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My family calls it Knock Out
These stories print in the Alaska Dispatch News Sunday insert. It’s been a great relationship and I have a good editor who lets me use my village talk and Inupiaq without explanations. Sometimes. I feel like this story was waiting to be told for a long time. I often don’t know what will make it…
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Inupiaq: The language I can write and speak, but don’t understand
Photo: I call Niv “my little teacher.” I spent four days with her and her Anaana, camping on the Niukluk River, near White Mountain. Niv and her Anaana are from Iqaluit, Canada and with intention, Jesse speaks Inuktitut with her young daughter. I learned so much simply listening to the two speak with one other, and from Niv’s…
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My favorite love story
UNALAKLEET — A year and a half ago, I moved to my hometown of Unalakleet. After 20 years, I decided that moving to the close-knit family community would bring me joy. I sold my cute, full-of-character Nome house, complete with a claw-foot tub, wood stove, and wood countertops from the old Anchor Bar. I shipped…
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Why I live where I live
UNALAKLEET — My great-great grandpa was a mythical figure to me. A man I read about in books. A person built in that historical, not really real way. But on a November day while visiting Chicago a few years ago, I looked at my great-great grandpa Stefan’s drawing and he became a human being. A…
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The morning fear turned into preparation
UNALAKLEET — Today I am defying the -51 temperature that exists six feet from me, on the other side of that six-inch wall. This morning I covered my body with wool. I wrapped a soft, caring bubblegum pink scarf around my neck. I put on some pink and fuchsia earrings made by my daughter —…
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Adii! Take that, tough January.
UNALAKLEET — Wearing a black kuspuk with black and white kupaks, topped with his white, thinning hair, Chip read the words. He has always been the most steady and solid man I know. From the time I was a little girl with bobbles holding up my side ponytail, this man of compassion speaks and I…
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White friends come in handy sometimes
UNALAKLEET – One of my favorite things to do on this earth is walk in beautiful places. Being in the open air, marveling at the world and being humbled by views makes me feel both strong and small, and happy to be alive. So when my friend Emily told me we should go hiking in…
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Alaska media misses their deadline for change
UNALAKLEET — I had just gotten back from picking cranberries. The air was cold and crisp. My favorite time. No mosquitoes and still warm enough to enjoy an afternoon picking berries in the hills with a lunch of dried fish, Pilot Bread and coffee. Back from a weekend of hunting with my friends Greta and…
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Finding light in a sometimes dark and scary world
UNALAKLEET – He turned the lights off. I had been in that church thousands of times from not long after I was born until I graduated high school, but never like that. It felt irreverent. The pews were full and the lights were off. There were elders in there, and I wondered what they were…
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My eyes smile again: A caribou hunt up the Kobuk
NALUQ — There’s something about being out in the country 10 miles up the Kobuk from Kiana. In the open air. Having the freedom of a river. Feeling the grounding of black spruce trees. Hearing the lightness in heart from friends’ laughter. And eating a breakfast prepared on a Coleman stove in a warm cabin.…
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laureli ivanoff 