I was born in 1925 on Ukivok, King Island, 85 miles northwest of Nome, to John Charles Olaranna and Madeleine Asenna Olaranna.
King Island is a steep island in the Bering Sea -- 150 Inupiat (Ugiuvangmiut Eskimo) used to live in 40 houses on a 20-foot-wide rock slide with an 85-degree pitch to the ocean below. Our people used to paddle their skin boats (umiaks) to Unalakleet and even up to Point Barrow to trade.
Ten years before I was born, our people built a church just above our houses. In the 1920s, the Bureau of Education wanted us to move to St. Lawrence Island, but my father firmly resisted.
Thousands of birds land on our 2½-square-mile island, also covered with plants and berries. The sea is open July to October. In 1778, Capt. Cook "discovered" our island and renamed it for one of his party, Lt. James King.
Before 1850, we lived in half-underground homes with rock-tunnel entrances. Then, on driftwood pads, the people built double-walled homes made of walrus hides and insulated with dried grass. After I was born, there was still one old house of walrus skin. In the 1930s, my dad built us a lumber house. We got our water from a creek in the summer.
We have big crabs, fish, walrus and, from their stomachs, we get a lot of clams, already cooked!
Men always went hunting and "womans" always go picking berries and greens for winter. Way up the other side of hill, we get blackberries and lots of salmonberries. There are three greens we like. We sour one and preserve all three in seal oil. Wintertime, we make Eskimo ice cream using berries for sweetener.
EXORCISING 'THE EYES'
My father, born around 1883, hunted seal, walrus, polar bear, birds, swans and sometimes black whales. When the birds fly north, they always come to King Island. Kids go up the hills hunting those auklets and puffins. My father used to tie a rope around my waist, give me a bag and then let me down the cliff to gather those small but good eggs. When I filled the bag, I pulled on the rope. I tried to pick a nest area with a nearby ravine because when they pulled me up, it stung and ached. Scary-y-y.
A quarter of a mile from the village, we had a huge, double-chambered ice cave with steps spiraling up many levels. My sister and I used to take a gas lamp and meat wrapped in skins to store in that cave. In wintertime or when it was storming, we would swing inside and play in the cave.
My mom used to dry peat moss to burn for fuel and also to make a soft wick for light. When she made seal oil, she washed three or four pieces of seal blubber and then put them in a barrel. With a polar bear jawbone, she beat the seal blubber down, making it soft. When some came up, she put it in another pot and cooked it over a seal oil lamp. Later we used a little German kerosene stove and, finally, a gas stove.
The men had a community house. They burned driftwood in the middle and piled up rocks, bathed and told stories. My father was a good dancer, and he was funny too. But one scary story they told was about seeing Eyes. An old lady had been gathering greens when she suddenly fell down a cliff. Afterward, when people were out on the sea crabbing, they heard hollering from the sea and saw her eyes. One time when Dad was crabbing, he saw that lady. Water was filling up his hold; he was sinking. He said to the old lady, "Let's go home!" And he went home, back to King Island.
But in 1937, after Father (Bernard R.) Hubbard brought the picture of Christ the King to us, we never saw those eyes or heard those voices again.
During the winter, my mother taught me to cleat bearded seal (oogruk) hide into rounded soles for mukluks with my teeth. I also made sinew thread for my father's skin boat. Before stretching a new walrus hide over the boat frame, we treated the wood with seal oil to prevent rot.
My father taught me to drill ivory with the mouth drill, and I made little ulu earrings and puffin and polar bear miniatures also.
My father used to go to Point Hope; Father Hubbard asked him to take missionaries there in his skin boat. So when I was 12, we all went by skin boat from Nome to Point Hope. That was the first time the King Islanders went there.
SUMMER HOME IN NOME
Every summer, as soon as walrus hunting and greens-gathering were finished, we left for Nome in my father's four-family-size skin boat. (Those old people knew when the weather was going to be fair and when the sea would be calm.) During our three- to four-month summer absence, our sled dogs would take care of themselves. They fed on the birds and their eggs. It took us about 13 hours to get to Nome in our large walrus-skin boat.
My father bought a Quonset hut house on Nome's east end for us. There, we carved ivory to sell to get food for winter. My dad worked as a longshoreman. If the dock needed handlers, they'd wake Dad early asking for King Island people.
During the early war years, about 1939 to 1943, we weren't allowed to go to Nome and we had to stay on King Island. Scary.
My father helped anyone who needed it; he was like a doctor. We used stinkweed, "sukuluk," to heal everything, and it grew all over the island. My father delivered babies as well as being a hunter.
After the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which required Native people to form village councils and elect chiefs, my father was made chief from 1939 to 1946. He was also a part of the Eskimo Scouts organized by "Muktuk" Marston. When General Eisenhower visited us, my father met with him. Those war years made a big impact on the Inupiat.
I was in school until eighth grade. (It was hard to get teachers on King Island.) After I married, my husband worked at the school so our house had two rooms, a good oil stove and a couple of double mattresses.
By the time I had four of my nine children, in 1959, I left King Island. By 1965-66, the Bureau of Indian Affairs decided to close our school.
Today my husband, Carl, and I have a tent house 23 miles by boat from Nome, where I still pick my greens and berries.
Every year, my son returns to King Island to walrus hunt, but I have not seen my house since 1959.
Back in the 1940s, Father Hubbard used to worry that the rocks would fall and crush our houses. But after all these years, those big rocks are still there. Must be an angel is holding them up!
Judy Ferguson is a publisher and the author of three children's books, "Alaska's Secret Door," Alaska's Little Chief" and the newly released "Alaska's First People." Her Web site is www.alaska-highway.org/delta/outpost.
