Our Kids Go Away

As people kept moving away, slowly the school was emptying out. Finally there was no more school. The government made arrangements for all our kids to go away to Wrangel or some other place. We were told, all we had to do was put a little card in their pocket or purse and another in their suitcase to identify the children. And we were to tell them not to lose their name card.
 
Here, I never went any place and the kids never traveled except to fish camp or hunting. LIttle kids, six years old, seven, eight, nine, ten years old, had to leave their parents. All those kids in day school — Frederick Tagarook, Willie Tukrook, Donald and Benny Neakok, Amos and Charlie Agnasagga, Walter Toorak, and my boy Allen Upicksoun — they took care of each other in school when they went out. That’s why they’re just like brothers.

Before the boys left they’d say to each other, “Stay away from Indians.” I told them the Indians never fought us. And they would say, “You don’t know how it be there Mom.” I told them they would all be partners in the group, Eskimos and Indians. They shouldn’t act like funny Eskimos.

You know, I can’t remember what year it happened. I know it was when Willard was one or two. All five of my kids went at once. Gordon went to high school and the others to day school: Allen, Nancy, Lilly and Marie. Juanita and little five year old Alma were the only ones left behind. They were all my kids except Alma —there were two Almas. The older one from my first husband’s family died at Mount Edgecumbe after she finished school. She graduated and we didn’t have enough money to bring her home then so she stayed there to work. The second Alma we adopted. She’s Amos Agnasagga’s sister and lives in Wainwright, married to David Bodfish.

With all the kids gone at once, I didn’t feel like cooking. We missed the kids. Warren was already working at DEW-line, so lots of times he brought home leftover food. Juanita died about that time, and when Alma had to go away to school, I just couldn’t cook. With the leftovers Warren brought, it was as though I didn’t even have to cut wood for my cookstove.

That old lady I talked about before,Tunualluk, she kept me company when the kids went away to school. She knew I wasn’t eating. When she came over I had to make something for her. That’s how she got me to eat. And I had to chop wood and keep a fire so she could be warm when she’d visit me. She’d kept me going. She kept me alive.

Tunuallak wanted us to send tapes to the kids when they went away to school.We had one of those old round tape recorders with the reels. Certain people from different villages sent recordings to each other. That’s how they talked to one another instead of letters. We would just talk like I’m doing right now and send them to Point Hope, Kivalina, Kotzebue, Selawik or whoever wanted It. We talked about different kinds of hunting we were doing in our own place. Or talk about what different people were doing.

Mickey Toorak hadn’t seen his brother in Anaktuvak for twenty years. They started to talk to each other with the tape recorder. Boy, that was a good one. We laughed. Everybody in town would come over for that. We furnished the recording and light plant — a small one for a small house. Sometimes they came early and waited until Warren came home. They liked to listen to those tapes over and over.

Some of them like Amos and Charlie Agnasagga were that old lady’s grandchildren. But all the kids called her grandma. They really liked their little grandma. She sang her little songs for us to tape and send to the kids. I wish I could sing them. They’re kind of like Mother Goose songs, only Eskimo. When she would sing, you started laughing. The words were funny. Then she would tell a story or just talk to the kids. The parents talked to the kids too and then sent them to the principal.

When the principal had time after supper or whenever, the kids were gathered together in one room to listen to them. The principal said they would cry and cry when they heard mommy and daddy talking to them. Afterwards they answered back and talked to us on the tape. They talked about themselves. The principal said they cried for a little while and then they started laughing. They answered back that the little old lady made them happy when she sang in Eskimo. They sure were happy. That was part of her work,Tunuallak made the homesick kids real happy.

Those songs she said were very old. People sang them, children to children. When she was growing up she learned them. Some she said came from the church when they first had Friend’s missionaries close to Kotzebue. There was a point between Kivalina and Kotzebue where the missionaries stayed and sang a lot. She didn’t understand many of the English words but she could almost pronounce them. Sometimes when the kids came home from school she said, “See if you can understand, I’m going to sing like English.” She sang loud and had a good voice. When she finished she’d ask, “Do you understand?” She learned this “Little Brown Church In The Valley”. She couldn’t speak English but the kids could. They knew the song and started to sing it for her.

That was how the kids had a good time even though there were no activities here. She made anything fun. Even washing her hair with shampoo. When they returned from school for summer, they brought her shampoo. They washed her hair and showed her how to put a little bit of shampoo in her hand.

Then one day It was nice weather and she went home to shampoo her hair outdoors. The kids watched her through the window. She used that shampoo, spilled her water on the ground, filled it back up again and rinsed her hair. She put a towel over her head. Then when she fixed her hair she’d come over and say, “Oh, I feel real light!”

She was a nice old lady. She sewed and made bags out of canvas to hold things. She gave them to the traveling boys like my husband Warren. She’d say, “Keep your traps In there. It’s a big bag so you won’t drop your traps all over.” They would pack them up and put webbing around it. Warren kept his for a long time on his dogsled and took It all over. When he needed to set a trap he just took that bag. It was handy. He even used it when he stared using the snowmachine. He put his parts in there so they never dropped all over. Finally, when the house burned down he lost it.

We lost lots of things when that house burned. It was the little house we made on this side here before everybody moved here. It was a plyboard house and it burned down by itself. The second house we burned on purpose to keep the ground clean after we moved to our quonset hut.
 
Warren worked hard for the kids. We had nothing except for food, and we ate lots of meat. We couldn’t afford to buy diesel. “That will wait. The money will have to go to the kids.” We sent them twenty dollars each, monthly. If they stayed In school they got at least twenty dollars a month. And we bought their clothes. Every summer they came home in old clothes and had grown one or two sizes bigger. Either they would out grow their clothes or wear them out. Summertime we picked out new clothes from Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery’s catalogs. It would take three months of winter to save that money for clothes. Warren never had a vacation for three straight years. Only then, he took two weeks off. He even worked on Sundays — never had a day off or anything.

But we wanted those kids to stay In school. We missed them all right. But we told them they would never be able to work for money unless they went to school. Their daddy Warren only went to the fourth grade. But still he worked hard and learned. Even though we only went to the fourth or sixth grade we learned how to spell, divide and multiply. Those are the important ones.

I don’t know why they aren’t learning that today. I ask my grandkids. In fourth grade some don’t know how to read. Some of them even graduate without learning how to read. We didn’t even find out until they finished school that two of the boys in Point Lay didn’t know how to read.

The kids that went out learned. We told them they had to finish. Too many of the older people never even finished day school. When that first school opened here with the Moyers, even some thirty year olds went. They studied hard Just to spell their names or learn how to speak English and say yes or no. That’s why we had teachers that could speak Eskimo, those first two. The BIA knew we needed an interpreter. That really helped. Maybe we learned how to speak English faster than the Wainwright kids our same age. School was important.

You know when our kids went out to Wrangel or Edgecumbe, it was really hard. Some of those older people didn’t have help so they moved out after a few years. Amos Agnasagga’s parents, Samuel and Ruth, went to Wainwright by boat. They talked to us about It. We told them to go ahead and move. “If we want to move later we will too. So we stayed here right to the end. Wainwrighters came for Walter Toorak’s old parents, Eunice and Mickey.

The kids never came home except for summer break. May 20, they left school and about August 24, they had to go back. The school and airlines tried to make It a fast trip so the kids wouldn’t be stopping around in other places. But sometimes they had to stay all night in Barrow when the weather was bad. Then they stayed with Warren’s cousin, Anna Aiken. My girls would say, “Aunt Anna, she’s bossy. She wouldn’t even let us go out.” Now they tell her, “Good thing you never let us out! You really want to take good care of us.” They realize that.

Summertime was just like Hallelujah! The kids all wanted to find duck eggs and hunt for ugruk. When Allen, Donald, Amos and the other ones got to be teenagers we had to watch them close. They didn’t know those holes in the ocean. They might just look at the ugruk and fall in. They had little accidents and went in the water but they learned to pop back up if they went into a hole. We just watched them close.

Donald went in one time like that. He was out because the older boys had to kill ugruk. He got off the sled, fell right in the hole and touched the bottom. He could see the hole from down there and headed right back up through it and grabbed the sled. That was before he learned to swim.

It was hard to keep up with those boys. They would, go all over and do anything. They were free. When Amos killed a wolf first then Allen had to do the same thing the next day. They did everything together. They wanted to see who would kill ugruk first and would hardly sleep. As soon as Samuel and Ruth and the oldebrothers went to sleep they would sneak out and go off to - do something. They would plan it. Amos’ mom would have to wake up early in the morning to see if Amos was asleep. When he was missing she knew he was out on the ocean. Samuel would have to get up and look with his binoculars.
 
Those kids were always doing something. They made the village lively again. After their summer break It was quiet again and we missed our kids.

