The departure from Point Hope, back toward Barrow

When it came time to leave Point Hope, I caught a ride on the back of Mayor Steve Oomittuk's four-wheeler and we headed toward the airstrip. We had not gone far at all when Conrad Killigvuk came toward us with a smile and an outstretched hand.

We stopped, I shook Conrad's hand and then took this picture. He told me the baby's name but, darn, I have forgotten. He also asked for a copy of the picture. So maybe someone in Point Hope can direct him to it, have him click it to pop up a larger copy and then download it.

Or maybe you could download it and take it to him.

When we landed in Point Hope four days earlier and boarded the school bus that took us into the village, we saw this sign of welcome.

Just as I was getting ready to board the plane, Othniel Anaqulutuq Oomittuk Jr, "Art" the very fine sculptor and artist who created it from part of the boatskin that covered the umiak of Popsy Tingook, drove up in the senior to drop off a few Elders scheduled to return to Barrow on the same flight as me.

I asked the pilot to wait just a minute so that I could run over to the sign and take this picture of Art with his creation of welcome. The supporting frame is made from the jawbones of a bowhead whale.

And always, every minute that I spent in Tikigaq was one of welcome.

And then the Beechcraft turned from Point Hope and pointed its nose towards Barrow, 330 miles to the northeast.

Now... I had said that I would try to post a little bit of explanation and run down on the Arctic Economic Development Summit, but the fact is, I simply do not have the time - just as I have not had time to post but the tiniest hint of the photos that I have shot and the stories that I have gathered on this trip.

The project that I am working on is a huge one and does not leave me much time for the blog.

Counting this one, I have five more nights on the Slope and then I head home. I will then go into production mode on this project and that will include a serious edit of all the pictures that I have taken, and a cobbling together of the stories.

This won't leave me much time for the blog, either, but maybe I can dovetail my production work with this blog a bit and do a little catching, just the same.

Kunuknowruk - artist, scholar, thinker, friend and host; mammoth tusks and the dream couch

This is Kunuknowruk, also known as Pete Lisbourne, a treasured friend and the man who hosted me during my trip to Tikigaq, also known as Point Hope. For those of you familiar with my book, Gift of the Whale, he is the man who you saw picking murre eggs off the 900-foot cliffs of Cape Thompson, and then resting on the very edge at the very top with a cache of eggs in front of him.

Although he is not inclined to speak about it at all, Kunuknowruk is not only a Vietnam veteran, but one decorated for heroism, for risking his own life to save another when others held back.

If he had been born and reared in mainstream America, I have no doubt but what that Pete would now be a noted scholar of some sort, a Phd, perhaps an archeaologist or historian.

In fact, he is a scholar, but in a different kind of way than are those who attend universities. He is extremely curious about his own home, Tikigaq, said by all scholars of both societies who know to be one of the oldest continually occupied communities in North America, and by some to be the oldest. 

Kunuknowruk not only reads all the scholarly works that are produced on his community and Iñupiaq society, but does his own studies, by his own means.

One of those means is to walk about and to examine all that is on the ground, which includes many old artifacts.

One summer not long ago, he found a ceramic bead in a certain spot. The next summer, he found another and the summer after that, still another. So he did a more thorough search of the area and found several other artifacts, not of his culture but of western culture, such as a ceramic smoking pipe, and this button and tiny thimble.

They appeared to be of British origin to him, with the button likely being that of an English sailor. He thought, perhaps, that he had found the site where the crew of the HMS Blossom had camped in 1826 while searching for the lost Franklin expedition.

He has sent some of those artifacts to England for further study. Author Tom Lowenstein of London, who brought his latest book, Ultimate Americans: Point Hope, 1826 - 1909, to the Arctic Economic Development Summit, wants to help him find out if, indeed, this is the case.

Although few in the art world know his name, in my own opinion, Kunuknowruk is one of Alaska's master artists, but he does not view his art in much of a commercial way. Back when I first got to know him, he would spend his winter months creating wonderful pieces of art and then, in the spring, when the school teachers left the village, many would want to go with a sample of his work. He would sell these creations of love to the teachers for $5.00 each.

He doesn't do that anymore. His work depicts his community and its people - both as he has known them in his lifetime and in the past as he has seen reported in scholarly works and in old photograpjhs.

Today's modern village sits next to the ancient community site of Ipiutak, 6000 years old. Using a combination of the scholarly works, artifacts that he has found with his own eyes, and images that appear in his dreams, Kunuknowruk also paints his vision of what life in Ipiutak might have looked like.

A work in progress, on Ipiutak.

Pete's brother, Wally, found these mammoth tasks not too far from Point Hope. They rest beneath polar bear hides and alongside a hand air pump, which should give you some idea of their size.

A buyer emerged, but has yet to finalize the deal.

Kunuknowruk shows a photo taken on a walk many years ago to a villager who happened by on a four-wheeler as he was out and about in Point Hope. The picture comes from a long walk that he and a couple of friends once took.

They ran out of food before they found game. "We got so hungry, we ate flowers," he remembered.

The dream couch.

I slept on the couch against the far wall and on my first night experienced a magnificent, vivid, dream that did not seem like a dream at all, but like an actual happening. In the morning, Kunuknowruk told me that whenever he sleeps on that couch, he has vivid dreams. Others have slept there, and they have also dreamed.

I spent four nights on this couch and each night I had at least one vivid dream.

