Friends,

About six weeks ago the blog had pictures of many memorabilia and animals our friends Mark and Denise Wartes have in their home.  I asked if he would kindly write some of his experiences for a blog to send to our Mid-West friends.  He obliged.  Thank you very much, Mark, for writing this.

 I met Elva and Larry at the 1st Presbyterian Church in Fairbanks Ak. Since then we see each other quite often around town.  During dinner a few weeks ago Larry asked if I might share a little of my back ground and a story on his Blog.   So here.

    Inupiaqsin Itqiliuraq assii tuniqaqsina Mark A. Wartes.  My Inupiat name is Itqiliuraq and my white given name is Mark Wartes.

    I was raised in Barrow Alaska as the oldest son of Bill and Bonnie Wartes.  My dad, Rev. Bill Wartes was the called pastor to the Utqiagvik Presbyterian Church in Barrow and supported by the old Board of National Missions to serve the total North Slope of Alaska and N.West Canada as a flying missionary.

     I attended the Bureau of Indian school in Barrow until the end of 6th grade, that is far as school went in Barrow in those days.  My whole generation had to leave Barrow at our parents expense,  if we wanted to continue our education.  I attended high school in Seattle Washington, started college in N. Carolina, served in the service during the Israeli and Vietnam wars.

     In time I ended up back on the N. Slope as a confused young man, returning to the native training I had been taught as a boy growing up.  I went back to a subsistence/nomadic life style that I was comfortable with, learning again from the elders that continued to share their knowledge of life in general.

    In time I married a beautiful girl from Michigan that had been my little sisters best friend. We honeymooned in a skin tent miles out on the Arctic Ice Pack as I shared my love for the animals and land that God had provided for my subsistance.

    A changing world and the need for formal education for our children brought us to Fairbanks, Ak in the 80's.

    God had made it clear that he had other plans for me and if I only made myself available, he would use me in ways I could never dream of.  Denise and I have been blessed by God using the gifts he gave us, among my Inupiat people, and it continues to this day.

    I'll attach a short story of a few days in our life along the Colville River on the N. slope.

Living With Oral History #3

If you enjoy listening to stories, you would certainly be entertained by the reciting
of many Inupiat oral history stories. I have slowly come to understand the importance
given to history through the retention of oral history. There is great honor in being
trusted with pieces of our Inupiat history, entrusted with stories and treasures of our
people and how we came to be the people we are today. It is through oral history we
carry the memories of what makes us Inupiaq. I often question, what good is knowledge
if you don’t share it, and if you don’t share it is it still history? The rehearing of oral
history stories often is a way of reliving something from the past.

It would have been much easier, to have just written down what my elders taught
and stories they shared, but there is a different responsibility, a trust given, an ownership,
when you are expected to put a story to memory. The story would not have been shared,
if there was not a felt need to pass it on. I am not one to question the wisdom or success
of oral history, for has it not withstood the test of time. The fact that our people are “a
people” today is all the proof I need.

To read information in a book, as we did in school, doesn’t guarantee that you
will remember it, when the need arises. Your mind says, “I can look it up again if I need
it, or have forgotten it.” The difference with oral history is that you practice it in your
mind, until it becomes part of you. Oral history was some times shared as a way to pass
on our Inupiat value system, then sometimes as an instructional tool. I can remember
our elders using oral history as a means of entertainment, as a story, and often very
humorous.

I’ll take you back to when I was a young boy living on the Colville River
Delta. I sat spell bound, listening, as Old Man Tukle told me about the Kuukpikmiut (Kuukpikmiut: Those that come from the Kuukpik River), the people who came long before him. I was never sure if Old Man Tukle knew how old he was, but he had spent most of his many years living along the Arctic coast. He was a walking, talking history book. His knowledge of the coastal land, names, families, and
relationships was all recorded in his mind. He explained that the people that lived on the
other side of the Kupigruak (Kupigruak: Main channel of a river) channel, at what he called the first Nuiqsut (Nuiqsut: New home or a place of new home) site, had wintered there, because the water coming from the Miluveach River ( Miluveach: Place where you miluk or suck, like nursing. There are sucker fish in this river) sometimes kept the ice thinner there and they could net fish longer into the winter. The Colville River Delta
is over twenty miles wide, and the Kupigruak channel is on the far eastern side of the
delta. As he told the story, I could visualize the islands, river channels, and mainland
although I had never been near there. It was easy to remind myself there could be thin ice
by the remnants of the old ivruliks (Ivruliks: Old sod houses), where the Miluveach River emptied into the
Colville. This would be a good spot, if I ever needed to try and set nets under the ice in
early winter.

It was over twenty years later, and I was now living on the eastern side of the
delta with my wife. I had built a home on Anachlik (Anachlik: White fish, big round nose) Island within sight of the old ivruliks. I had shown them to my wife and we used the old sod blocks as a blind, concealing ourselves while hunting seals. As we hid there, I repeated to her the history I had long
sense memorized.