DEW-line

We moved over to this side when everybody moved out of the Old Village. It was a little house near here. I had nobody to talk to, just a shepard dog. He wouldn’t let DEW-line people come near us, unless I told him not to bother them. The DEW-line had their own rules. It’s an Air Force or military warning system. You get along fine If you follow their rules and never go around where you’re not supposed to be. People only stay for awhile so there were always new people.

When they had a new movie someone would come get me with a pickup. Sometimes when they had something fresh they would get me for supper. When they killed a moose some of the people would get me to eat with them. After work, sometimes bosses like the station chief or superintendent wanted Warren to teach them so they went hunting with us. We would hunt around with two boats and kill some ducks or belugas, ugruk or walrus, whatever was around.

Some DEW-line people who hunted, didn’t want the meat so they would give it to me. Lots of them just wanted the skin. One guy killed an ugruk, bearded seal. He let it stand in the sand for two days and then came to me to say I could have the meat. I said. “No way. It’s no good. Never let It stand. Have to cut them up right away when you want the meat.”

He said, “Your dog feed?”

“No way. Even my dog won’t eat that,” I told him. “You want the skin, you scrape it yourself.” He said he’d give me twenty dollars. I said, I’m not doing anything. Not even for money.” He did it himself. He didn’t want to look at me. He thought I was just an Eskimo he could handle. When I say no, I stand by it.

Even though Warren worked seven days a week, all day long, he always went hunting in good weather. He never ate supper at home. I would make a hot meal and put the pot, or whatever. We’d beach where we wanted to hunt, and started to eat while it’s still hot. Then we’d get something like spotted seals. I’d skin them and send those to the tannery. That way I had my own work sewing Jackets.

Then I got sick. I had to stay at Walnwright for awhile to be close to the health aide. My nose kept bleeding all the time and I couldn’t stay alone. The DEW-line let him switch wIth a Walnwrighter who came here while Warren went to Wainwright to work.

They did that one other time and we both went to Barter Island. That way we felt better because we got homesick for people with nobody in Point Lay. At Barter Island there were lots of Eskimos like us. I knew a lot of the relatives up there. When I told one person I was going they’d tell me to say hi to their cousin.

That’s how I have lots of friends north and south.

We stayed in Wainwright for most of the summer and then had to come back. Those kids who went away for school were all older now. They were getting training Outside so they could work as mechanics or whatever they needed to get a good job. I worried sometimes. I would tell them to come home when they finished school, there’s no other place.

When Warren and I came back from Walnwright we found out that some new people In DEW-line went looking around our ice cellar. That’s where we had our cold storage, ice cellars. We used the same ones, year after year. They have those at Point Hope too but they don’t stay really frozen in the summer. Our ice cellars at Point Lay really freeze. They stay that way year-round if they stay covered when it’s warm. One big family would have their own ice cellar, or maybe two. When they first made them, people helped each other and gave cigarettes or something in return. But somebody took everything off to see what was inside and then left it open. It just melted — full of caribou.

I guess those new people didn’t know what it was. They thought that was where we dumped trash or something. Oh boy, everything was ruined. The ice cellar just filled up with water. There was nothing we could do. Then when winter came it all turned to ice. People told me to sue them, but we didn’t want to. We didn’t even know who did it.

It was a good thing we had another ice cellar across the lagoon. And it was good they left that one alone. Sometimes I had a board over there that said “Leave Alone. Neakok.” That’s because I knew DEW-line people sometimes took things from over there. One time they used a helicopter to pick things up from the Old Site. People took things left behind in the old houses and warehouses. Warren saw that helicopter going back and forth from the Old Village back to the garage at DEW-line. These people with the helicopter weren’t DEW-line workers. They were oil drillers or exploration — I don’t know what they were doing. There were too many things going on with people coming In and out. I couldn’t keep track of them all.

Maybe I shouldn’t talk about these kinds of things. But they are not stories. Those are the things I went through. I saw it. And I was telling you about that helicopter going back and forth from the Old Village. Since my husband worked over there at DEW-line, he looked in the garage and saw all the winter fur clothes and skins. He recognized our stuff in the garage.

Warren came home to tell me what was happening. I got a piece of paper and started writing. “Bring all the junks you pick from Old Village and bring them to me here. Right now." Warren took that over to them. Those people had to load everything into trucks and bring them to my house.

