"On June 2nd my family and I went down the Yukon River to Emmonak and Alakanuk to attend Terri and Bill Manumik's wedding. I was worried about going because this was only Moses's third trip downriver. He wasn't sure of which route to use.

Everything worked out great though because Charlie and Alice Fitka were also going down to attend the wedding. Charlie and Alice have traveled down every year to fish for Herring.

About 20 miles down from Mt. Village we came to a wide part of the Yukon River, and was it rough!! Crossing from the north to the south side of the river was a very scary ride. The front of our boat would tip forward so hard that all we saw was water!! Then we would crest the wave and see for miles around for about four seconds!! This lasted about two hours!! All my children had big scared eyes!!!

About five miles up river from Emmonak, Charlie Fitka's motor broke down, so we had to tow them into Emmonak. Moses and Charlie weren't sure what the problem was, but we made it to Emmonak. There we checked to see if David and Christine Teganlakla were home, but they had already gone up to Marshall for fish camp.

Later we had to go over to Alakanuk to stay with our cousin, Ray Oney, and his wife, Ruth. They were delighted to have us there because it was only our second visit to Alakanuk.

The next day we went back to Emmonak to attend Tern and Bill's wedding which was held at the Complex building.

Tern and her maid of honor and flower girls, Anna Irene, Debbie and Flora, and Bill's nieces and daughter were all dressed in bright blue kuspaks. They were all so beautiful! Bill and his best man, the ring bearer, and Tern's sister, Manian, all wore white kuspaks with bright blue trim. It was dazzling!!

It was a court wedding and Tern's sister, Marian P. Okitkun, performed the marriage ceremony. There were also guest speakers at the ceremony. These were Alex Bird and Ray Waska, both elders. They had very good advice for young couples courting, couples planning to get married, and married couples too. Their message was to respect each other, work together to have a good life, to always be considerate of each other, and to be sober and drug free. They said that we were losing our young people, especially our young men, by drunk driving both on roads and rivers. Alex Bird said when a person dies by drowning while drunk driving his body goes straight down to the bottom. They really wanted young people to heed their advice because they are both sad at seeing young healthy lives taken away by drugs and alcohol.

They had one more message, and it was to both the moms and women in general. This concerned money. They said we were to use the money we made to clothe, feed, and help our children, parents, grandparents and our grown brothers and sisters if they have need for money. This surprised me because I don't usually see or hear of anyone in Marshall sharing their money with extended families like they do with food we gather from the land. I think that's where our cultural values and traditions ended and started to fade away. We do need to start sharing again. I felt so good to hear this advice, like someone still cared and wanted the best for us.

Story by: Clara Shorty

Interviewed by: Matt Shorty