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Yup'ik Raven This collection of student work is from Frank Keim's classes. He wants to share these works for others to use as an example of culturally-based curriculum and documentation. These documents have been OCR-scanned and are available for educational use only.


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Stephanie Johnson

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Stephanie Johnson with her husband Johnathan Johnson
Stephanie Johnson
(Namaryuq)
Born: January 16, 1911

"I was born in Tununak. When I was a little girl I used to pick green grass and learned to sew a handmade Eskimo carrying bag. But I only worked on it every once in awhile, then put it away and didn't work on it again for some time. I also made a basket out of green grass but not a very high one because I got lazy and put it aside. I was also a small girl when I first started making a pair of Eskimo mukluks. During the winter, all day long I put them together. When I finished working on them I put them on and went outside. I was alone there and nobody was around.

Just then I saw how I had made the mukluks. They were so sharp they somehow looked like a little mouse's nose. I used to make anything then, even out of seal intestines. I used to wash the intestines in water, then blow them up, and then dry them. One time after scraping them, I soaked the seal intestines in a hole in the ground that had water in it. I put them in and I filled it up with more water. While they were in the hole in the ground I used to go and check them every once in awhile. Then I took them out, washed them, and blew them up. After I blew them up, I hung them out to dry. When they were dry I started working on them the way I saw other people do it. I kept on doing it that way thinking I really wanted to make something special. So I made a gut window, and then I put the window in our house. It was our window for a long time, and when it was ruined I threw it away and made another one just like it."

interview by Edna Lake

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Go to University of Alaska The University of Alaska Fairbanks is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer, educational institution and provider is a part of the University of Alaska system. Learn more about UA's notice of nondiscriminitation.