February 10, 2004

Howard Rock Ballroom CSheraton Hotel

Anchorage, Alaska

A Celebration Honoring

Alaska’sIndigenousLiterature

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A Celebration HonoringAlaska’s Indigenous

Literature

February 10, 2004

Howard Rock Ballroom CSheraton Hotel

6–9 PM

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Opening Prayer

Introduction of HAIL Executive Board andWorking Committee:

Andy Hope

Co-Masters of Ceremony:

Teri SchneiderLinda Green

Introduction and Presentations

Sidney Huntington, Athabascanby Linda Green

Loretta Outwater Cox, Inupiaqby Bernadette Alvanna-Stimpfle

John Pestrikoff and the late Julia Pestrikoff, Alutiiq Eldersby Teri Schneider

Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Tlingitby Andy Hope

Mike Andrews Sr., Yup’ikby Joanna Wassillie

Posthumous Award Presentations

Belle Deacon, Deg Hit’anby Malinda Chase

Rober Nasruk Cleveland, Inupiaqby Ruth Sampson

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The 2004 Honoring Alaska’sIndigenous Literature Awards

Indigenous educators from across the state of Alaska have hadnumerous opportunities to meet cross-regionally and share issuesand concerns of importance to them in their roles as educators.

They first met as students of the Alaska Rural Teacher Training Corps(ARTTC ) program and then as students of the Cross-CulturalEducation Development (X-CED) program. With the formation ofregional Native educator associations in the early 1990s to thepresent and the help of the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative, theycontinue to meet within their regional associations and in statewideNative educators conferences. As indigenous educators they havepaved new trails in curriculum development, Academy of Elderscamps and many other initiatives.

A concern in the area of literature in reference to indigenouspeoples led to the formation of a working committee made up ofrepresentatives from each of the regional indigenous educatorassociations which led to the development of the Guidelines forRespecting Cultural Knowledge. These guidelines address issues ofconcern in the documentation, representation and utilization oftraditional cultural knowledge as they relate to the role of variousparticipants, including Elders, authors, curriculum developers,classroom teachers, publishers and researchers.

Along with the guidelines are a set of recommendations, one ofwhich called for establishing a prestigious award to honor indigenousElders, authors, illustrators and others who make significantcontributions to the documentation and representation of Nativecultural knowledge and traditions.

The 2001 Celebration of Alaska Native Literature was the first torecognize those who have made an impact in our lives as indigenouspeoples through their work in indigenous literature. We hope thiswas the first of many celebrations of recognizing our people in thearea of literature as we choose to define literature, with anindigenous perspective.

The 2001 awards program was organized by a group called theAlaska Indigenous Literary Review Board per the above-mentionedguidelines. In the spring of 2001, the group changed its name toHonoring Alaska’s Indigenous Literature, or HAIL. Members of theHAIL working committee are listed on the back of this program.

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2004 Award Winners

Sidney Huntington

Publication: Shadows of the KoyoukukPublished by Alaska Northwest Books,6th printing 2000

Born in 1915 Sidney Huntington is afamous, respected Athabascan Elder fromInterior Alaska. He is currently residing inGalena. He has been a trapper, fisherman,goldminer and carpenter, but perhaps mostimportant, a storyteller and master ofindigenous knowledge in his policymakingcareer. He has served on school boards, theBoard of Game and numerous othercommittees on the local and state level.

As stated in the preface of his book:

His life story is a fascinating slice of Alaskan history.Sidney grew up in a subarctic wildland of birch-bark canoes,dog teams, trappers, goldminers and Koyukon Indians. Hecontinues to live in essentially the same culture, nowmodernized with snow machines, bush planes and satelliteTV. His is a product of the land, who thoroughly knows hisregions, the animals and the people who live there. Thememories he shares in this book bring alive a way of life thatis gone forever, for as a teenager and a young man he liveprimarily off the land; his interest in traditional Koyukontales provides an intriguing peek into Koyukon Indianprehistory.

Sidney has an honorary doctorate from the University ofAlaska and is self educated in traditional knowledge and globalissues.

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Loretta Outwater Cox

Publication: Winter WalkPublished by: GraphicArts Center PublishingCo., 2003.

Loretta Outwater Cox is an InupiaqEskimo woman born in Nome, Alaska andraised in various villages around the SewardPeninsula in Northwest Alaska. She holds a bachelor’s degree inEducation and a master’s degree in Educational Administration.Loretta taught elementary school in Western Alaska for twenty-three years. She and her husband, Skip, currently live inFairbanks, Alaska. They have four children and fivegrandchildren.

John Peter Pestrikoff and Julia Pestrikoff

John Peter Pestrikoffwas born August 28, 1914in the village of Ouzinkieto Peter Pestrikoff andKhristina Cheriknov. Johnis 93 years old and livesat the Senior Center inKodiak. John helped indentify Afognak Island Sugpiaq placenames for a mapping project with Jeff Leer of UAF and theNative Village of Afognak. John told his niece by marriage,Helen Simeonoff, about “little people” at Little Afognak thatwould sneak up on barabaras-ciqlluaq and look down the smokehole.

John, along with his wife Julia, were the primarycontributors of oral history to the Red Cedar of Afognakchildrens’ book about driftwood, yet unpublished. The storyfeatures them as the main characters from their story of thetidal wave. They had one son, Fredrick, and have threegrandchildren living in Port Lions and the state of Washington.

