Uiñiq (we-nyik) Magazine explained

Following last night's post, MissSunshine left a comment asking how the heck Uiñiq was pronounced and what does it - already defined as "open lead" - mean. I left her an explanation, but promised that I would better explain it tonight.

I consulted with Jana Harcharek, the Bilingual/Multicultural Coordinator for the North Slope Borough School District and she gave me this phonetic spelling of uiñiq: "we-nyik."

I started Uiñiq magazine in late November of 1985 with funding from the North Slope Borough Mayor's Office and published my first issue in January of 1986. My purpose was to document what I could of life in the eight Iñupiat Eskimo villages located in the Borough, spread out over an area nearly as big as the state of Utah. 

The bowhead whale hunt is the foundation upon which the majority of these villages are built. The bowheads come to the villages through the lead, the water that separates the shorefast sea ice from the pack ice. When the winds and current push the pack ice and the sea ice together, the lead is said to be closed.

When the two bodies of ice are separated, then you have an open lead.

This makes the open lead an extremely important part of Iñupiaq life and so I named the magazine, The Open Lead. 

It was then suggested to me that I use the Iñupiaq word, Uiñiq, so I added it in. The magazine then became, Uiñiq - The Open Lead.

This struck me as redundant, so, in time, I just made it Uiñiq.

I was the sole staff of Uiñiq. I took all the pictures, did all the layout, and wrote all the stories - in that order.

It was my big project for the next 11 years, but, as artistic endeavors of the heart so frequently do, by the end of that time it had driven me so deep into debt and into a situation so complicated and convoluted that, although I loved Uiñiq dearly, I was forced to let it go.

Then, about 5 or 6 years later, the Borough asked me to do another special issue. I have continued to do occassional special issues, about one every two years, since that time.

The picture on the cover above is of flower girl Ruby Aiken, the same Ruby Aiken Donovan pictured with her children on yesterday's post.

An example of Uiñiq without the English words, open lead. The gentleman on the cover - and let me stress that he was a true gentleman - is the late Arthur Neakok.

What a privilege it was, to get to know people such as Arthur Neakok!

What a privilege it has been to do Uiñiq!

My Uiñiq work eventually led to my book, Gift of the Whale: The Iñupiat Bowhead Hunt, A Sacred Tradition.

Those of you who have not already seen them can also find some of whaling work on a website that I begun awhile back but never finished, mostly because I got distracted by this blog.

I must finish it - and refine it - for I had no idea how to build a website when I put this together.

The original series was all black and white. The later, special issues, are all color, thanks to the fact that I no longer shoot film, but digital.

When I bought my first digital camera, I thought I would convert everything to black and white, but it was too much work to get digital black and white right and I already spend an incredible amount of time working on my photos, so I decided to leave it color.

This is Trudy Kippi from the Meade River village of Atqasuk and she has just caught a grayling. The month is August, 2005.

I will note that I did not have a copy stand or lights available and so photographed these covers at 3200 ISO with a Canon 5D Mark II under a solitary hotel bathroom tungsten light. 

With a copy stand, tripod and low ISO, they could look a lot better, but you get the idea.

I must thank George Ahmaogak, who was Mayor at the time I originally started Uiñiq, for the opportunity and also Margaret Opie, a true Iñupiaq woman who gave me invaluable help and support, former Mayor Jeslie Kaleak who kept me going during an interim period between Ahmaogak administrations and current Mayor Edward Itta and his special assistant, Karla Kolash, who have not only given me my most recent opportunities, but have also stood by me in an exceptional way since I took my big fall last June and put myself out of action for the better part of a year.

Actually, the people who I need to thank number in multitudes and include virtually the entire Iñupiat nation of the Arctic Slope.

Two people from past covers of Uiñiq Magazine

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.

Transition: Wasilla to Barrow, where I see watersky

This is what it was like in my yard before I left. It looks to me like Kalib is playing, "harpoon the whale." Hmmm... and there's Muzzy, pretending to be a whale.

It was really hard to leave him.

I had seat 9A, no one sat in 9B and Steve Scarpitta occupied 9C - the aisle. Steve is the assistant principal at Alak School in Wainwright and arrived for the first time in December, when the sun was down for 24 hours a day. He was enthralled by the mysterious beauty.

Now the sun is up most of the day and very soon will be for 24 hours. Steve also has a home in Homer, where he and his wife run Halycon Heights Bed and Breakfast, where you can get your own hot tub and sit there and soak while viewing a magnificent glacier. He recommends August, on the day of the full moon, as a prime time to visit.

Before moving to Alaska, Steve taught inner city kids from Los Angeles who were on the verge of dropping out or not making it. And now he is in Wainwright, Alaska, seeing a world and society unlike any that he had ever before been in. It is not always easy for him, especially with his wife running the business down in Homer, but he says he loves Wainwright.

He loves Alaska, every bit of it, and if you visit him at his inn in Homer, where he will spend his summer, he will pass on that love.

He had been up all night working and so he needed to get some sleep on the airplane.

Back in Barrow - the view from the second floor of the Top of the World Hotel.

A girl looks out the very same second story window where I took the previous picture.

The Arctic Ocean's Chukchi Sea. That dark area in the clouds is called "watersky." It is the reflection in the clouds of a lead open water in the sea ice below. People like to see watersky this time of year - because open water means bowhead whales.

All the umiaks are ready.

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.

On my way to the play, where Marv Young played the piano during intermission

Obviously, this is not a picture of a poet or poets. It is a mountain. Pioneer Peak to be precise. And I am driving to Anchorage to see a play, Time Immemorial. I have been wanting to see this play, but tonight would be my last chance.

Trouble was, if I took the time to drive to Anchorage to see it, I did not see anyway that I could get everything done that I needed to do before I left for Barrow on the Sunday afternoon flight - let alone put my poets post up.

Yet... I wanted to see the play... I reasoned that, in a way, going to it would be like going to Barrow tonight, but not just for tonight, but for the whole of time, since that is what time immemorial is. So I decided to postpone my trip to Barrow until Monday and go.

And this is Marv Young, who put on an impromptu piano performance during the intermission. And now I really must go to bed. I haven't time to introduce you to the playwright-actors, so I put them in the queue for a later post, along with the poets.

But I will say this... if you haven't seen this play and you are anywhere near Anchorage, GO!

It is brilliant! Not merely good; excellent does not go far enough as a descriptor. 

It is BRILLIANT! POWERFUL! And one of the actors and playwrights and her preacher mother used to share the other half of a quonset hut with me just north of Barrow, at NARL.

I still consider her my neighbor. She made me very proud.

I will introduce her, soon - along with her exceptionally talented partner.