Connex I have known

You aren't in a village if you haven't seen any Connex trailers.  It's in the vocabulary at a young age, along with wannigan, Pilot Bread, smoke house and snowmachine.  Connex are the perfect items to repurpose.  They are lockable, waterproof and are delivered by the barge full of other useful things.  Stony River is no different in that respect.  I've seen at least 6 but I'm sure there are more.

These are by the side of the airstrip...obviously not locked.  

Here's a hidden away Connex.  It's securely locked.  To me, this speaks of the owner moving out of a building and intending to come back, but maybe a relative is living in the house.  Seems like it's been unopened for awhile.

This is my favorite because the label is Crooked Creek.  Since Stony River is upriver from Crooked Creek, I can imagine the barge stevedores getting here and noticing that they forgot to offload it at CC.  They stood around for awhile scratching heads and swatting flies and decided to put it here anyway.  It's the storage for the power plant now.  Maybe Crooked Creek has the one labeled "Stony River".

Alaska Native villagers were re-purposers long before it was fashionable.  Buildings are roofed with flattened Blazo cans, no containers (especially with tight lids) are ever thrown out.  In the old days, people in Atmautluak told me in the 80s, moose hooves were hung in trees or bushes just in case people were starving and found them, they could be boiled for the gelatinous broth.  Not sure if anyone would do that now.

The heritage language of this area is Dena'ina (pronounced da-ny-na).  It is listed as severely endangered.  There were between 75-90 speakers a few years back.  Most of the collection of Dena'ina cultural materials are centered around the Kenai Peninsula.   James Kari is the researcher whose name shows up most often in the archives.  Sadly, I can't find any old photos of Stony River in the UAF digital archives. but I'll keep looking.

Here are the dialects of Dena'ina:  (Dialects are defined as different varieties of the same language that have evolved over time and in different geographical locations) 

1. Upper Inlet, spoken in Eklutna, Knik, Susitna, Tyonek
2. Outer Inlet, spoken in Kenai, Kustatan, Seldovia
3. Iliamna, spoken in Pedro Bay, Old Iliamna, Lake Iliamna area
4. Inland, spoken in Nondalton, Lime Village (close to Stony River)

The color changes happened overnight in the highbush cranberries and the birch trees. You know what that means.