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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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The Story of My Life

On the first of May when I first saw the light of day, I was scared and cold from the liquids all over my skin from my mother's womb. It wasn't till the next day that I started to walk. It was so cool to walk around and to explore. At first I was really scared to walk around because I saw a lot of strange animals everywhere. During the next few days I was running around playing with my brother and sister. After drinking milk from my mother for a couple of weeks, I started to watch what my mother was eating and copied what she was doing. I started to eat grass and some other stuff. While we were all eating in a great big meadow one of my brothers choked on some grass and we didn't know what to do. I tried to ask him what was wrong, but he couldn't answer. In a couple of minutes he fell to the ground and he was dead. We all hung around the corpse for a couple of days waiting for him to wake up from his long sleep, but he never did get up and we all moved on. We were all still trying to get over his death but it was hard for all of us.

Two years later my antlers were finally big enough to use to pick on my friends. While I was playing with one of my friends I noticed that my mother was not around my area. I tried calling for her but she did not answer me. I started to panic. A while later I saw her with a new born baby. I tried to stick with her, but she would just chase me off, and I decided it would be better for me anyway. So I decided to run around and try to find a mate. I tried to get this one chick, but this bigger bull tried to fight me and I took off. Every time I tried to find a mate a bigger bull would always chase me off. So I got fed up with it and forgot about finding a mate.

One day early in September I decided to go check out a slough to get a drink of water. I was very thirsty and I couldn't find any water where I was eating. I started to run as fast as I could to the nearest slough, and it took me only about five minutes to get there. While I was drinking water I heard this really loud bang far back in the slough, then I heard this really loud buzzing noise that I'd never heard before. I was curious, so I decided to wait and see what the noise was. It took a long time till it finally came in sight. It was going really fast right on top of the water. I watched it for a while, then I saw something in the thing run up to the front with a long stick. Then I heard that really loud bang again. I saw something splat right in the mud in front of me, and I got scared and took off running. While I was running, those things were whizzing by all around me. I got really scared then, and I started to run as fast as I could. While I was just picking up some speed I felt something jump up from the ground and bite me in the buttocks. When it hit me I stopped right in my tracks because of the terrible pain. When I stopped I felt more of those things going into my body. I fell down to the ground and felt my soul escaping from my body. Then I called out for my mother, but she never came around.

The last thing I saw before my soul escaped were strange beings coming towards me. They had only two legs and were walking upright. They bent over and cut my throat with a sharp object, and I felt all the blood draining from my body. A minute later I saw my dead body as I floated up in the air. Before I knew it, I was up in moose heaven where I don't think I'd ever seen so many moose in my whole life. There I lived happily ever after with all my friends and my new wife. The big bulls didn't pick on me up there.


By: David Andrew

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