A hard wind blows, glacier dust tears my throat and sinuses apart; I wish it would snow and bury all that damn dust

I took this from my car about noon - the temperature was 36 degrees, warm for this time of year, but the voice on the radio was saying that the wind was 40, gusting to 70, so if you were to have gone and stood out there, it would not have felt warm.

This is all wrong. Wasilla Lake is supposed to be frozen by now. Some years, it has frozen in the second week in October, quite often by the third and almost always by the fourth. In only one other year do I recall seeing the entire month pass without this and the other lakes freezing.

Of course, October has not completely passed and it could yet freeze before the month is over, but I don't think it will.

The ravens were having fun, riding the wind.

They rode it low. They rode it high. It carried them up, it pulled them down.

She appeared on the trail and she shouted at me, but the wind carried her words away before they could reach my ears.

"What?" I shouted back.

She shouted at me again.

"What?" I again shouted back.

Then she really put her lungs into it: "The birds love the wind! They ride it high! They ride it low! It carries them up, it pulls them down!"

The wind grabs the glacier dust and drives it through the air. Glacier dust is extremely fine, like powdered sugar. It is horrible to breathe. And undoubtedly, it has some volcanic ash mixed in with it.

One year, it froze very early, but no moisture came. It did not snow in October, it did not snow in November, it did not snow through most of December, but it got very cold. Day after day of teens and twenties below zero, sometimes 30's and even -40.

And on many of those days the wind tore, just like this. There was no snow to hold any of the glacier dust down, so the wind just picked it up and in the midst of all that cold, blasted it into you.

It was horrible.

Traveling through the streaming glacier dust. I write this with a sore throat, plugged nose and irritated sinuses.

Kalib was in the car with us - with Margie and me, that is. We had been baby sitting him. Fierce gusts frequently broadsided the car. It would rock, it would jerk.

It was windy in Anchorage, too, but not as windy as out here in the valley. On what they call the Anchorage Hillside, though - it would have been fiercely windy.

This was why we went to Anchorage. Every Halloween, they put on a chili feast at the place where Melanie works. Every employee brings in a pot of their own special chili. Melanie wanted her mom to help her as she cooked hers, so she did.

Me, I went off to try to visit a friend who had been severely injured in a snowmachine accident while returning to Wainwright from an ice-fishing trip.  He was medivaced by air-ambulance to Anchorage and then taken to the Alaska Native Medical Center. Also, I finally got that check that I had been waiting for, so I thought maybe I would buy the new Canon G11 pocket camera, because its high ISO, low-light, capabilities are much improved over the G10 that I have been using.

Yet, when the time came, I could not bring myself to lay down $499 for that camera. I really wanted to, but I just couldn't do it. So here I am, at the chili feed - the perfect place to test out the low light, high ISO capabilty of the G11, but instead I used the G10, which is very noisy and grainy at high ISO, but, oh well, so what?

That's Melanie on the left, of course. The fellow on the right is Chancey. A bit over two years ago, he was one of her coworkers at Duane Miller & Associates, but then he left to go be a Mormon missionary.

And where did he get sent? Japan? South America? France? New Zealand?

No. The Mormon Church sent him to Salt Lake City. For two years. To be a Mormon Missionary. In Salt Lake City. But he did get to learn to speak Spanish.

He is not being rehired, but he remembered how good all the DMA chili feeds were, so he came back to eat chili. That vat of chili in the foreground is Melanie's. Pumpkin chili. It is very tasty. "Don't eat too much, Dad!" she warned. "It's very spicy." It was very tasty. I would never have known that pumpkin and chili go well together, had it not been for Melanie.

I did not get to see my friend. They are being very strict about visitors, due to swine flu, and were only allowing two family members to go in with him. I did see his daughter, but not until after the feast. I was able to introduce her to Margie.

He has not yet come to, but he is in stable condition and his prognosis is good. He is just about to turn 70 and still he is shooting about the country on a snowmachine, hunting caribou, catching fish - doing that kind of thing.

