This series features Yupik Elder Harriet Penayah. Listen to the previous episode here. Harriet Penayah stays active in her community. The 80 year-old elder teaches children native drumming and dance. She also recently opened up her home to her community’s youth. Savoonga has no teen center. After the “hang-out place” closed down, Harriet saw teens [...]
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Elder Voices: Harriet Penayah, Part Two
This series features Yupik elder Harriet Penayah. Listen to the first episode here. For most of her life, Harriet Penayah worked as a health aide in Savoonga. She tended to the wounded and sick within her community, stitching up cuts, transfusing blood, and even delivering twins. There were no doctors in Savoonga. No nurses. But Harriet says [...]
Elder Voices: Harriet Penayah, Part One
This episode is the first of a three-part series featuring Yupik elder Harriet Penayah. When Harriet Penayah was growing up in Savoonga in the 1930s, the Alaska native village looked much the same as it does today. “No igloos,” she says, “no sod houses.” Just wooden-frame homes clustered above the black sandy beach. But, she says, [...]
Elder Voices: Mike Williams, Sr.
Mike Williams, Sr. is a well-regarded man. An Iditarod veteran, Yupik elder, and prominent tribal rights advocate, Williams is the type of musher who draws a big crowd at the finish line, even if he comes in 45th place. He shares some of his stories on the latest edition of KNOM’s Elder Voices. Williams has mushed for [...]
Elder Voices: Raymond Seetok Sr.
This month’s Elder Voices celebrates Raymond Seetok Sr, a Kingikmiut elder from Wales. Raymond was born in Wales in 1946. A whaling captain, husband, and father, he grew up with twelve siblings in the traditional Inupiaq way. He speaks about the hardships he faced, and Inupiaq lessons his elders and parents passed onto him about [...]
Elder Voices: Winton Weyapuk Jr.
At 62, Winton Weyapuk Jr. is a young elder. But he is a wealth of information about the Inupiaq language and marine mammal subsistence in his native village of Wales. Winton’s passion for preserving Inupiaq and the subsistence lifestyle started as a boy, learning how to navigate sea ice in an umiak skinboat with his father, and [...]
Elder Voices: Vince Pikonganna
On this month’s episode of Elder Voices, hear from Vince Pikonganna of King Island. Vince remembers his youth on the island, and along the way, sharing his knowledge of Inupiaq values and customs his elders passed down to him. Listen to Vince tell his story:
Elder Voices: James Okpealuk
James Okpealuk is a skilled carpenter. Throughout his life, the Teller Elder has helped build many houses in Alaska, including homes in Fairbanks, new houses in Nome, and the old school in Teller. But he remembers his traditional home in Little Diomede with a smile: “All sod and rocks…more like a shack. Small, but very [...]
Elder Voices: Susan Campbell (encore)
This month EV features an encore presentation of Susan Campbell, who was born in Gambell in 1934. Susan remembers her childhood in Gambell: picking greens and berries while camping in the country; her first time away from her family when she went to school; and trapped with her family all over St. Lawrence Island. Originally aired in 2002, this month KNOM features an encore presentation of Gambell’s Susan Campbell.
Elder Voices: Jacob Ahwinona (encore)
Jacob Ahwinona was interviewed by KNOM for Elder Voices in 2009. He passed away in June of 2012. In his honor, we present an encore presentation of his Elder Voices interview.