Eskimos don’t take things when they go to a new town, not unless they are told to take it. And when I go to Anchorage, they don’t give me anything. All they want is my money. That’s how it is. These newcomers visit the village once in awhile and they think Eskimo stuff is priceless. But they have no right to take things from between the houses and what’s stored Inside. Even if no one is staying at the house, that’s still their house. They come back sometimes.

When those guys brought our stuff over with the trucks they were full of all kinds of things. And the other stuff, I knew who they belonged to. There were all my old parkies that I never used, old mukiuks and hip boots. Some of them had holes in the bottom or the caribou hair coming out. That’s why I didn’t use them. But they were nice and dry. Some of the people wanted to buy them, I picked out what we still used and sold the others one by one. There, we were happy. I told them not to do that again.

Some of those companies looking for oil came around here. They unloaded about five hundred barrels of diesel and jet fuel over by where Cully Camp is now for when the company came in with their Cat-train. The Cat-train was all their equipment for drilling to see what was around here. You know they even drilled in front of my door! We were away for two weeks and when we came home there was no house around here except one hut. That was the quonset hut we lived in. I said, “How come they dumped sand in front of my steps?” I thought they brought sand from DEW-line. Here they drilled in front of our house and brought up sand. I didn’t even know they drilled!

Still, new people would come through. One of the taniks from DEW-line took an ugruk skin I had stretching on plyboard. It was all dried and bleached real white. This was when we moved over to the River Site. I left the skin outside my hut on this side to freeze-dry and bleach. I told DEW-line that I wanted it back. Well they tracked and tracked that guy. When they caught up to him he said he sold it already. Finally, I said never mind. That’s why sometimes I don’t get along with the new people that come through. I tell them to leave my stuff alone. They don’t like me, so I smile to make them more mad. But nice people are nice — it’s the other ones I leave alone.

The Kids Return

It used to be fun in the summertime listening to the kids make their plans to come back to Point Lay. They had to prepare themselves. They made me laugh when they all got together talking about what they would be. One said she’d be secretary, another one accountant, then a mechanic, diesel worker and helicopter frame maker. They kept telling us they would come back. That’s why we stayed here. I knew they would come back. We didn’t know who, though, because In some of the villages, once they went away to school the kids didn’t come back. That’s why I worried sometimes.

They really did work hard to be trained. My son Gordon went to electrician school in New York for four years. He lives in Barrow now. He’s worked all over the Arctic Slope on the electric poles. And the girls like Lilly, Nancy, Marie and Alma, they went to school in Anchorage and worked for people there. The way I saw it, they weren’t doing much working for the other people. They should be working at home for Eskimos.

Now the ones that came back are working for the Eskimo community. They keep their school, store and clinic going. One of them is mayor, another is the light plant man — Charlie Agnasagga. Lilly is the village coordinator. When Marie comes home, she will do something.

There aren’t many people here so they have to take turns. If someone doesn’t know how to take care of money or the business goes broke, they have to be kicked out of the job. Then one of the others will jump in and keep It going. We have to pick ourselves up. By trying, they find out who is good for this or that. They don’t have to feel bad if they’re replaced. They can try another job. Some of the kids are scared of jobs they don’t know how to do and want to get out. The kids didn’t know they would be coming back here to work hard.

When Land Claims started up the kids told us they were coming home. We were happy. By then only Warren and I were here and DEW-line. As soon as we got word, we started getting ready for them to return. They had to make all of their plans too. They had almost one year to get ready. Some of them were in Barrow or Wainwright, some of them still Outside.

With Land Claims there was a rush in Barrow to help get things going with Nuiqsut, Atqasuk and Point Lay. They wanted to start up those old villages that people had left behind. Barrow said there was too much space between there and Point Hope. They had to have a little town here in between. That’s why the rush was on.

There were so many things to do. We ordered lots of groceries from Lindy’s in Fairbanks because there was no store here. DEW-line let us get It through them, freight-free. We got lots of flour and sugar and stacked It up. When DEW-line got new mattresses and threw away their old ones, we put them across the lagoon in a warehouse and stacked them up.

We did lots of extra hunting that fall too and ordered some sheefish from Kotzebue, whatever we could get. I told you about that ice cellar that got spoiled. That was the year before everyone came back. That’s why it was full of caribou. We had word ahead of time. So we had to start over again with hunting that winter to fill the other ice cellar across at the Old Village.

It was about March or April when they started coming down here from Barrow and Wainwright with snowmachines to start over again. Willie Tukrook and his brother Frederick came from Barrow with their snowmachines. They left their parents in Barrow because they had to start their Old Village over. And the Wainwright Agnasagga boys like Amos had their machines all loaded up too.

