FAIRBANKS -- Two generations separate the Rev. Trimble Gilbert and his grandson Matthew Gilbert.
This summer, grandfather and grandson spent countless hours together translating and transcribing old Gwitch'in stories recorded on tapes and cached decades ago at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Rasmuson Library archives.
The tapes resound with stories of long ago times, preserving the voices, knowledge and Gwich'in tales of Arctic Village elders now gone -- their Gwitch'in history, passed down orally from generation to generation throughout thousands of years.
With Trimble's unique ability to translate the high Gwitch'in language and Matt's desire to learn more about his heritage, the collaboration has been fruitful in many unexpected ways.
"It changed my life; I found out where I come from," Matt said.
"In my 16 years of education, I didn't learn anything about myself, and in the span of two months, I've learned so much."
Matt is calling the research project a "Gwich'in Renaissance."
"I hope other people do this within their own cultures, particularly the Gwich'in. We are in a time when our culture is dying fast. Kids are forgetting who they are," he said.
The elder Gilbert, 74, is an ordained Episcopal minister. He lives with his wife, Mary, in Arctic Village, a remote Gwitch'in village tucked in the foothills of the Brooks Range, 290 air miles north of Fairbanks.
Matt, 29, is a graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He was born and raised in Arctic Village but left to travel and study when he was a teenager. He returned to Alaska to earn a bachelor's degree at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
While an undergraduate, Matt first heard mention of the tape recordings. They piqued his interest, and later he asked his grandfather about them.
"He told me little bits and pieces about them, but things kept dragging me away from doing anything, like internships and travel opportunities," Matt said.
But every now and then the story lines would come back to haunt Matt -- stories about woolly mammoths, rivers frozen to the bottom, the Ice Age, climate change and restoring peace between the Gwich'in and the Inupiat people.
"Years later, I thought I have to do something with those," Matt said.
THE LAST NOMADIC ELDER
Last year, while pursuing a master's degree in rural development, Matt realized he could wait no longer. He wrote a grant to underwrite the project, which was funded by the Alaska Humanities Forum.
"My grandpa is getting old, and he's the only person alive who can translate the old Gwitch'in well," Matt said.
Trimble explained that he understands the dialect because he grew up with elders.
"They talk to each other different than we talk today. They talk fast, teasing and all that," Trimble said.
Matt said he understands his parents when they speak Gwich'in but has a difficult time understanding his grandparents when they speak to each other in their Native language. As for the taped stories, he can't understand them.
"They speak high Gwich'in; only my grandpa can understand them," Matt said.
"He is the only elder alive that really knows the stories too. All the old storytellers are dead except my grandpa. They were the last elders of old. He is one of the last Gwich'in who knew the nomadic life."
During the many hours spent working together this summer, Trimble translated and Matt transcribed the stories recorded by two different women during the 1980s.
Fairbanks author Debbie Miller and her husband, Dennis, taught school in Arctic Village from 1975-1978, when there was one emergency phone, "Trapline Chatter" on the radio and no TV or computers. Most evenings were spent visiting.
"It was a wonderful place to live and learn about one of the most remote cultures in North America," Miller said. "I just loved hearing the stories."
Miller was so fascinated by the many interesting tales that she went back in 1980 to record them with the assistance of Albert Gilbert, Trimble's brother.
Seven years later, UAF librarian Rosemarie Speranza interviewed Arctic Village elders on tape as part of her graduate fieldwork in anthropology. When her master's thesis topic didn't fit with the fieldwork, she eventually abandoned it for a different topic.
"I thought my fieldwork was a failure," Speranza said, "but Matt and other scholars have used it. I am real happy for that. It is a great thing for him."
Both the Gilberts are grateful for the women's foresight.
"It was lucky the white ladies taped for us," Trimble said. "I don't want to lose a lot of good stories."
The summer's work was long and arduous. Trimble was in Fairbanks playing the fiddle for tourists in the evenings at the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center and being called upon to minister or visit the sick. But Matt stayed on his grandfather's trail, meeting with him daily wherever he was staying -- a hotel or a dorm room.
"I followed him home for a week to Arctic Village because my grandmother was missing him," Matt said.
The many hours together were spent with Trimble translating the tapes and Matt writing them out, asking questions and drawing pictures to clarify details.
TALES OF SMOKE AND FIRE
Matt now understands his grandfather's life experiences in greater detail.
It was a time when every bullet counted, and residents couldn't run out of bullets because the closest store or airstrip was 120 miles away and transportation was via dog team. It was a time when burning birch fungus was carried from camp to camp as a fire starter.
Matt also learned about his great-grandfather who smoked his family's clothes outdoors over a fire every day during the flu epidemic to keep his family alive when many others in the village were dying.
After a particularly dramatic story about a man who overcame huge odds to save his starving family, Matt said his grandfather told him, "This is where you come from. This is the kind of work people put in so you are here today."
"I was speechless all day. I was really humbled," Matt said.
Whether the stories will be published, hasn't yet been established.
"Some of these stories are sacred to us," Matt said. "I think I'll have to have them reviewed by a traditional advisory board before I publish them."
Bill Schneider, who started the oral history program years ago at the UAF Archives and is one of Matt's advisers for the Alaska Humanities Forum, is enthusiastic about the Gilberts' cooperative effort translating the tapes.
"So often oral tapes will just sit on a shelf waiting to be discovered," Schneider said.
"For those of us at the university seeking to reach out to rural Alaska, to have someone like Matt doing this is very exciting."
By MARY BETH SMETZER
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner