A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

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Wasilla

Wasilla is the place where I have lived for the past 29 years - sort of. The house in which my wife and I raised our family sits here, but I have made my rather odd career as a different sort of photojournalist by continually wandering off to other places to photograph people and gather information, which I have then put together in various publications that have served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communities.

Although I did not have a great of free time to devote to this rather strange community, named after a Tanaina Athabascan Indian chief who knew Wasilla in the way that I so impossibly long to, I have still documented it regularly over the past quarter-century plus. In the early days, my Wasilla photographs focused mostly upon my children and the events they participated in - baseball, football, figure skating, hockey, frog catching, fire cracker detonation, Fourth of July parade - that sort of thing. 

In 2002, I purchased my first digital camera and then, whenever I was home, I began to photograph Wasilla upon a daily basis, but not in a conventional way. These were grab shots - whatever caught my eye as I took my many long walks or drove through the town, shooting through the car window at people and scenes that appeared and disappeared before I could even focus and compose in the traditional photographic way.

Thus, the Wasilla portion of this blog will be devoted both to the images that I take as I wander about and those that I have taken in the past. Despite the odd, random, nature of the images, I believe they communicate something powerful about this town that I have never seen expressed anywhere else. 

Wasilla is a sprawling community that has been slapped down hodge-podge upon what was so recently wilderness of the most exquisite beauty. In its design, it is deliberately anti-zoned, anti-planned. In the building of Wasilla, the desire to make a buck has trumped aesthetics and all other considerations. This town, built in the midst of exquisite beauty, has largely become an unsightly, unattractive, mess of urban sprawl. Largely because of this, it often seems to me that Wasilla is a community with no sense of community, a town devoid of town soul.

Yet - Wasilla is my home and if I am lucky it will be until I grow old and die. Despite its horrific failings, it is still made of the stuff of any small city: people; moms and dads, grammas and grampas, teens, children, churches, bars, professionals, laborers, soldiers, missionaries, artists, athletes, geniuses, do-gooders, hoodlums, the wealthy, the homeless, the rational and logical, the slightly insane and the wholly insane - and, yes, as is now obvious to the whole world, politicians, too.

So perhaps, if one were to search hard enough, it might just be possible to find a sense of community here, and a town soul. So, using my skills as a photojournalist and a writer, I hope to do just that. If this place has a sense of community, I will find it. If there is a town soul to Wasilla, I will document it. I won't compete with the newspapers. Hell no! But as time and income allow, it will be fun to wander into the places where the folks described above gather, and then put what I find on this blog.

 

by 300...

Anywhere within a 300 mile radius of Wasilla. This encompasses perhaps the most wild, dramatic, gorgeous, beautiful section of land and sea to be found in any comparable space anywhere on Earth. I can never explore it all, but I will do the best that I can, and will here share what I find and experience with you.  

and then some...

Anywhere else in the world that I happen to get to, such as Point Lay, Alaska; Missoula, Montana; Serenki, Chukotka, Russia; or Bangalore, India. Perhaps even Lagos, Nigeria. I have both a desire and scheme to get me there. It is a long shot. We shall see if I succeed.

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Sunday
Apr192009

Two Iñupiat poets who did a reading in Anchorage

For almost a week now, I have been delaying this post on these two Iñupiat poets, Cathy Tagnak Rexford and d g nanouk okpik. That's because on the Monday after they did their reading at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, as part of the Still North series, they drove out to Wasilla and I met them at Kaladi Bros. 

It was then that I came to understand that, not only were they superb poets, but they have led amazing lives.

I wanted to tell at least a tiny portion of their life stories, but to properly do so, I needed some time that I did not have. I kept thinking that I would find that time the next day, but each day would pass and the time would not materialize for me.

And now I am about to leave for Barrow.

I do plan to tell their story in a special edition of Uiñiq Magazine that I am working on. I do not think that I will have time to write it until I put the issue together. Perhaps, after it comes out, I will find an excuse to revisit Cathy and d g and put the story here, for readers who will not see Uiñiq Magazine.

So, for now, I will just say this: they are close relatives, who grew up not even knowing about each other. d g did not even know she was Iñupiaq. As a baby, for complicated reasons, she was adopted out to a white family in Anchorage. Her adopted parents never told her she was adopted, they raised her as if she were white, but she noticed that she wasn't.

She wanted to find out who she was and therein began a long story that took her to an Indian college in Northwestern Montana, where she learned the spiritual ways of the people from that part of the country. Due to privacy laws, she could learn nothing about her origins but, after prayers and a sweat with her friends and mentors in Montana, she set out on a journey that took her to see Senator Ted Stevens and that ultimately led her to what might seem a chance reunion with her mother, or perhaps one that was not chance at all, but guided. Later, she met Cathy at a Lower 48 powwow and then wound up going to school with her at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe, New Mexico.

Both are accomplished and published poets who work to find and encourage other young Native writers.

The reading of poetry that they did was from their works published in the book, Effigies.

With their generous permission, I include a poem from each here.

A Wind Drives Over the Waters

by Cathy Tagnak Rexford

 

A small brown Dukha girl

offers her hand

bearing black medicine

to a short fine haired reindeer

 

a wind drives over northern Mongolian taiga.

 

A round aged Inupiaq woman

stretches wet sealskin

over white driftwood

lashing tightly with oiled sinew

 

a wind drives over Northern Alaskan tundra.

 

A stout fearless Inuit boy

sits on softened spruce branches

daydreams of spearing the land

as lichen islands surface in salt water

 

a wind drives over treeless Nunavut plains.

 

A tall agile Yuit man

treading on fragrant wet moss

watches breathless - a rusting of the soil

 

A wind drives over Chukotkan sedges.

 

Cathy Tagnak Rexford, reading.

Cathy Tagnak Rexford takes her bow.

The standing-room only crowd listens, some with eyes eyes closed to better to see the mental images evoked by the words of the poets.

Foist

by d g nanouk okpik

 

Bones surfaced on the old land

as the earth thaws and cracks.

 

In Kuukpik area we find them,

let no one be in any doubt,

 

of the remedy from Anatkuq,

for the red illness. She prepares

 

the poultice in the mortar bowl,

Cotton grass, seal liver, rainwater.

 

The soil rattles with bleached

ivory bones, bones clack and claw,

 

at the walls of glaciers melting,

crossing all darkness into grey.

 

I roam in a sideslip of clouds,

I paint a sign used in music,

 

algebra, marking in the direction

of light-shadow, as if for a fossil record.

 

I meet her bringing lead pieces

for making spark, pumice burns slowly.

 

Coldest moon reacts to the equinox,

the age of the earth is already intact.

 

d g nanouk okpik reads.

d g nanouk okpik takes her bows. She made her beautiful deerskin and fur outfit, which reflects both her Inupiaq heritage and that of the Lower 48 Indians who gave her guidance, herself.

 

 

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Reader Comments (1)

Thank you. Brought tears to my eyes.

April 20, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterMissSunshine

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