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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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Iikuq and Irrpak

Once upon a time there was a funny seagull named Iikuq. Iikuq always made other birds laugh. He was smart too. Host of the time he was goofing off. Iikuq had a kind of girl friend-not another seagull, but an owl. His girl friend was named Irrpak because of her big beautiful eyes that could see things from far away. Irrpak met Iikuq about a year ago by a beautiful pond near the trees. That's when Iikuq went for a little dip. Irrpak was flying by when she saw Iikuq in the pond, so she went down and landed on the side of the pond. Iikuq got kind of scared and climbed up on land. But Irrpak said, "Don't be scared, I won't hurt you." And Iikuq said, "You promise?" Irrpak answered, "I promise." So Iikuq went skipping over to Irrpak and said, "What's your name?" Irrpak said, "My name is Irrpak, what is yours?" "My name is Iikuq." So it was that they became friends and they began to play together and to have lots of fun.


The next day they met by the pond again. Iikuq got there first and waited about two minutes. There was no sign of Irrpak so he started humming, "La la la de de dee! la la laaa!" While Iikuq was still singing, Irrpak went sneaking around behind him and then shouted, "Boo!" Iikuq was so scared he fell into the pond. Then Irrpak started laughing, and she laughed and laughed until she couldn't laugh anymore. She said, "You're a funny, ha! ha! ha! buh ha! ha! ha! bird! ha! ha! ha!" Then Iikuq started laughing with her too. Irrpak was about to pull Iikuq from the water, but then he pulled her into the water with him. Irrpak yelled "I'm wet, I'm wet!" And Iikuq said, "Because you're in the water." "You dummy, you shouldn't have done this," said Irrpak. "Me, dummy?" Ha!. ha! ha! me,dummy! ha ha ha!" laughed Iikuq. Then they both got out of the water and started shaking the water off! Afterwards Iikuq started skipping and singing, "dun de dun de!" Then Irrpak started laughing and said, "You're the funniest friend I've ever had, ha! ha! And then off they went to Irrpak's home.


Tu-ai

By Stella Walker

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