In my previous post, “Be the Other,” I wrote about my dedication to getting the voice and actions of my half Inupiaq character, Mary, as real as possible. I should note that I have never taken a creative writing course that taught me about voice, so I’m learning as I go. So far I’ve found this article extremely useful and am pausing my writing to flesh out my characters’ histories.
I know she’s studious, wants to attend college, and deeply misses the connection to her mother’s Inupiaq family. After getting married to a white man, Mary’s mother severed her family connections. Mary’s mixed ancestry was overlooked, and she had all the benefits of being raised white. She is conflicted about her mother’s choice, and tends to see the nessesity to make a choice between cultures to be an injustice. I am looking for quality sources to help form Mary’s history, and through history, voice. I’m starting with the race elements, but her ambitions will play a large role too.
I found quite a few sources through a consortium hosted by University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University. They have a list of books, articles, oral histories, and interviews that I’m using as my starting point.
Of course my little city does not have any of the books on the list, so thank goodness for OhioLink! OhioLink is the Ohio Library and Information Network, an organization that connects public and private libraries throughout Ohio. I’ve already ordered: “Fighter in Velvet Gloves,” a book about Elizabeth Peratrovich, a famous Tlingit civil rights leader; “The Alaska Native Reader,” which is a collection of stories, poems, and art; and “Blonde Indian: an Alaska Native Memoir” by Ernestine Hayes.
Another book by Ernestine Hayes, “The Tao of Raven” I had to buy on Amazon because it wasn’t in any Ohio library. I would read this book even if I weren’t researching first person native Alaskan perspectives, because interweaving The Art of War with a traditional native story sounds fascinating.
There’s also a documentary “For the rights of all: ending Jim Crow in Alaska” that I want to watch. I just keep forgetting my headphones on my writing days. Someday I will remember, so someday it will be watched.
So far I’ve been through a couple resources: an interview with Polly Hyslop from October 2009 and “Racism’s Frontier: The Untold Story of Discrimination and Division in Alaska,” April 2002, and watched “For the Rights of All: Ending Jim Crow in Alaska.”
In the interview, Polly Hyslop spoke about her childhood and her view of societal changes. Hyslop seemed conflicted about changes to her clan and society. She said things like, who is she to say the elders were wrong? They made the choice to not teach the language and culture. They made the choice not to protest the highway being built through their land. It was the highway that brought so much change. And they love the convenience of the highway now, even if it did bring change. But change always happens. There was that note of fatalism, or realism, and no hint of the victimization or resentment that I expected.
She also gave some insight into their culture. She said that they were very kind people; that they took in Gold Rush people who were starving to death. I had thought that might be true before, but now I have some proof. My main character’s parents were some of those Gold Rush people who were helped by Inupiaq in 1900. Wish I had more accounts of this.
Hyslop also said that the clan is passed on through the mother. When she was a child, women like her mother would gather together to speak in their native language, but only to each other. The native language was not used otherwise at home or in public. Hyslop never learned it. I’ve encountered that with ELL families too, a separation between their childhood culture and the one they’re attempting to acclimate with. Though it should be noted too, that Hyslop’s own grandmother refused to learn English. It was her own way to protest change.
“For the Rights of All” gave me a better understanding of how the Alaskan Brotherhood and Sisterhoods were formed, and why. The Nelson Act of 1905 created separate school systems for white and native children. Separate, but I don’t think equal was ever attempted. Sound familiar? At the native boarding schools, children were indoctrinated into white culture. The ANB was formed in 1912 to advocate for the right to attend white schools and the right to vote. The ANS was formed the next year. After they got voting rights, and ALL natives became citizens in 1924, they started to tackle civil rights. It’s crazy this was never taught in school, because the ANS was making progress toward eliminating Jim Crow laws before MLK Jr. or Rose Parks were born.
Most of the documentary was… dull. Historians talking, repeated black and white photos, etc., but one point shocked me. A woman held up a framed document that belonged to her father. It was the document that verified he had renounced his native culture. It wasn’t enough for him to sign it, but five teachers had to affix their names too, to attest he was telling the truth, that he was indeed living in a civil manner. That got to me. As far as I know immigrants, from anywhere, didn’t need that, and the Alaskan natives weren’t even immigrants! (obviously).
One comment was made in the documentary that was tantalizing. Like a tease in it’s brevity. A speaker said that the teaching of native culture went underground. I can imagine what it means: covert lessons out of the public’s sight. But what was it like living it? What exactly was passed down? How could they practice the skills without being seen? What happened if they were caught?
Overall, I hope these sources will give me insight into Mary, the mixed Inupiaq/White character, and a more nuanced view of her mother’s choice to assimilate into white culture. Hyslop does not lead me to believe that assimilation was evil or the wrong choice. It was a choice. It was change. That is not to say it was always a choice. I anticipate finding many examples of how white western culture was forced upon Alaskan natives in the books I ordered. I’m just not there yet.
Like the highway, the advent of air travel would change Alaska too. I already wrote a conversation between Mary and the main character Margaret about the changes airplanes will bring. I think I’ll revisit that conversation to have Mary arguing against (or, at least not excitedly embracing) the change airplanes will bring, and use that to express her frustration/internal conflict over cultural change.
Maybe Mary will go away to college in Anchorage or Juneau and become active with the ANS. Perhaps she’ll embrace teenage rebellion by trying to learn her mother’s culture, causing tension within the family. Mary’s story could be another whole book.
My pile of work is getting higher and higher. Up to three young adult novels now:
1900: story of Silas and Helen Gilmartin (Margaret’s parents) sailing to Nome through the Inner Passage and setting up life in Nome; adventure
1920: 4 months in the life of a white girl coming to age in Nome; timeline dictated by the first airplane expedition; making life decisions, dealing with loss, and a little budding romance
1920: 4 months in the life of an Inupiaq/White girl coming to age in Nome; a shift in perspective, and taking on more elements of Inupiaq life and culture, civil rights, and women’s rights
Crazy idea: Weave the two 1920 books together, alternating between perspective? Whoa. Maybe. That’s…. I need to think about that.
Northern Skies Publishing 