Night 1: I was Outside, attending a conference and was walking around with a couple of friends when we happened upon three beautiful women, one of whom attached herself to me. It was a beautiful and pleasant dream, although it did not ever reach the point that you are thinking about right now.

When I awoke, I wished that I could go back to sleep and continue the dream.

Night 2: A blond man with freckles repeatedly tried to kill me, by various means. Each time, I barely managed to defend myself until finally I had to wreak violence against the man, just to live myself. I hated the dream. It woke me up too early and I did not want to go back to sleep, but I needed to, so I did.

Night 3: I was out with my camera when I came upon some exquisitely beautiful people, mostly women, but a couple of men, too. They wanted to be photographed and I obliged, pleased to have the opportunity to photograph such beauty.

As I set about to take the photographs, I saw that I was not photographing flesh, but rather something artificial. On some, it was like they had the skin of a mannequin, others, a ceramic covering.

I kept taking pictures and then, gradually, the artificial coverings began to crack, chip and fall away. Real flesh appeared - flesh that bore scars and wrinkles; teeth that had been white and bright now became yellow and chipped, with big gaps where some had gone missing, breasts that had been firm now drooped and many other imperfections manifested themselves. I saw not only the hard work of time, but of sorrow and grief.

Yet, I realized that what was before me was beauty, even greater than that I had first seen. I continued to photograph.

Night 4: I was visiting a house elsewhere in Point Hope when the father announced that they had a dog, a really big dog, that he wanted me to meet. He went to his closet and opened the door. I expected to see a St. Bernard bound out of that closet, kind of like Muzzy.

Instead, a horse charged out. Or at least an animal with the head and body of a horse, but the legs and tail of a dog. It was very happy to see me and came charging over, wagging its tail and shaking all over, the way a happy dog does.

I did not know what else to do, so I petted it, and spoke to it as one speaks to a happy dog.

And so passed my four nights on the dream couch.

If you could read the clock on the wall, you would see that it is 12:50 - and that is AM. That's how it was every night. We stayed up late, talking, mostly Kunuknowruk telling me stories.

Pete slept on the other couch, by the way, the one he sits on here. He has some relatives living with him and he lets them stay in the bedrooms.

He also told me that when he learned that I had crashed my airplane, he wanted to tell the North Slope Borough that they should buy me another one, so that I could go back to visiting villages the way I used to. He said that because of the work I had done with my airplane and my camera, he had learned so much about other Iñupiat villages, places that even though they share the same coastline as does Point Hope, he had never had a chance to spend time in.

The Borough can never buy me a plane, but I was most touched by that.

Thank you, Pete Lisbourne, Kunuknowruk, for hosting me in your house - for being a friend.

The wedding - setting the stage, part 1: The musicians

Horn player # 1.

Horn player # 2.

Horn players #1 and #2 together. (Please note: the numbers do not mean any kind of rank and are quite arbitrary on my part).

The drummer.

All the players, making music together.

There will be four parts to this "setting the stage" series: The musicians, the cooks, the photographers, and the bride and groom. All will go up today, no more than hours apart, maybe less.

Then I will get into the wedding itself. Compared to a typical American wedding, it is so vast and has so many parts, far too many for me to include here, that I have no idea how I am going to handle it. I will figure it out. 

I know right now, though, I will never be able to do it the justice that it deserves.

Doreen makes a painting, Apache-Navajo filmmaker walks into Barrow's Osaka Restaurant; I go to Wainwright

Doreen Simmonds is the daughter of the late, truly great, Reverend Samuel Simmonds, the first Iñupiat to become an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church. He also designed and painted the mural in the Barrow Chapel, showing all the peoples of the world under the care of Christ.

Doreen remembers being her father's "go-for" when she was small and he was creating the mural. She loved to help him and she loved to be in the church with him. She also loved to do art herself.

She did the painting above in 2002, after seeing a photograph of a mother polar bear with two cubs, one of them dead. Doreen was moved by the photo, but wanted to create a happier version and so she painted it with only the mother and the living cub - yet, she could not stop herself from depicting the sorrow that she saw in the mother.

Then, she added the dead cub in.

Two years later, one of her two sons died of cancer.

"How did you know?" friends who saw the painting asked her, "how did you know your son was going to die?"

This is Dustinn Craig, and if you are watching the series, "We Shall Remain" on public TV, be certain not to miss the May 4 episode on the Apache. Dustinn is the writer/director/producer for that episode and also did some of the shooting and editing.

You will also see some of Margie's country.

When Dustinn was small, from the time that he was a toddler, my wife and I sometimes baby sat him, and he often played with Jacob and Caleb. We lived in Whiteriver, Arizona at the time, the capitol of Margie's White Mountain Apache Tribe. Dustinn's father, Vincent Craig, Navajo, was also married to a White Mountain Apache and his parents were our best friends.

Today I was eating lunch in Osaka Restaurant in Barrow with Savik when Dustinn came walking in with local filmmaker Rachel Edwardson and her Australian husband, Dave.

He had just arrived in town to do a week's worth of work.

Little Dustinn Craig.

Soon I was on a plane, headed for Wainwright.

Self-portrait, me on the plane. 

Pic through the car window, as Bob drove me to the home that I always knew as the residence of the late Ben and Florence Ahmaogak, who always made me feel at home, like family. Bob is married to their daughter, Mary Ellen.

"Hello brother,"she greetedc when I entered the door.

"Hello sister," I greeted back.

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.