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Nora Marks Dauenhauer

Nora Marks Dauenhauer was born1927 in Juneau, Alaska and was raised inJuneau and Hoonah, as well as on thefamily fishing boat and in seasonalsubsistence sites around Icy Straits,Glacier Bay and Cape Spencer. Her firstlanguage is Tlingit. She began to learnEnglish when entering school at the ageof eight. She has a B.A. in Anthropology

(Alaska Methodist University 1976) and is internationallyrecognized for her fieldwork, transcription, translation andexplication of Tlingit oral literature.

Nora’s creative writing has been widely published andanthologized. Her Raven plays have been performed in severalvenues internationally, including the Kennedy Center inWashington, D.C. In 1980 she was named Humanist of the Yearby the Alaska Humanities Forum. In 1989 she received anAlaska Governor’s Award for the Arts and in 1991 she was awinner of the Before Columbus Foundation’s American BookAward. From 1983 to 1997 she was Principal Researcher inLanguage and Cultural Studies at Sealaska Heritage Foundationin Juneau.

Nora is married to Richard Dauenhauer, writer and formerpoet laureate of Alaska, with whom she has co-authored andco-edited several editions of Tlingit language and folklorematerial. She has served on the Southeast Alaska Tribal CollegeElders Council since 1996. She has four children, thirteengrandchildren, and five great grandchildren.

2004 Award Winners, con’t.

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Mike Andrews, Sr.

Mike Andrews, Sr. was born at the oldvillage site of Amigtuli along the BlackRiver near Kusilvak Mountain. He wasraised at Amigtuli until he was abouteleven years old, after which he wastaken away by a priest for his formaleducation. He attended school at theAkulurak Mission, one of the firstboarding schools in the state and run bythe Catholic Church.

While growing up, Mike helped his parents by packing waterand chopping firewood. He learned how to do things byobserving people and then later trying them on his own. In thisway, he learned how to make traditional tools, like fish trapsmade out of driftwood. He also made his own sled and startedhis own dog team. As an adult, he made his own qayaq, andbegan trapping for different kinds of furs such as mink, otterand muskrat.

At a recent community meeting held to discuss the newLYSD cultural curriculum, Mike shared his belief that the Yup’iklanguage must be spoken and understood by the youngerpeople. He also shared his experiences with the Yup’ikLanguage Institute and how he is pleased with the efforts madeto preserve the language in the region. He likes being involvedwith the program and sharing his knowledge with the youngergenerations.

Today, “Upa” Andrews is very busy, being an elder-mentor toseveral Yup’ik teachers from the region and sharing his culturalwisdom as much as he can. He can often be found in the schoolat Emmonak, showing the students how to make fish traps ordrumming and teaching them how to yuraq (dance). We arevery lucky to have him in our lives and he is an inspiration to usall. Quyana, Upa!

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Posthumous Awards

Belle Deacon

As a child, Belle was favored by her grandmother and wastaught how to live a good and long life, never to swear, andalways be kind and help old people. Marcia foretold that Bellewould outlive the rest of her family, so it was to Belle that shepassed on the traditional skills and knowledge she possessed.By watching Marcia work, and then by trying it herself, Bellelearned the craftsmanship which has made her well-known inAlaska for her birchbark baskets.

Engithidong Xugixudhoy: Their Stories of Long Ago documentsnine Deg Hit’an traditional stories by the late Belle Deacon ofGrayling. Belle Deacon was a renowned storyteller, fluent inboth English and Deg Xinag. She was a cultural expert insubsistence ways of the Deg Hit’an people and also known forher expertise in making beautiful birch bark and willow rootbaskets. From the late 1970s through the 1980s, Belle wasinvited to tell stories and demonstrate her basket-making skillsto groups of people all over Alaska. This publication is aninvaluble educational and language learning resource.

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Robert Nasruk Cleveland

Robert Nasruk Cleveland, father of Minnie Gray, shared manystories and legends on reel-to-reel tapes to preserve valuableinformation on Iñupiaq language, history and heritage. He wasrecorded by the late Don Foote and by Wanni Anderson inFolktakes of the Riverine and Coastal Iñupiat.

Robert is one of three Kobuk Cleveland brothers. Borntoward the end of the 1800s, Robert Cleveland, as a young boy,had personally participated in the historic Sisualik tradingmeets where Inupiaq from coastal and riverine settlements meteach spring to trade. A skilled subsistence Inupiaq and aprolific storyteller, Robert spent a great deal of his growing-upyears in a qargi where he acquired his Iñupiaq skill and storiesfrom the Elders.

Robert lived most of his life around the Black River andmoved to live in Shungnak after the village was established.Robert was married to Flora Sanmigana (Cooper) Clevelandfrom Qala and had thirteen children. The four surviving sonsand daughters are: Minnie Alitchak Gray, Clara Paaniikaaluk Lee,Homer Qaliaq Cleveland and Levi Anarraaq Cleveland.

HAIL Working CommitteeAndy Hope, ChairpersonLolly CarplukVirginia NedBernice TetponEsther IlutsikCecilia MartzMarie Olson-ElderFrank HillBernadette Yaayuk Alvanna-Stimpfle

Yurrliq Nita ReardenDorothy LarsonRay BarnhardtMartha StackhouseLinda GreenShirley TuzroylukeTeri SchneiderMoses DirksOlga Pestrikoff

List of Sponsors

Wells Fargo is pleased to helpsupport this year’s CelebratingAlaska’s Indigenous LiteratureAwards.

Alaska Federation of NativesAlaska Rural Systemic InitiativeAlaska Native Knowledge NetworkAnchorage Sheraton HotelWells Fargo Bank of Alaska

Program layout and design by Paula ElmesAward plaques created by Ben Snowball and funded by Wells Fargo