All of them were coming home to Point Lay. Whoever wanted to follow them was welcome. My son Allen was working in Oakland when he heard all the kids were coming home. He left his wife, grabbed his little car and drove to Alaska. He couldn’t stay away. None of them could stay away. All those years going to school they’d been homesick.

So, my husband told Dew-line he wanted to quit and help the young people coming home. Even though they wanted him to work yet, Warren said no. He said he had to work for his own people now. Our own Inupiaq builders and carpenters.
 
Everybody moved into the houses at the Old Village when they first came back. They had plans to build all new houses at the River Site. People stayed at the old school house at the Old Village. Some of the families were in the nurses quarters, some in the kitchen, others in the dispensary of the old school. It was hard to heat that one. And some of them stayed in tents all spring until fall. Quite a few people came back - I wish I knew how many.

My husband made a landing field in the middle of the lagoon. We put a quonset hut at the end of It. In March a Herc started bringing building materials. It kept coming back and forth with the materials to build houses.

Everybody was busy. When I say busy, I mean busy. They chose the River Site for the new village. The young people had no time to cook, so I cooked for anybody who came in. Some of them lived too far from the building site if they were staying in the Old Village. Others had nothing to eat in their tent. That’s why we got all that food ahead of time. I cooked and babysat while everybody else worked on the houses.

We tried to raise dogs so they could have a dogteam but the dogs were too mean. They were raised when there were no people around. They kept biting people. We had no time for them so they had to be killed.

We built ten houses in that one year. They finished the first one and told me and Warren to move into it. It’s this house we Iive in now, we just brought It from the River Site when the village moved here. We were the first one to move into a new house. Somebody else took over the hut. As soon as a house was done, somebody moved right in.

We were so busy building houses there was no time to go place except hunt for meat. The meat was divided up and went to the people who cooked, then everyone would eat it. For two years it was like that. It was a good time though.

The only problem was that the River Site flooded. The ground was sinking or something. After just a couple years we had to build a new village again. That’s when we moved here to where we are today. Everybody pulled their houses over here and kept on building for the new ones coming in. We had the Cully School here and afterwards got this big new school.

I know Ruth Agnasagga worried about her son Amos when he first came back. She asked us to take care of him. She was afraid that since he Just came back from California he’d have a hard time because he didn’t know how to make biscuits, bread, donuts or whatever. They told us to treat him like one of our kids.

Warren never went back to work at DEW-line. He’d work at different jobs around town like he’s doing right now, working on some tractors. That way we had lots more time to live off the land.

Warren and I kept going out for our food to the same places we go now. We have two fish camp cabins on the Kukpowruk River. We use them in the wintertime and stay there one or two weeks looking for caribou and trapping foxes but mostly wolverine. We track them and go further up Uz a, Tirjmigiaq, Tulugaq, Cape Lisbourne, Kuutchiaq. Neakok and just stay around the cabins. After everyone came back, Amos and Liss von Ziegesar. went hunting with us a lot until she got tied down with her baby. Usually Warren and I go by ourselves. But this winter we missed it because Warren was sick and we stayed away in Anchorage for about five months.

When it was fishing or beluga hunt, duck hunting, seal hunting — that’s when we went in a big group. Like beluga, people still do that together — herd them up and hunt. We butcher them across the lagoon on the hill where it’s not sandy. The mayor is in charge of dividing the beluga up for everyone in the village. We make a pile for each house and have to haul them up to the ice cellars because they spoil quick. I remember around 1980 we got lots of beluga. Those were happy days, but lots of work. We were lucky. A few years we didn’t get any beluga.

People don’t get beluga other places because they travel in the open lead with whales and sink easy in that deep water after shooting. We herd them to a shallow place in the lagoon so they can’t sink. That’s why lots of people want beluga. When we have enough, we send lots of bags and boxes to Barrow, Wainwright and Kotzebue. But not this year, fourteen was not enough for the village. We could only send a little part.

We had lots of fun fishing too when the village started again. Our house at fish camp was too small so whoever wanted to follow brought their own gear and used tents. Fall Is the only fishing time, October and part of November. There’s grayling, dolly varden, silver fish and dog salmon. You just have to get your fish hook out. It’s freezing then, so as you take the fish out they freeze.