Wandering about AFN, Part 7, final: More faces; I end at a memorial for a strong woman

The AFN Convention began one week ago yesterday and ended one week ago tomorrow, so, as fun as this has been for me, I think I had better wrap it up. I begin the close with Willie Kasayulie of Akiachak. Thanks to Ada Deer, a Menominee who served as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs under President Bill Clinton, 229 tribes in Alaska now enjoy federal recognition, but in the early 1980's, many argued that ANCSA had rendered tribal government null and void in Alaska.

Kasayulie was President of Akiachak's tribal government, formed under the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and neither he, the tribal council or the village elders believed this. They saw their tribal government as the legitimate voice of the people of their village.

So they dissolved their city government and moved all of its functions under the tribe. The move was extremely controversial, even within the Native community, but Akiachak did it and they succeeded.

The woman at left is Carolyn Nora David, daughter of Katie John and the wife of Charles David, who I earlier introduced as the man who witnessed as I crashed my plane just outside the village of Mentasta. Standing next to her is Shawn Sanford, Jr. with his mother, Crystal and father, Shawn Sanford, Sr.

The reason that I had flown to Mentasta in the first place was to attend the victory celebration for Katie John, after then Governor Tony Knowles, following a period of long debate, uncertainty and a trip to Katie John's fishwheel at Batzulnetas on the Copper River, dropped the State's court case against her right to subsistence fish under federal jurisdiction and did not appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Even though I crashed my plane, I still covered the celebration.

Katie is well into her nineties, now. Although she did not come to Anchorage, Nora says she is doing well.

Paul Kignak Jr. and wife Kate, of Barrow.

Aqqaluk Lynge, left, traveled all the way from Greenland to attend the AFN Convention, on behalf of the Inuit Circumpolar Council. Lynge is President of ICC Greenland and delivered an address to AFN. Next to him stands Kelly Eningowuk, the Executive Director of ICC Alaska. Jim Stotts of Barrow is the acting Chair of ICC. 

The last General Assembly of ICC was held in Barrow in the summer of 2005 and the next is scheduled for July, 2010, in Nuuk, Greenland. I cannot promise that I will be there, but I hope that I will and I think the odds are fairly good.

Eben Hopson, the first Mayor of the North Slope Borough, was never happy with the fact the Inuit people, spread from the Russian Far East, across Alaska and Canada and Greenland were separated by international boundaries.

And so he set in motion the movement that led to the first General Assembly of ICC, then known as the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, in Barrow in 1977. The organization seeks not only to strengthen ties between the Inuit of all four nations, but also to advance Inuit and indigenous causes world wide, including in the United Nations.

The tall lady second from left is Julie Kitka, Tlingit, who is President of the Alaska Federation of Natives and the person upon whom the responsibility of organizing the convention falls most heavily. At left is Valerie Davidson, originally of Bethel, who has earned her law degree and now works at the Southcentral Foundation in Anchorage. 

Yesterday, I introduced Sylvia Lange of Barrow. Standing next to her is Marla Berg who carries North Slope Borough issues to Juneau and Washington, DC.

Colleen Akpikleman, from the North Slope Borough Mayor's Office.

Ellen Frantz and Martha Brower, both of Barrow.

Christopher Kalerak of Elim, artist, and his daughter.

Merlin Koonooka of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island, who I once followed on a seal hunt. I am sorry, but I have forgotten the name of the woman who stands next to him.

Iqaluk Nayakik, Kuugmiut Dancers, Wainwright. 

On Saturday, I headed into Anchorage with plans to attend the final hours of the AFN convention, which was scheduled to adjourn at 3:00 PM. First, I stopped at the Anchorage Native Assembly of God chapel to attend a memorial for Bernice Tagarook, a respected Elder from Wainwright who had passed away at the Alaska Native Medical Center.

It is common in Alaska to have a memorial in Anchorage before the person is flown back to their village for the funeral and burial. Because of AFN, many people were in town and were able to attend the memorial.

Bernice always greeted me in Wainwright with warmth and friendship, but the memory that I have of her that I think speaks most strongly to her strength of character took place in the village of Atqasuk.

Her daughter, Bernadine, had married into that village and I, who, I stress again, am not a wedding photographer, happened to be there at the time and so I photographed the wedding. Several years later, I happened to return to Atqasuk on the very day that Bernadine died of cancer.

