A new pair of mukluks for Royce
Monday, June 13, 2011 at 11:29AM 
Young Royce Rock assists his aaka (grandmother), Ramona Rock, by holding down the pattern that will make the shapes to cover his foot as she traces it onto a section of polar bear hide. She is making making mukluks for him.
A couple days later, the mukluks are done. Royce lifts up his foot as Aaka Ramona prepares to encase it in the left mukluk.
Royce takes his first stroll in his new mukluks. His aaka is Athbascan, raised in Nenana as the daughter of a river boat owner and pilot. Although her father is gone now, The Ramona, the river boat that he named for her, still plies the Tanana and Yukon Rivers.
Ramona adjusted well to life on the Arctic Coast and for years has been the Point Hope high school Tikigaq Harpooners girls basketball coach, often co-coaching with her son, Rex Jr., Royce's dad.
Reader Comments (7)
Royce looks sharp in his new mukluks! Kalib will love his PJs. :)
Another awesome post Bill!
The mukluks are gorgeous, but why do they kill the polar bears? Do they eat them? Please excuse my ignorance; hard to picture eating a polar bear if you have lived in California your whole life.
Knowing your love affair of cats, I thought you might like this funny video of an owl and a cat. Best friends!!
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/the-odd-couple-cat-and-owl-are-best-friends/20lif9wr?rel=msn&cpkey=349f0953-0274-4adc-b80b-e664e54bcbe9%7Cstupid%20videos%7Cmsn%7C
Mom of grandsons - Yes, those are Kalib's kind of jammies.
Nancy - thank you.
WakeUpAmerica: Yes, I graduated from high school in California and while that was quite awhile ago, there was nothing in the way we lived or in the expectations that were implanted in us to give us much understanding of distant people and cultures. We had the impression that the rest of world, in essence, wanted to become “us” – to live as we did and eat as we did.
The Iñupiat culture is a hunting culture. For thousands of years, they have live and survived as a hunting culture, obtaining food, clothing, tools and even home construction materials from the animals they hunt. Hunting is ingrained in Iñupiaq culture and without hunting there would no Iñupiat people. Hunting is what has enabled the Iñupiat to survive in the place they have. Yes, the Iñupiat do eat polar bear, and when one is taken, which happens only on rare occasions, a call is usually put out to the elders to come and partake.
I was struck by this comment left on the NYT Lens site by a reader:
“I was saddened and at the same time, rejoiced at the honor and honesty the Native Alaskans exhibited through their truthful embrace of tradition in the hunting of whales and other native animals of the region.”
In the words “honor and honesty,” that reader grasped it. That’s the thing about the Iñupiat way of life and diet – it is honest. People know where their food comes from. In the larger American society the average person has little comprehension of the truth behind the food he eats for his own survival. This includes vegetarians, because even to grow vegetables, habitat must be taken from the wild animals and the population of those that remain must be kept in check to prevent them from eating the vegetarian diet that the vegetarian needs.
As to polar bears, today’s Iñupiat hunter poses no threat to their survival – but everyone in California who drives a car does. And there are a lot of car drivers in California.
Thanks for the video! I always like a good cat video - better yet with an owl buddy.
Thank you for your response as to the Inupiat way of life.
Thank you for the lesson on Iñupiat culture. On the one hand, I embrace nature and mourn for what we do to the environment. On the other, I irrationally regret the killing of any animal (I draw the line at flies and mosquitoes), and I do drive a car.