Across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, subsistence season is well underway. From geese, to ducks, to whitefish and pike, people are out hunting and gathering food to store up for next winter. On Nelson Island, families of the youngest among those hunters and gatherers celebrate with a throwing party.
Usually it’s for a first seal, but recently in Mertarvik, Mildred Tom decided to host a throwing party to celebrate a daughter who graduated and a few of her grandchildren’s recent achievements.
“For all their first catches, everything, mosquitoes, flies, you name it,” Tom said, laughing.
Tom had been gathering gifts to give out at a throwing party for quite a while. “And my daughter was like, 'we gotta make more room in the house,’” she said.
So, on a Sunday afternoon at the end of April, Tom put the word out to all the women in Mertarvik, and they made their way down to her front porch.
Once the Elders get situated in the middle of the crowd, the party starts and it’s total chaos. A throwing party is exactly what it sounds like: Tom, her niece, and her daughter pull treats and prizes from a big blue plastic tote and toss them into the air. They rain down on the crowd of women below, who then scramble in slushy, melting, springtime snow for the bounty. The first round of throwing included a rainbow colored array of candy.
Tom said that she felt a little guilty about the candy she tossed out, so she also threw toothbrushes off her porch, and eventually a couple of tubes of toothpaste.
“I was, like, looking at the candies and I was like, ‘we threw the toothbrushes away, but I failed to provide the toothpaste,’” Tom said.
Party horns, kazoos, and little toys, socks, gloves - the list of prizes seems endless. They all went flying off Tom's front porch. She also filled little canvas tote bags with things like measuring cups, mixing bowls, and a few wooden spoons - items Tom wouldn’t dare throw at the group of Elders gathered in the snow next to her house.
“Those wooden spoons, you know I asked my son ‘if I threw this wooden spoon would somebody get hurt?' And he’s like, 'Yeah! You better not throw them mom,'" Tom said.
Before packaged candy, plastic kazoos, and factory made wooden spoons became available in a villages like Mertarvik, women tossed out food: dried fish, fish strips, and most of the first catch that prompted the party.
These days it’s the gathering itself that’s notable. In the years since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tom said that there have been far fewer people getting together.
“Since COVID, we haven’t gotten used to having visitors or visiting around,” Tom said.
That’s why getting the women of the village together for some Sunday afternoon fun in the spring sunshine was as welcome a treat as the goodies that went home with all of Tom’s guests.