So I attended the funeral, and after the burial, during one of the most hard and painful events of her life, Bernice invited me to sit with her, in the midst of many crosses and grave markers. It was she who found the strength to smile, even to laugh, and to give comfort to those others who mourned all around her.

Here, her grandchildren that were present in Anchorage step to her casket before it is closed for the service.

I never made it to the convention on Saturday, because I did not leave Bernice's memorial until well after 2:00 PM. I then headed over to the Bishop's Attic, an Anchorage thrift store, to meet my daughter Melanie so that we could figure out where to meet Lisa for lunch. 

After we decided where to go, I drove back out onto the Seward Highway, looked into my mirror and was surprised to see the hearse that Bernice now rode in. It was the first leg of her final journey back to Wainwright.

I could not help but think of these lines from the Carter Family, accompanied by the great Johnny Cash:

I was standing by my window,
On one cold and cloudy day
When I saw that hearse come rolling
For to carry my mother away...

Well I told that undertaker,
Undertaker please drive slow
For this lady you are hauling
Lord, I hate to see her go!

Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by?
There’s a better home a-waiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky!

When you think about it, that's really what the people are doing when they get together - the youth and the Elders, the leaders and the onlookers - to discuss, debate, to try to determine how to advance ancient cultures within a modern and sometimes alien and hostile world - they want to keep the circle from breaking.

Not so long ago, I watched a white hearse carry my own mother away. Those lyrics came into my mind then, too.

Wandering about AFN, Part 6: Still more faces and stories: Centurian, rescuer, Tlingit Anthropologist, Point Lay whaling captain and more

When I first went to work for the Tundra Times, nearly three decades ago, I was lucky to meet Elders from all across Alaska and one of them was Dr. Walter Soboleff, Tlingit. These Elders were a special group of people, for they had seen and known life in Alaska in a way that no one else ever would again. They had knowledge in their heads that they would take to the grave and then that knowledge would never again be possessed by anyone in quite the same way.

To honor them, it was Tundra Times policy to always capitalize the words Elders and Elder - and I have continued to do so.

With very few exceptions, those who were Elders then are gone now.

But Dr. Soboleff is still here. He will turn 101 on November 15. The very short nap that he took during the proceedings is well-deserved. I spoke to his son, Walter Soboleff, Jr. not long after I took this picture. He told me that the week before, he had attended a Grand Camp meeting of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and that his dad had been busy throughout - reviewing and filing resolutions and always making sure that folks adhered to Robert's Rules of Order.

Late one day in March of 2000, shortly after the sun dropped below the sea ice on the horizon, I landed the Running Dog on Norton Sound, just beyond the Nome shoreline. I was tired, I did not have much spare change and the hotels were full anyway. 

I expected Mike Williams to drive his dogs into town in the wee hours, probably about 3:00 AM, so I twisted my ice screws into the surface of the sea, tied the Running Dog down, hiked to the shore, bought a big dinner at Fat Freddie's, went back to the airplane, pitched my tent beneath one wing, crawled in, slept a bit, got up to greet Mike as he came in, then went back to the plane, crawled back into my tent, back into the sleeping bag and got what sleep I could.

I felt like hell when I got up the next day and I wandered into town in somewhat of a daze. I had not gone far before a pickup truck stopped beside me. "Hey Bill!" I heard a voice. I turned and looked into this smiling face.

Perry Mendenhall.

I moved out of the tent and into his house, where I stayed for several days. We ate good. Seal, dry fish, walrus, an occassional hotdog, maktak - and a bunch of King crab pulled fresh out of the ocean and dropped live into the boiling pot.

At night we went to ball games and to the bars where we threw darts at targets hanging on the walls.

His wife was down in the states. Two cats lived with him - the white one, which he did not like but his wife did, and the gray one, which he did like.

When finally I would get to bed and go to sleep, those cats would come in and sleep on top of me.

Late on an AFN afternoon, I was feeling dry and parched, so I left the convention center and headed over toward the Penny's Mall, determined to get a Pepsi. When I got there, I found Janice Meadows shopping for goods to take back home to the Slope with her.

