;)
The AFN convention is now more than half-way through its second day and here am I, in Wasilla, unable to attend a minute of it because press deadlines push. So I missed Iditarod champion John Baker's opening day keynote address...
...but I was there the day before when Baker addressed the AFN Elders and Youth Conference. His words have been reported in widespread articles and news broadcasts and I am too pressed for time to write a story about it for this blog, other than to note he spent 16 years working patiently, quietly and determinedly towards the victory that would make him, at 48, the first Alaska Native to win the Iditarod in 35 years.
Most of that time, he was out in the Iñupiat country of Northwest Alaska near his Kotzebue home, alone with his dogs.
Baker is softspoken and quiet, and paid his highest tribute to his biggest supporter, his mother, who, as he was winning his race, was entering a hard battle with cancer.
Pictured here are several youth from the Arctic Slope, all members of the North Slope Borough Mayor's Arctic Youth Advisory Council, waiting in line to have him autograph their copies of the First Alaskans magazine that came out in conjunction with AFN and featured John Baker on the cover.
I will include all these MAYAC youth - and John Baker, too - in my next and perhaps final, perhaps not, issue of Uiñiq, which will be out very soon.
The youth pictured above: Aileen Frankson, originally of Point Hope, now living in Barrow, Danielle Sims of Kaktovik, Simon Aguvluk of Wainwright, Justina Neakok and Hilary Leman, both of Barrow.