The Alaska Native Language Center published a novel on June 1 that adapts a story from Rudyard Kipling’s famous “The Jungle Book.” The story is the only one from Kipling’s collection that takes place outside of India, set in part on a beach in the middle of the Bering Sea, on St. Paul Island.
“Sergie and the White Seal” is an adaptation and update of Kipling’s “The White Seal,” told from the perspective of the young Indigenous protagonist, Sergie. The two coauthors of the new novel said their story is an original creative work that stems from their passion for handicraft and a desire to better represent the community and history of St. Paul.
“Dear reader, what you will find in these pages is not a retelling of traditional Unangan stories, nor a reproduction of traditional Unangan knowledge,” author Garret Pletnikoff read from the foreword of the new young adult chapter book. “Rather, you will enter a fantasy world of our creation…”
Pletnikoff is the great, great, great grandson of an Unangax̂ chief named as a main antagonist in Kipling’s original story.
Pletnikoff said he and coauthor Hannah Zimmerman based the tale on various published Unangax̂ fables and spirituality, as well as Kipling’s original story. But in the original story, Kipling portrays Pletnikoff’s ancestors through a disparaging colonial lens — as “not clean” murderers of the innocent marine mammals.
“Rudyard Kipling just didn't understand the full scope of what’s going on here,” Pletnikoff said.
Kipling’s story follows an albino fur seal named Kotick who witnesses the harvesting of other seals by Unangax̂ hunters living on St. Paul. Kipling pits the local Indigenous community against Kotick, who resolves to find a safe haven for seals away from humankind.
This adaptation is a chance to tell a different story, to portray the Unangax̂ community and the seals as partners instead of enemies, as Kipling — who never visited the remote island — depicted them, Pletnikoff said.
The foreword of the new novel provides a brief historical context of the forced labor of the Unangax̂ people in St. Paul, and the dark history of the Russian and American seal fur trades.
“The ‘White Seal’ includes violent descriptions of seal harvesting, but Kipling never mentions that these harvests were not done by Unangan free will,” Pletnikoff read again from the foreword. “The Unangan people of the Pribilof Islands were subjected to forced labor, often described as slavery under both Russian and United States rule lasting for nearly 200 years.”
The new story features a different protagonist and antagonist.
“The enemy here — instead of being, you know, Unangan seal hunters — that are a personification of an industry — is … something that really is affecting our region, and it's illegal overfishing practices,” said coauthor Zimmerman.
Zimmerman, who came to St. Paul in 2024, is an adjunct professor with the Alaska Native Language Center hailing from New York, and studied linguistic anthropology. She said their story follows Sergie and a seal working together to save their island.
“It's a story of Sergie, who discovers that he's a shaman, and he has this, you know, magical ability to talk to animals, and he discovers his purpose as a conduit between the animal world and the human world at the same time that the white seal, Kotick, is coming of age and discovering that he needs to protect his species,” Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman said she and Pletnikoff were inspired by Unangax̂ lore and mythology and decided to name their main character after a spiritual leader from the Aleutian chain — Sergie Soboroff.
The coauthors worked with Unangax̂ historian Michael Livingston to incorporate elements of colonization and first contact with the Russians, and to bring in Indigenous practices that colonizers had wiped out, she said.
“When the Russians colonized the Aleutian Islands in the 1700s they were equipped to stamp out anything they considered sinful, including non-Christian spiritual practices,” Pletnikoff said. “This meant the Unangan could not share what knowledge they still had of their old ways without risking retaliation from Russian Orthodox leaders. Much of that knowledge, therefore, died.”
Zimmerman said there are no known precolonial traditions from the island, as the Unangax̂ community there was forcibly brought to St. Paul by the Russians to harvest fur seals. But Zimmerman said they used their research to create a world of spiritual history for their characters.
“We like to imagine that they guarded these traditions like precious jewels and passed them on as long as they could,” she said, reading again from the foreword.
Pletnikoff — who tans seal and reindeer skins by trade — said the practice of crafting brought him and Zimmerman together initially to create the text.
“We sort of developed a relationship over the love of craft ourselves,” Pletnikoff said.
Zimmerman said Pletnikoff’s craft played a major role in inspiring the retelling. She said they even sent images of some of his soft sculptures of seals as inspiration for their illustrator, an artist in Sweden.
Kipling’s original story was published without any say from the Unangax̂ community of St. Paul and provided them little to no direct benefit, according to the authors.
Zimmerman said she hopes their text can give local Indigenous artists an opportunity to create their own crafts and ultimately be a source of pride.
“We read the book to fourth and fifth graders in the fall at the St. Paul Island School, and we were like, ‘We're working on this. What do you guys think?’ And I'll never forget how, at the end of the book, one of the fifth grade students came up to me, and he was like, ‘You know, I didn't know Aleuts could be superheroes,’” Zimmerman said.
The roughly 150-page text includes 95 Unangam Tunuu words with a picture glossary.
Zimmerman said the Kipling Society has been supportive of the retelling, purchasing a copy and plan to place it next to the original in their library.
Zimmerman and Pletnikoff will be working on recording a full-cast audiobook this summer. They plan to be in Unalaska in mid-July to record with local actors.