She needed a Pepsi, too, so I bought one for both of us, plus pretzels. We had a good, long, visit and she advanced some excellent ideas about how I might seek out the ways and means to begin sorting through and making sense of the photos and stories that I have taken and gathered over the years.

Thank you, Janice!

This is Rosita Worl, Phd, Tlingit Anthropologist and the President of the Sealaska Heritage Institute. In 2008, she was honored with the very prestigious Solon T. Kimball Award for Public and Applied Anthropology. In June of that year - the same month that I took my fall and shattered my shoulder, got it replaced with titanium and truly learned why the American Health Insurance industry needs to be reformed - SHI released a book on which, as a photographer I collaborated with Worl and other Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian authors:

Celebration: Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian, Dancing on the Land. 

In short, in 1982, after listening to the Elders lament about how the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian language, songs, and dances were being lost among the young, Rosita took a lead role in organizing Celebration '82. Tlingit, Haida and Tshimshian people came to Juneau from all across Southeast, as well as Anchorage and Seattle, for three days of dancing, singing and feasting in the hope of inspiring the young to learn.

There was much power, energy and joy in the dances, but there was also a solemnity that hung over the entire celebration, one that reminded me a little bit of being at a wake - this because no one knew for certain if this was the birth of a new cultural awakening or the dirge of one about to go under.

The number of dance groups was fairly small and most of the dancers were older. The number of youth and children dancers was small.

I returned again for Celebration '84 and then did not come back until 2004.

What an amazing experience 2004 was. Now, there were so many dance groups that the only way they could accommodate them all was to set up three separate venues so that they could perform simultaneously.

And there were hundreds - no, THOUSANDS - of young people dancing. And when the parade came, they poured through the streets of Juneau like a multi-colored river of song and dance. The power of the drums boomed through the streets of the Capitol City.

I returned in 2006 to find Celebration had grown even bigger still.

So that's what the book was about. It has been kind of a strange experience for me, this book, almost like it never happened, like I was never involved in such a work at all. I have not been to Southeast since I fell and got hurt. In the year that followed publication of the book, particularly the first half, my whole focus was pretty much limited to trying to put myself back together. I had almost no contact with anyone down in Southeast. I have heard almost nothing of the book since it came out. I have not attended a single function related to it, nor autographed a single book.

Rosita told me that it has had many excellent reviews and is beloved by the people of Southeast.

So that was good to hear.

This is Thomas Nukapigak, one of two whaling captains from Point Lay. I am not going to say much about this story right now, because it is part of the project that I am near to bringing to conclusion, so I will tell it in more depth later.

Briefly stated, one year in the 1930's, the people of Point Lay landed three bowhead whales. After that, largely due to the misguided Indian Relocation Act, the people of the village began to be dispersed all across the nation, from Chicago to San Francisco and elsewhere.

Point Lay emptied, until only two people remained - Warren and Dorcas Neakok.

In the early 1970's, following the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and the organization of the North Slope Borough, they returned to reclaim their village, but they were small in number and not yet organized to where they could whale again.

By the time they were ready, many complicated things had happened and only ten Alaska communities were recognized as whaling villages. Point Lay was not one of the ten. They were not allowed to whale. In 2008, after several years of trying, Point Lay was finally recognized as a whaling village.

So I headed over there, to see what would happen. Thomas and his crew - comprised largely of very eager high school students were the first to head down to the ice, so I went with them.

A couple of days later, Julius Rexford, the other whaling captain, had repaired his boat and brought his crew down, too.

It was a most enjoyable stay for me, but the weather was relentlessly windy and harsh, ice conditions terrible, and no whale was landed.

I wanted to go back in 2009, even as I wanted to go back to Wainwright and follow Jason Ahmaogak and Iceberg 14 - for reasons that will also become clear in future posts.

But I had shattered my shoulder and was still recovering. It hurt all the time. It was weak. I wore a brace. I feared that I could not hold up under the rigors of the whaling life. So I went to India to photograph Soundarya's wedding and on the day that I left, Julius Rexford and crew struck a bowhead, even as Thomas and his crew were closing in on another.

Thomas turned away from the whale that looked like it was about to come to his boat and rushed off to help Julius land his.

