Alaska Governor Sarah Palin joined Franklin Graham on Feb. 20 to deliver food to hundreds of hungry families along the frozen Yukon River.

Emergency Food for Eskimo Villages

Food packages delivered by Samaritan’s Purse are bringing relief to families struggling through a difficult winter

Listen to a report from

Luther Harrison
Director, North American Projects

Samaritan’s Purse is continuing to airlift tons of food to hundreds of Yup’ik Eskimo families who are struggling to survive an unusually harsh winter in the Alaskan wilderness.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and state officials joined Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham on Friday, Feb. 20, as our aircraft flew to the villages of Marshall and Russian Mission along the frozen Yukon River to deliver food to hundreds of families.

"It felt like someone actually cared about our small villages," 28-year-old Russian Mission resident Jojo Changsak told the Anchorage Daily News after Palin and Graham visited the community of 330 people.

Since then, Samaritan's Purse has delivered food to an additional nine villages. We purchased 22 tons of food, enough to give a 44-pound box to 1,000 families. Additional boxes are being packed by churches in Anchorage and Wasilla, and Samaritan’s Purse aircraft will deliver them to the villages, which are just below the Arctic Circle miles and about 400-500 miles from Anchorage. More than 700 boxes have been given out so far.

Food boxes include pancake mix, instant potatoes, corn, rice, soup, crackers, noodles, spaghetti sauce, and other staples. Each box of food costs $64.

Some families say they have been eating only once a day as they ran short of the fish and berries they stored away last year. Others are so impoverished that they have had to choose between heat and food. A gallon of fuel can cost $8 and milk $10, if they can find it at all.

In the depth of the Arctic winter, airplanes are the only way to bring relief to villages that are hundreds of miles from the nearest highway. Samaritan’s Purse has aircraft based in Alaska to fly volunteers and supplies to ministry projects deep in the wilderness and even across the Bering Strait in Far East Russia. Our construction efforts have included homes rebuilt after a massive fire in Hooper Bay.