MERTARVIK, ALASKA, sits high on a treeless bluff, roughly 30 miles up the Ninglick River from the Bering Sea. On a late April day, wet, stinging snow and ominous gray clouds gave way to spots of blue sky. After school, Gibby Charles, 11, and Jonah Andy, 12, spend their time trying to perfect their handstands. “I’ve been doing this for four years — since I was 7,” said Charles as he slapped his hands down in the slushy snow and kicked his feet in the air.
The two boys giggled, then stopped and looked up at a small flock of birds soaring overhead. “We hunt them,” said Charles. “Tutangays,” said Andy, an Anglicized version of Tutangayak — “Canada goose” in Yugtun, the Central Yup’ik dialect spoken here.
The geese are a prized meal in the spring: The first fresh meat of the subsistence hunting and fishing season and a sign of warmer weather to come. The boys’ eyes followed their flight