Now I am very embarrassed. I do not have a picture of Julius at AFN to post here. I saw him, we had a good chat, but, as I did in many cases at AFN, I got so wrapped up in the conversation that I simply forgot to take a picture.

Julius received AFN's Culture Bearer Award at this convention.

You can find pictures of Julius in my Point Lay Nalukataq series.

Here are some of the others who helped land, butcher, divide and share the Point Lay bowhead: Amy Henry, Sophie Henry, Marie Tracey and Lena Henry. The Henry's are all sisters, Sophie is Marie's daughter-in-law and her husband, Bill Jr., is Tom's harpooner and a good, all-around right-hand man.

I am running out of time, so I am not going to say much about these two, Roy Nageak of Barrow and Nannie Ray Kaigeluk of Nuiqsut. They both have roles in the project that I am working on. After that project is done, I am going to share the results with you, so you can learn about them, then.

Now I must hurry: Paulette Moreno, Tlingit poet, actress and playwright, chatting with Mike Williams.

Deborah Vo, who I knew as the Executive Director the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council in the late '90's and early '00's.

Robin Demoski, who took my picture.

Laura Itta, of Barrow. I can assure you, there are stories behind all of these people, but I am flat out of time for now.

Tomorrow, I will publish the final episode of this series and then I will leave the AFN Convention behind until next year.

Wandering about AFN, Part 5: More of the many faces that I saw

This is Mae Lange of Cordova, with her son, Tom. I used to go to Cordova often and whenever I did, at least one morning, usually Sunday, she and her late husband, Fred, would invite me over for breakfast.

Oh, did I love breakfast at Mae's! I don't remember how long she has had her sourdough starter brewing, but it is a long time and she would keep those sourdough pancakes coming, along with all the bacon, sausage and eggs-over-easy that I could eat.

In fact, she would feed me more than I could eat, and I would happily eat it all.

And when we weren't eating, she and Fred had many stories to tell me, ranging from their experiences running a fishing tender in Prince William Sound to Fred's role in the battle to retake the Aleutian Island of Attu to hanging out with Bob Hope in Palm Springs, where they tried to retire for awhile - but, when you've known Prince William Sound, how can you ever be happy in Palm Springs?

That's Caleb Pungowiyi on the left and Mike Williams on the right. Pungowiyi is very short, even shorter than me (I think. Sometimes I think I am taller than I actually am) but don't be fooled. He is an ex Special Forces paratrooper, so you know that he is tough.

Of course he is. One has to be tough to grow up as a hunter on St. Lawrence Island, where Pungowiyi did, in the village of Savoonga.

He is also the past President of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.

If you live in Alaska or pay close attention to this place, you probably already know who Mike Williams is. He is the famous "Sobriety Musher" who declared war on alcohol and drug abuse after he lost all six of his brothers to incidents involving alcohol. 

The Iditarod Trail has been his battlefield. In the early days, he fought the fight by carrying pledges to stay sober for one year and he would give them to people along the way to sign. In 2000, I followed along in my little airplane.

Mike Williams will not be running in the next Iditarod, but Mike Williams plans to. Jr., that is. Mike Williams Jr. will be making his first run. This does not mean Mike Sr. is retiring, "The Iditarod is in my blood," he told me. "I'm not retiring."

He also fights for Alaska's tribes and the education of Native youth.

I first met Al Adams at a dinner table in the restaurant of NANA's Nulugvik Hotel in Kotzebue in 1981, when he was a member of Alaska's House of Representatives. He had recently played a lead role in forming a bipartisan coalition of rural legislators that, for many years, provided Native and rural Alaskans with unprecedented power in Juneau.

He later served as the Senator for Northern Alaska and is now an influential lobbyist.

Ben Nageak, former Mayor of the North Slope Borough, holds his baby granddaughter, Madeline, who is the daughter of his late son, Perry. Standing proudly beside her is granddaughter Angela and looking back, daughter-n-law Elli. 

Connie Oomittuk, formerly of Point Hope but now of Palmer, observes.

When you are in town for AFN, you run into friendly people wherever you go. I was walking across Fourth Avenyue looking for food when I heard someone shout from a car, "Hi Bill!" It was Brittney, niece of my friend and colleague in Barrow, Noe Texeria.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that, due to getting hung up in Wasilla, I arrived late on opening day and missed the dual keynote addresses of Willie and Elizabeth Hensley. I arrived shortly before noon and, as I stepped to the doorway opening into the convention hall, an old friend whom I had not seen in over a decade came dashing over to say "hi."