(Mark had a picture of him standing on the track of a yellow John Deere tractor.  I could not get it into the blog.  Sorry!)

That winter we were visited by Neil and Annie Allen, as they were heading back to Kaktovik (Kaktovik: Barter Island) from Nuiqsut. The Allen’s were a nomadic couple that thought nothing of traveling for miles along the coast just to say “hi” or visit with someone they missed. They never passed our house without coming in and sharing news from others they had been visiting. In a very soft voice Neil said,
“Maybe there is going to be some cold babies in Nuiqsut soon, for the village is very low
on stove fuel.” This was the way the elders talked when they didn’t want to make you
feel obligated. I immediately borrowed a John Deere Tractor, so I could haul some spare
drums of heating fuel to Nuiqsut. Some of these half full drums of helicopter fuel were
abandoned and left scattered across the tundra by the oil exploration crews, and I would
haul them home as I worked my trap line. I left that night, so I could get there for the
brief morning light. After unloading the fuel, I started right back home, for it had taken
me over nine hours to get to Nuiqsut and now the wind had started blowing up a storm.
As I turned off the Niglik (Niglik: Place of the Brant) channel past Putu (Putu: Hole, puncture)
 and started up the Kupigruak channel, I lost the tracks I had made coming up river. Driving a tractor in the dark with the wind picking up the snow, it becomes very hard to navigate.

I could see less than 50 yards, and had to keep bumping into the east side of the
riverbank to make sure I was traveling up the correct channel. To stay awake, I would
repeat to myself different “oral history” lessons I had learned. This is when the history of
the Kukpikmiuts that had lived in the ivruliks at the first Nuiqsut site, came to mind. Thin
ice and I was driving the tractor right up the east bank of the Colville River, with no idea
of how close I was to the mouth of the Miluveach River, with the real possibility of thin
ice.

I had been turning the tractor left and right, it seemed for hours, trying to pick up
some sign of my trip up the river the night before, and now I had lost track of how far
down river I had actually traveled. I would turn all the lights off on the tractor and stare
out into the blowing snow, hoping to see a glimpse of a light. I knew my wife would
have a Coleman lantern hanging in the kitchen window, reflecting its bright rays through
the many, many tiny facets of frost crystals that covered our windows. On a clear night I
have seen that light, from over ten miles away.

It was right then I saw what appeared to be a small camp fire flare up off to the
east. As I tried to make sense out of what I was seeing, a small light left the fire and
moved out and stopped in front of me. I headed the tractor straight at the strange light,
and as I got closer, it looked like the flare pots we would put out on the runway, to help a
pilot land his plane in the dark. Just as I got to the light it disappeared, suddenly another
one was visible off to my left. I looked behind me and I could not see the light I had just
passed, but I could still see the small fire back where I first spotted it. I could see what
appeared to be a small figure passing back and forth around the fire. As I traveled toward
the second flare, I had to keep heading straight toward it, or I would lose sight of it. The
third light turned me more to the west, and it wasn’t until the fourth or fifth light that
I was again headed north. Next thing I knew, the light shining in front of me, was the
lantern hanging in our window.

After I put the tractor away I stopped at my sister’s house and yelled in the door at
my brother-in-law “thanks for the flares.” My sister gave me a strange look, as I backed
out and closed the door.

As I walked to my house I thought it strange that all the snowmachines were still
in the same location, as when I left the previous day. I asked my wife if anyone had gone
out with a snowmachine in the last few hours and she said “no.” As I had been up for
over 24 hours, I just went to bed. When I awoke, my wife asked if I was okay and if I
wanted something to eat. I told her I was okay, but before I could eat I needed to check
something out. I started my snowmachine and followed my tractor tracks back the way I
had traveled the night before. I could see every place I had made a major change of
direction, but I could find no sign of any reason that would have caused me to turn. I
knew before I gotten far what I would find. There was no sign of any camp fire or of
anything having been burned, but my tracks had abruptly turned and traveled out and
around the thin ice at the mouth of the Miluveach River.

When I got home again I had a big smile on my face. I told my wife that I was
taught when I was young, that sometimes when you were helping others and you needed
help yourself, the Inuguluurak (Inuguluurak: The little people.is to just keep looking for ways to help others)
 would appear. The only way you could ever thank them, is to just keep looking for ways to help others.

Thank you.

Written by: Itqiliuraq  (Mark Wartes)


Denise has Marita as a new born on her back and son Marwan out leading the way.

Tent used while seal hunting in spring 1971.  Traveling tent, which can be set up in just minutes.

This is inland in the fall.  Marwan is learning to crawl.

Denise with first caribou.

We used seals skins for all our spring mukluks, we also mixed the fat and oil with our dog food.

Thank you very much, Mark, for sharing your story with all of us.

If anyone sends me questions or comments for Mark I will forward them to him.

Thanks, readers, for your interest.

Larry and Elva