I was different because I could fly out of my body and fly all over. I was intuitive...when I met my aunt Merna Mendenhall in Kotzebue, she explained to me that we come from a long line of shamans and that's why I I'm the way I am. But it took a long time because of how Christianity really shamed shamanism.

I feel like they, they should be knowledgeable…I would love to see our future leaders to be making things happen. Teaching the kids how to survive, how to cut wood, how to trap, how to bead, how to sing - what do the songs mean? I mean…they don't have to know everything because we don't even know everything. But I would just love to see them doing something, you know, before it's gone. I guess that's what I, that's what I would love to see: more involvement, get involved, make it happen.

We'd probably have to actually physically work harder, be expected to provide that appreciation for sweat equity.

So that means what happens now is what's gonna happen later. What's gonna happen later is the future. And the future is…how can we help the future in our, say our kids and people, our families, our people here right now? What's gonna happen to them in their language and their culture? Because we are on a brink of extinction pretty soon if we don't do anything about it right now. So what happens now in our future is that the Ancestors were the last ones to learn this. So I'm assuming…we will probably strengthen our values in that community to prevent it. So I think of this as a kind of like a defense for this culture we have nowadays. They try to help it to keep on going with this - trying to implement more things into the culture and school or education system.

My parents and the older generation are very conditioned….My grandmother and my grandfather actually were asked by the student council in my village and by some of the respectable local teachers to sing one of our traditional songs. But she wouldn't wanna do it because they were told that they were praising Satan or something, that it was just a bad thing to do. So…yeah, it's, it's just very, it's, it's different. It's a very sensitive subject to talk about it…and I want to be vocal and talk about it, but I have to respect my Elders because that's just how it is here.

We do morning circle the first half hour or forty-five minutes. We start off with a prayer, verse of the day, Iñupiaq word of the day, how to put it in a sentence, we ask them how they're doing in Iñupiaq, how's the weather…and then we jump into their courses. We have sewing and Iñupiaq language - we do Iñupiaq first, before English.

The stories that our Ancestors had, you know, if that's our future then it all comes full circle. You know, kind of like the cycle of life. Our stories will be retold over and over and over. They'll be preserved in that way. To think our kids would have stories of what our aakas and aapas went through, you know, that's our future.

Her sister's son is a trapper. He hunts, too, and he'll go from Wainwright to Barrow by himself all the time on a snow machine and he'll, he'll be out and about hunting, taking care of the community. It's so awesome to see. I don't know if I can trust my kid out on the nuna by themself, but at the sametime they're more than capable.

I often wonder if Our people were impacted by anxiety and depression and mental and behavioral health issues because I feel like we can say that life was a little bit simpler and there wasn't all these like outside impacts. Like - everything had a purpose. Everything was in its own system and it was all revolving around the seasons and the migration patterns and really coming together and caring for the community, like collectively. And so I just think about like, you know, with colonization and then this whole individualistic concept like you have to fend for yourself in society. You know, you're not strong or capable if you're asking for help kind of a thing. When it was just part of the process, traditionally…a lot of times it was tied to spirituality and they would use practices to help that person. I just, I always wonder if we were to ever, you know, if all of these impacts weren't in place, would we still have as many issues as we do with mental health and suicide and identity?

I went to Job Corps. We were teenagers, something old enough to go. But we were at the post office and my friend and I had seen this little application to go to a Job Corps in Astoria. We just for kicks, we filled it out and wow…they sent our tickets to go…we didn't expect that arrival. And so I went to, Job Corps in Astoria, Oregon from Unalakleet. That’s how far I got.

We weren’t in the village of Unalakleet we were up the river, North river. We stayed there with all us kids. In winter time when dad had to take us. Dad would put all of us kids there to go to school. It wasn’t a truck or car, it had track on it. Not a snowmachine or snowgo. We were all in this big vehicle with a track on it. We all fit in there, that’s how we got to school, to and from. Mom and dad had to count heads to make sure we were all there.

Indigenous knowledge traditionally was passed down orally, so in some ways it feels a little bit more natural to speak and to share knowledge and stories and to pass down important information just by word of mouth…it’s almost like decolonizing in a way.

We want this future Ancestor to feel like they belong. We want them to be purposed, to have a purpose, a function. I want this future Ancestor to be seen and to, to actively see. That they are accepted, that they have a responsibility, that they're in this space with purpose.

I was raised by Iñuipaq people. I was raised by my grandparents. I didn't know who my biological father was. So I identify as an Inupiat person. That's what my identity was formed as a child. But when you look at me, I appear to very clearly not be full Inupiat. Right? So I, for a long time could pass in spaces, that definitely has changed that I have face tattoos. Right? That's changed my situation. Regardless of whether or not non-Native people are here, we have to find places and spaces for them. And not only, and that's not just that they have to be like in our place and space, but that they take responsibility for the shared vision of our community and that they have to be embedded into that and brought into it in a good way so that they feel that responsibility too.