;)
I visited Makalik tonight - at 34, the youngest whaling captain in Barrow and also an individual who has spoken out in public about suicide, something that has struck very close to Makalik. His words will appear in the special Uiñiq that I am working on.
In this small space, I will note that Makalik gives his wife, Tina, credit for helping him through the darkness that all this brought upon his own life, to manifest itself in drug and alcohol abuse, and that she did that by helping him burst the bubble in which he kept all the pain trapped inside and let him release it.
To both keep the past alive and protect the future, he counsels that not only should we honor and listen to the Elders, but that we should sit down with the young as well and listen - really listen - to what they say.
Makalik holds Hunter, his seven week old son.
"I love to hunt," he explains, "to provide for the people. I love it. I hope that he will do the same thing that I do, provide for the people."
As for the scabs on Makalik's face, that is frostbite, earned while driving a snowmachine across the tundra to get caribou, to provide for the people.
Around here, such scabs are a mark of honor.
;)
This is also Makalik - from the first time that I photographed him in May of 1985. I put him on the cover of the very first issue of Uiñiq magazine that I made. This framed version hangs in his house. It makes me feel good when I see something like that. When I took the pictures for that Uiñiq, I was the same age that he is now.
Yet, sometimes, it feels like it happened pretty recently.
If you think about it, even when a very, very old man lays down upon his bed to face his death, even his birth remains just a recent thing.
;)
When Ruby Aiken Donovan was a very small girl, she appeared on the cover of another Uiñiq, as a flower girl at her Aunt Anna's wedding. A while back, I photographed Ruby's wedding to Quuniq Donovan, who holds their baby on in the picture behind her.
Yes, they will be in the next Uiñiq, too. I used to do Uiniq all the time.
Now, I only do it every now and then.
I called the first issue, "The Open Lead." The second one became Uiñiq - The Open Lead, but it time I dropped the English words and just kept the Iñupiaq, which means the same thing.
As for the fact that both of today's subjects appeared on past covers of Uiñiq, it is pure coincidence. I did not plan it all. I sought them out not for the past, but for what they do now and it just turned out that way.