Just last fall that didn’t work. It kept raining and the fish didn’t freeze right away. Even though the fish were wet, I kept putting them in boxes because I don’t like those ermine to kick them around and play with them. You know those little white animals? I don’t like them. They eat the liver and that’s all. And when they’ve had enough to eat they just open them up for nothing. You know, we’re out at fish camp. If we left the fish outdoors the ermine kept hauling them away. As many as they could. They put them in the squirrels’ dens while the squirrels were asleep. I’ve seen them do it. That’s why I know.

Point Lay Right Now

All those kids are grown up and have their own kids and families. This town really built up. Now I have grandchildren. Things changed from when I was young. When I was growing up 1 never stayed out after nine during school days. Now they can stay up all night if they want to. When I was a kid everyone was in by nine o’clock, even the parents.

And there was no work and no money. They had to haul something to burn in their stove. There was no diesel like now. And they didn’t buy meat from the store. When we compare life a long time ago, back then was just hunting. There was no money so they just had to hunt. It was lots harder than now.

I think that’s why kids are loafing now. They don’t haul wood or hunt. They have nothing to do when they’re teenagers. And I think this drug, marijuana is bad. I don’t like it. It gets into the kids, I think. What should I tell my grandkids? I tell them, “You want to try that? Then just look at that boy who spoiled his mind. I’m scared of that kind of person. Because they don’t think. If you want to be like that then go ahead.” I don’t know if I’m right or not, but that’s the way I see it.

I worry about my grandkids. When I was little, we worked hard until we were tired. I followed daddy hauling wood or hunting. Just when It was dangerous he didn’t let me follow. When it was safe, I followed till I went to sleep. The kids hardly do that now.

But they’re still Eskimo here. They eat their Eskimo meat. They hunt. If they try to go without it, they can’t do it. And they have to have seal oil. When the kids went away and stayed with White people, they thought they didn’t have to eat seal oil. Of course, they couldn’t get it in school and had to eat different kinds of food. But when you come up here and start to eat Eskimo food, you’ve got to have seal oil to dip your meat in.

When my kids stopped eating seal oil they thought they didn’t have to make it. Then in the wintertime they’d say, “Mamma, you have seal oil?” I always told them yeah. But lately I tell them, “You don’t want to learn how to make your own seal oil? Okay. I tell you what. You go study from Lisa. She’s the only one who listens when I teach you girls. You go study from her. I’m not going to keep on teaching folks one by one.” Then they tell me, “No, I know how.” Lisa was with Amos Agnasagga and they have a daughter Christina. We used to spend lots of time together. I taught Lisa lots of things whenever we could get together before she started working at the school.

But when my leg started hurting and I couldn’t walk, my kids cut up ugruk skin in no time. They had a tough time taking the oil from the heavy ugruk. So I said, “I’ll tell you the easy way. Everything is heavy. You take the skin off when you get the ugruk and cut it up the middle. You hold the skin as you’re taking it off and leave the oil in the meat. Then you roll the skin and roll it. As you take the skin off, make sure you have something clean under the oil or uqsruq blubber. Then you have an easy time cutting that oil to put in the barrel.

I want all the young kids to know those kinds of things. I don't want to take our grandkids out to fishcamp and find out they don’t even know how to chop wood. They should know that. But they hit it all over instead of in one place. I had to teach them. They had to learn how to build a fire. They thought you just pile wood on top of each other and build a fire. I watched them. They’d say they were going to build a fire like the Indians they read about in a book. After piling up pieces of woods they got a big box of matches to start their fire. Pretty soon the matches are all finished. I started to teach them how and told them it wouldn’t start without small pieces of wood. I made sure they learned it.

They have to learn how to cut their caribou meat. My one boy watched us all the time. And then when he could hunt caribou, the first thing he did was skin it his own way — right down the back. He thought he had it all figured out the easy way. Well he had a tough time trying to take things out. I told him, “You can’t do it another way. You have to follow Mamma and Daddy’s life. You see, all you have to do is tackle those legs.”

Most of the kids here get to go out and learn. The parents take them out or the uncles and sisters. It depends on how big the boat is. But the kids have to learn all those thing.

I don’t know what the future will be like for these kids. Is 1991 our future? Whatever comes, I guess we’ll just keep on living. It’s good that they know about this town and the people from here. We say that Point Lay is anybody’s town. The people from here came from different places. Like the two other old people in this book. Kate is three years older than me. She’s got different kinds of stories because she came from the north, Prudhoe Bay. That would be a good story. And one came from the south, me. Pualu came from Point Hope or somewhere around here. So that makes Point Lay right now.

Point Lay Cose Study 1989 Impact Assessment, Inc.