Amidst the pandemic, a look at the bigger picture
Sometimes transformation only takes place when we’re forced, through pain, to see what’s broken.
Can you please not talk to me like I’m an idiot?
Yet again, I was on the phone with a man in a hardware store who felt he could talk down to me simply because I was a woman with a question.
Family memories built around meals so homey, they make you ache
Growing up in Unalakleet, I remember meals of uuraq. Boiled humpies, onions and potatoes filling our bowls. Smells and tastes that say home.
Why I love Unalakleet? Let me count the ways.
There are so many reasons why Laureli Ivanoff loves her hometown on the Bering Sea, it's hard to keep count.
Inupiaq: The language I can write and speak, but don't understand
My mother grew up in a house where her parents spoke Inupiaq to each other. I grew up in a house where only English was used. And because of that, I was excluded.
Seeking Mr. Right in rural Alaska
When it became time for me to see this man face to face, we realized one sobering truth about rural Alaska dating. “You literally live $1,000 away,” he said — three flights and a day and a half of travel.
Unalakleet - So many connections
On a November day while visiting Chicago a few years ago, I looked at my great-great grandpa Stefan’s drawing of Unalakleet and he became a human being.
I'm a strong, beautiful, fierce Inuit woman. Today I march.
More than ever, I feel all good things. My thighs are soft. And they’re as strong as the birch trees. I stand. In the cold I will stand. And walk.
Embracing the lives of others to combat Alaska's post-holiday darkness
If I was resolute on making a change in the new year, it would be this. I open myself to be in the lives of others. I welcome others into my own life.
Native. White. Friends. For racism to disappear, it'll take all of us.
With white culture and history perpetuated in institutions and art in Nome, the majority of residents were, and oftentimes still are, treated as if they don’t belong. I’m saddened to feel I need to point out there is harm in that.
Why can't media portray the rural Alaska I know?
Most of Alaska doesn’t get it — doesn’t get our life in rural Alaska, doesn’t understand why we choose to live where we do.
My eyes smile again: A caribou hunt up the Kobuk River
A trip up the Kobuk River to hunt caribou, to smell the countryside, to eat sourdough biscuits with friends and relatives.