Making a difference: an Alaskan hero.

• Author: Kim, John
• Position: Alaska Wilderness Gourmet - Seize the Opportunity

Making a difference: An Alaskan hero

We Alaskans like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists. Keepers of the pioneer spirit on the Last Frontier. The harsh environment has made us self-anointed heroes.

Professor Stephen Haycox, a historian at the University of Alaska Anchorage, says devotion to this myth has foreclosed other perspectives that might serve us better. Besides, he argues, the myth is riddled with contradictions. Alaskans are really very dependent on others: big oil companies, the federal government, Outside investors and developers of every description. We've wrapped ourselves in a cocoon of self-deception. Lately, the land of opportunity and "North to the Future" myth has come under attack.

I give lots of presentations around the state. I talk about small Alaska businesses and what they're doing to diversify the economy by selling goods and services to the international marketplace. I talk about the guy in Juneau who's developed clothing items and acessories out of salmon skin.

I talk about the people who are developing a high-tech machine that grows new bone. The idea came from a Russian doctor who had to get creative because he lacked sophisticated surgical equipment. After I tell these stories (and there are more all the time), somebody stands up and says, "That's all well and good, but nothing's gonna replace oil."

These folks may be right in the short run. But their failure to see the importance of other stirrings in the non-oil economy could become a self-fulfilling prophecy - a new myth, one that obscures more than it illuminates. The implication is that our entrepreneurs are spitting in the wind; paddling upstream without a paddle, without a boat.

Meanwhile, the "nothing's gonna replace oil" credo is propounded more and more in the media and in some corporate board rooms and legislative offices. I've seen it stop conversations, bring the curtain down on speculation and imagination.

Luckily, I keep running into people who are living the Alaska myth - the time honored one in which the individual can make a difference. The other day I met Jean Wall at the World Trade Center's fax machine. Wall is president of Alaska Wilderness Gourmet, a company specializing in wild Alaska berry products such as jams, jellies, syrups and sauces. "Why are you smiling?" I asked.

She replied, "I've just sold my first order to a department store in Tokyo, and I'm faxing them my confirmation." The moment was especially sweet for Wall...