As we stood at the doorway, talking, I became aware of a beautiful, young, female, voice singing "God Be With You 'til We Meet Again," in Yup'ik. The doorway to the hall is far away from the stage, but I looked and saw Alaska Congressman Don Young standing on stage between his two daughters, Joni Nelson and June Valley.

A large image of his wife, Lu, Gwich'in Athabascan, who died in August, was projected onto the screens at either end of the stage. A strong, emotional, moment was happening, but I was too far back to photograph it and it seemed rude to suddenly dash off to the front, so I stayed there with my friend until the song ended.

Then I went up and took this photo, after the main moment had passed, having missed it, but while the feeling still lingered. The song had been sung by 12 year-old Alyson McCarty of Anchorage.

I stopped by a reception sponsored by the Kuukpik Corporation of Nuiqsut. They had door prizes and this boy, who told me his name, but, damnit, I have forgotten, won. He grabbed the poker set. Maybe I will sit in for a few hands with him next time I go to Nuiqsut.

I'll probably leave broke.

Memry Dahl and Janie Leask. Back during my Tundra Times days, Leask, Tsimshian, served AFN as President. Now she is the President and CEO of the First Alaskans Institute. Dahl used to work there with her but is now with the Aleut Corporation.

John Trent, a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife service, and Johnny Leavit of Barrow. Trent's works with walrus and polar bears and so does Leavitt, as a traditional hunter.

In June of 1991, Luke Koonook was 65 when I saw him climb onto the skin-boat blanket at Qaqrugvik, the spring whale feast in Point Hope. Given his age, I wondered if they would toss him more gently than they did youthful celebrants.

No! They tossed him high and hard and he easily rose more than 16 feet above the ground. I know, because I had mounted a camera atop a 16 foot two-by-four and in some of my images, Luke is above the camera.

Sylvia Lange, daughter of Mae, who is at the top of this thread. Sylvia is a commercial fisherwoman and was once featured on a CNN special about strong, independent, women. She also owns the Reluctant Fisherman Inn in Cordova. Two summers ago, before either my wife or I got banged up the way we have been the last two summers, I put our car on the ferry in Whittier and took Margie to Cordova - not for work, but for fun.

We stayed in a suite overlooking the boat harbor at the Reluctant Fisherman and it was truly wonderful. We could look out the window and see otters swimming, as fishing boats came and went.

I would recommend the Reluctant Fisherman Inn to anyone.

Children join in with the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian dance group that came from Juneau.

The children dance to the beat of the box drum.

I hate to go into overkill, seeing as how AFN took place last week and is now a memory slipping into history, but I have already placed the photos for two more posts, so I will, and will feature them tomorrow and the next day.

Wandering about AFN, part 4:* Pilot, artists, activists, war hero and more

This is Hugh Patkotak, Iñupiat, North Slope Borough Search and Rescue pilot. I have been fortunate to tag along with him a few times. Once, we were out during an overcast day on a search for some ladies who got lost on the tundra. It was white above, white below, white straight ahead, white all around.

Hugh and his spotter found the women. They were out of gas and were cold and a bit shook up, but were fine. Back at the airport, when their families came to pick them up, there were hugs and tears.

The lady in front is Desa Jacobson, who has conducted long-term fasts in which she has limited herself to coffee and water. She has fasted for subsistence rights and in an effort to try to bring justice to a man who, in the days that she lay dead and undiscovered, had brought friends by to view the body of a Native woman whom he boasted that he had raped and killed.

He was acquitted. This past year, he was charged with the murder of a female neighbor.

Here, Jacobson holds the petition for which she is gathering signatures in a bid to become Alaska's next governor. She was very pleased with the success of her efforts so far - especially that Ethan Berkowitz, who she expects to run against, had signed her petition.

"I"m going to win, too!" she assured me.

