October 23, 2023 — Michael Cleveland’s job is resuscitating the equipment essential to village life.
On a morning in late summer, inside a modest engine repair shop, Cleveland was juggling jobs fixing the transom of an aluminum skiff and stripping a four-wheeler down to the guts.
Mechanics here fix snowmachines, boat motors, the occasional car, dirt bikes and anything else with an engine. In a part of Alaska without roads, these are the vehicles vital to everyday life — getting to the airstrip, going hunting and fishing, traveling to other communities across the flat terrain of the Kuskokwim Delta.
Cleveland, 33, grew up in this predominantly Yup’ik part of Southwest Alaska and has been employed at the shop for around two years.
“For me, I’m learning while I’m working,” he said.