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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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Wolf Spots
Once a long time ago there was a man and his wife. The couple always stayed all year at fall camp. They didn't move around much like the other Yupiks. One day the man made a trap. He dug a big hole in the ground, put soft branches over it and put some bait in the middle. The man would catch a lot of things with it, including wolves.

One morning when the man checked his trap he found three wolf pups. The man took the pups home and decided to keep them as pets. A month went by, and the pups grew to be young wolves. One of the wolves had spots, and he was also a better hunter than the other two. The man always liked the spotted wolf, and Its hunting skills pleased him.

One night while the man was getting ready for bed he heard a pack of wolves howling off in the distance. But he payed no attention to the wolves and went to bed. This also happened the next night and the night after that. One night while they were howling right outside his house two wolves entered. They stood by the door rubbing their noses. Then, as though they were hoods, they pulled their wolf faces off and became humans. They claimed to be man and wife, and the three young wolves the trapper had caught they said were their children. The parents then did the same to their children, and one of the young wolves became a girl child, and the other two were boys. The wolf with the spots was a boy, and his parents said they really loved him because he would be their hunter. But they said, if the trapper really wanted the spotted boy-wolf, he could take off his spots and use them on his parka. After agreeing to this, the wolf people put their hoods back on, rubbed their noses, and turned back into wolves. Then they left, never to return again. After that the trapper became a great hunter.

Told by:
Kathy
Peteroff
By:
Benjamin Peteroff

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