The boy walking past in the background is Josiah Patkotak, Iñupiat of Barrow, who I had earlier interviewed for the project that I am working on. He has jumped into politics, too, and was voted in to be the Arctic Slope youth representative to the First Alaskans Elders and Youth Conference, held on Monday and Tuesday of last week.

My friend, Rose Albert, the first Native woman to run the Iditarod and, as I have stated before, in my opinion, Alaska's best Iditarod artist. 

Jim Barker, one of Alaska's truly great photographers. His book, Always Getting Ready, is the classic work on the life of the Yup'ik of Southwest Alaska. He was the official AFN photographer.

Mark Hoover of the Native Village of Eyak, who has one of the largest collections of blues, rock and roll, folk and other kinds of music that I have ever seen.

He likes to hang out with eagles and ravens. He has rescued a number of injured ravens, restored them to health and then turned them free again.

One time I was riding in his truck with him and a one-eyed raven that he had rescued and was nursing back to health when the raven flapped around a bit and then landed on my head. 

And who is this? Why, it's my own beloved daughter-in-law, Lavina, Navajo, with her friend, Steffers, Iñupiat. Lavina bought the little mukluks for our second grandchild, who still floats in her/his mother's womb. 

Jody Potts, Athabascan, and her son, whose name I forget. Sorry. I first met Jody in 1998 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where she was competing for the title of Miss National Congress of American Indians. She won. Now she lives in the ruggedly beautiful Copper River Valley Community of Kenny Lake.

John Waghiyi had come from Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island to sell ivory and other art work produced both by himself and many other artists in his village. He told me about a great celebration that his village recently hosted with their relatives and friends who came over from Russia.

The gentleman on the left is Walter Sampson, Iñupiat of NANA. The man with him is John Walsh, who grew up in Nome, but now lives in Juneau and is a lobbiest for many rural organizations. 

As for Walter, I once walked the length of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, with him and he did shed a few quiet tears.

During his own days as a soldier in Vietnam, Sampson saw his best friend get killed. He once set out to climb a hill with 105 men when they got caught in a u-shaped ambush. At the end of the battle, only 24 still stood - the rest having been killed or injured. 

Once, Sampson was sent to help rescue soldiers whose helicopter had been shot down, but he and his men got pinned down in the fire of two machine guns. Sampson worked his way through the fire and took out the machine guns with a grenade.

In another event, Sampson was carrying a radio when his platoon fell into an ambush. Two men manning the platoon machine gun were quickly killed. “So I handed my radio over to my platoon leader and took the machine gun position and stayed on the machine gun all night.  And life was tough, but I managed to get through.”

Sampson was awarded two bronze stars.

After the war, he turned to alcohol and fell into a miserable way of life, but, with the help of his wife and his God, turned it all around.

I once followed George Woods on a caribou hunting trip outside of Nuiqsut - he driving a snowmachine, me riding in the sled behind. On that same trip, I photographed his wedding. Unfortunately, the marriage didn't last. His wife later relocated to Anchorage, along with his children.

George wanted to be with them, so he recently moved to Anchorage. He doesn't really care for city life, but it is worth it, to be with his children.

I found him and his son, Jonathan (right) and his nephew, Daniel, as they were coming out of Penney's Mall and I going in.

Jonathan recently enlisted in the Army and will soon be inducted.

Rex and Meda Snyder. Meda is the daughter of former North Slope Borough Mayor George Ahmaogak and his wife, Maggie. George was also the first whaling captain to let me follow him out onto the ice and it is he who is on the cover of my book, Gift of the Whale.

Meda was still a girl then, but she quickly grew into an exceptionally beautiful young woman. I wondered who would be the lucky young man to wed her and it was Rex. Again - I stress - I AM NOT A WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER - but I did photograph their wedding. They have two children, a boy and a girl.

This is the Barrow Dancers, led by Joe Sage. They are doing a whaling dance. The men behind Joe have been paddling the umiak to a whale. Joe now throws the harpoon. 

The whale is killed. They say a prayer.

One of their dances was dedicated to all the women who sewed the skins that cover the umiak skin boats used for the spring hunt. All women who had done so were invited to come up and dance.

*While I gave the post just before this the number 1, I should have numbered it three, as the two previous dance-related posts are actually a part of this series. I will put up at least one more, possibly two.