The little house at the end of North Bliss Street is full of memories, said Tulukqaaqsiuq Hank, who found my blog, Mountain View Post, on Facebook and sent me a note with some old pictures attached. I sent him a message and asked if he’d be willing to tell me more. We ended up talking on the phone for a few hours over the course of a several days. He lives in Point Hope now.

Growing up on N. Bliss, still in grade school, Hank played basketball in the driveway with the hoop his dad built, back before his dad went to prison. Sometimes, when the cupboards in the house were empty and his mother was nowhere to be found, he pocketed packets of ramen noodles and candy bars from Red Apple to feed his young brothers.

He rode his bike all over the neighborhood, smoked stolen cigarettes at Lions Park and learned to take care of himself. One day, when a stray dog chased his cousin, he fought it off with a metal rod. When things got tense with a boy at school, he broke into a neighbor’s house and stole a handgun for protection.

Hank spent the next 17 years moving in and out of the justice system on charges ranging from assault to burglary. He fought addiction. He felt angry. He was locked up when his brother died: Tigautchaiq Douglas was 22 when he fell from the fifth floor of the Castle Apartments. Then, a few years later, Hank learned about the death of his girlfriend while brushing his teeth and watching the evening news at Goose Creek Correctional Center: Elaine Cleveland was 34 when she was discovered, frozen, in a van in downtown Anchorage. It broke Hank’s heart.

Behind bars, he said, he became part of the Native Brotherhood: Police call it a prison gang, Hank calls it a positive movement. It helped him understand some things.

”I kind of understand why I am who I am today,” he said. “It had to take a lot of tragedy for me to change my life.”

The last time he was in Mountain View was last fall, right after he got out of prison, right before he went back to Point Hope to be with family. His childhood girlfriend, Panika Williams, had called him and asked for help finding her mom, Irma Williams, who came up missing, and Hank walked all over the neighborhood looking for her. The house on N. Bliss is still there, remodeled and recently sold. Tuluk couldn’t believe how much it changed — how much the whole neighborhood changed — since he grew up there.

He had no luck looking for Williams that day. It wasn’t until October that a man walking his dogs found her body buried in Davis Park. She was 54 years old. (Michael Memeo, her former boyfriend, was charged with first and second-degree murder and evidence tampering. He’s currently scheduled to go to trial in October.)

In Point Hope, Hank says he found a measure of calm on the Arctic Ocean ice, thinking about his future and making peace with his past.

“Mountain View taught me to survive,” he said.

Here is the picture that was attached to his email:

Kirsten Swann is a writer and blogger who lives in Mountain View. A version of this post originally appeared on Mountain View Post.

The post Guest city notebook: A boy from North Bliss appeared first on Julia O'Malley.

Anyway, here’s what I brought back from the trip on my phone, mainly food photos, from one of America’s most northern communities.

The post Point Hope (food) in iPhone snaps appeared first on Julia O'Malley.

POINT HOPE, Alaska — At this community’s original town site, abandoned decades ago because of creeping beach erosion, the bleached remains of a few houses still stand on the treeless landscape. In one of them, you can make out “1957” carved into a driftwood corner post. That’s the year this Inupiat village first got electricity. Up until then, light in the winter came from seal oil.

Change has been washing over this ancient place, one of the oldest continuously inhabited town sites in North America, rapidly the last 100 years. Here on this ever-thinning peninsula in the Chukchi Sea, people have gone from existing completely off the land, traveling by dog sled, living in homes built from sod and whalebone, to a world of four wheelers and Facebook, big screen TVs and toaster waffles in the span of two generations. Someday soon, offshore, high-tech Shell platforms will likely begin drilling for oil.

But, the 900 people who live here hold on to a ritual that dates back 2,000 years: the spring hunt for the bowhead whale. This year, the village took three.

Read more here.

The post For Al Jazeera America: A whaling village preserves its past appeared first on Julia O'Malley.

(For a real treat, check out Katie’s slide show.)

Point Hope, Alaska — For the Inupiat villagers who have made their homes on this finger of land in the Chukchi Sea for generations, nothing is more important than the bowhead whale.

The calendar revolves around seasons for hunting, fishing and gathering. It’s a lifestyle Alaskans call “subsistence”, which is as much cultural tradition as economic necessity in one of the state’s most northern villages.

About 900 people live in Point Hope. The village store prices are double what people pay 700 miles south in Anchorage. A gallon of milk might be $12. Two pounds of hamburger patties: $23. In most homes, wild and foraged foods make up at least half of the menu. The village has two stores, a school, several churches and a restaurant that serves pizza, Chinese food and hamburgers. Alcohol can’t be legally possessed, sold or imported.

All year, the village looks forward to spring whaling, when crews of men thread through leads in the sea ice, quietly paddling in seal-skin boats, looking for smooth black shapes rising out of the water.
The few massive bowheads taken by villagers each year supply thousands of pounds of dense protein. Beyond that, whale meat is considered an Alaska Native soul food. Hunting, butchering and distributing the animal, village leaders say, is how elders teach young people the culture.

“Without the whale,” said Steve Oomittuk, the former mayor of the city and former vice-president of the tribe, “we wouldn’t be who we are.”

In recent years, however, the much-anticipated whale hunt has run up against a warming Arctic. A bowhead can be 60 feet long and weigh 75 tons. Successful whaling crews have always hauled the massive animals on to the ice using a block and tackle. The last few seasons, the ice has been more unstable than elders in the village have ever seen.

“It’s getting harder and harder, the ice is thinner,” Oomittuk said. “We can’t pull up the whale.”

Read more here.

The post For The Guardian: In Point Hope, centuries-old whaling tradition runs up against climate change appeared first on Julia O'Malley.