diana Ramoth’s mother — might not have the ability to visit the school for a meal.
In Selawik, one idea would be to have meals prepared by students in a culinary program at Davis-Ramoth Memorial School.
“We actually have two culinary classes,” said Clyde Ramoth who is also a Selawik school council member. He said that in one of the classes, high school students already “cook or bake and sometimes deliver it to elders but it’s not a daily thing.”
Clyde Ramoth said it would also be great to have subsistence harvest donations so that students could prepare fish, moose and caribou and deliver that as a side dish to Elders, along with the main meal.
“I think that’s a doable thing for the few Elders we have, but we haven’t gotten that far yet,” he said.
Selawik school does offer a cultural education class where students, among other things, set fish nets underneath the ice to catch whitefish, some of which they later deliver to seniors in the community.
Speaking of the value of subsistence food in the Elders’ diet, In Kotzebue, seniors expressed their appreciation for the Hunter Support Program, which allows hunters who harvest animals for Elders to get reimbursement. They also praised the Siglauq, a traditional food donation center in Kotzebue that supplies food for the elders at the Long-term Care facility called Utuqqanaat Inaat.
The concern Elders in Northwest Alaska Elders have about healthy food options relates not only to them but also to the children in the community because many of the grandparents are caregivers, Radbod said. One Kivalina Elder shared a photo of a school breakfast that showed a packaged muffin, a packaged bag of cookies and a small apple sauce container, questioning the nutritious value of the meal.
In both Kivalina and Selawik, Elders said they would be happy to receive frozen food deliveries because frozen food has a longer shelf life and Elders can heat it up when they need it, Radbod said.
“In Kivalina, I heard that frozen meat would be really helpful because the tribe has a freezer available to use,” Radbod said.
Maniilaq Association, the local health corporation, participated in some of the listening sessions and expressed interest in figuring out the best way to either have school meals again or ship food to elders, Radbod said. The corporation is working on a needs assessment to figure out what exactly most local Elders want in terms of nutrition, she said.
To help coordinate the right solution, the commission connected Maniilaq to Fairbanks Senior Center and Tanana Chiefs Conference, two organizations that have a shelf-stable and frozen meal delivery model for Elders that works in over 40 villages in the Interior, Radbod said.
TCC serves up to 400 Elders in the Interior with meals, Radbod said. They help Elders apply for the service and provide many of them with congregate meals, she said, Those who can’t attend the meals get a food box delivery once a month, she said.
To freeze meals, Fairbanks Senior Center uses a sealer machine “so that no food is wasted after their daily congregate meals,” Radbod said. “Then these frozen meals can be used for emergencies and back-up.”
In addition to food security, Elders in Northwest Alaska villages spoke about other needs as well.
In Selawik, several Elders experience dementia and might need more healthcare services — something that the community clinic doesn’t provide, said Marty Lange, program coordinator at the Alaska Commission on Aging. The community also expressed a strong desire for respite care, which is currently unavailable, he said.
Diana Ramoth expressed a desire for a better connection to existing help.
“We have Elders Services at our association Maniilaq, but we always have no one to get a hold of,” she said.
When it comes to water, Selawik is surrounded by lakes and rivers. But the community relies on expensive chemicals for water treatment and struggles to find and train qualified personnel to operate the water treatment plant, Lange said. As a result, “the water is often murky, unpleasant-tasting,” and “many residents resort to purchasing bottled water, collecting rainwater, or melting snow for drinking.”
Functional affordable housing is also an issue for seniors. Most houses in Selawik are over 30 years old and, due to melting permafrost, have uneven floors and ill-fitting doors and windows, Lange said. Many of the heating units are obsolete, and finding any repair parts is a challenge in the community, he said.
Kotzebue and Kivalina Elders expressed Interest in having a gathering place for Elders to have parties and events, as they used to in years prior, Radbod said.
Overall, local officials expressed eagerness to meet the needs of the Elders who are the bearers of culture, Clyde Ramoth said.
“In the 1980s we lost probably 20 Elders, and that means that 20 books of history about sharing and the culture, the language, the food, the way we survived for ten thousand years plus. ... We need to learn from them and survive our ways of living,” Clyde Ramoth said. “It’s part of our Iñupiaq... values — share and help our Elders and love our Elders,”
Following the listening sessions, the commission plans to use the feedback they received for advocacy during the legislative session and to help local organizations coordinate with other agencies and resource providers across the state, Radbod said.
The commission publishes the State Plan for Senior Services every four years and Senior Snapshots annually. In between quarterly board meetings, they host teleconferences on senior and Elder topics. Radbod said the commission hopes to have an in-person statewide conference next year.
Elders in Northwest Alaska who might want support can call or text Radbod at 907-230-0871.