IT’S ‘LIZZY’ FROM TOKSOOK
The Wall Street Journal today reports the first person to be counted in the U.S. Census will be Lizzy Chimiugak of Toksook, when the 2020 Census starts in January in the village.
The elders wanted the village’s oldest person to be counted first, but no one knows if the oldest is Alois Lincoln or Lizzy Chimiugak, who both might be 89 years old, although they aren’t sure. Back when they were born, precision on their birthdate wasn’t a priority.
“They guessed back then,” resident Charles Moses told the reporter from the Journal.
The first person to be counted will be Lizzy Chimiugak, the newspaper reveals.
Chimiugak was born in a nearby village and moved to Toksook in the mid-1960s. She is considered an elder who passes down both cultural history and the Yugtun language,.
The story, behind the newspaper’s paywall, advances the process for how the count will take place in Alaska’s remote villages — a very old-fashioned process that is done by hand.
And the person who will conduct that first count in Toksook is Steve Dillingham, the director of the Census Bureau, who will travel to Nelson Island in the Bering Sea, where “residents still catch herring, hunt musk-ox and pick berries to eat,” wrote Janet Adamy for the Wall Street Journal.
Ms. Chimiugak was featured in August in the Delta Discovery, an online publication.
An “adorable” 89 year old?
I hope when I hit 89 no one calls me that.
With that attitude I doubt you have to worry. 😉
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