Raising Ourselves: A Gwich'in Coming of Age Story from the Yukon River

Rating:
Summary: Thank You, Velma
Review: I can't really say anything else. Just Thank You. My mother grew up during the "Great Depression" here in the USA. She raised several children alone. Your story is very much like hers. My oldest sister doesn't "read books" (????!) but I made her read the book jacket on this book, and she cried.

Oh the trials and tribulations we go through as human beings. And all the feelings we share. I look forward to more stories from you, and THANK YOU AGAIN, lovey. Thank you.

Rating:
Summary: Thank You, Velma
Review: I can't really say anything else. Just Thank You. My mother grew up during the "Great Depression" here in the USA. She raised several children alone. Your story is very much like hers. My oldest sister doesn't "read books" (????!) but I made her read the book jacket on this book, and she cried.

Oh the trials and tribulations we go through as human beings. And all the feelings we share. I look forward to more stories from you, and THANK YOU AGAIN, lovey. Thank you.

Rating:
Summary: Thanks for sharing!
Review: I read Velma's book with great anticipation of something real and revealing, I was not disappointed. In my mind's eye and my heart I could feel the anguish and fear of her story. Because her story is my also my story.

I too know and remember the little pleasures of simple things in a world of want. I too remember the hunger, the drunken quarrels and the shame instilled in us by drunken families. The desperately desired moments of loving kindness rarely given.

Velma's story is a great act of personal courage. I admire her strength to tell such a tale. It should be read by all Alaskan Natives.

Velma's story is a legacy we have left to our children. It is sometimes a very sad legacy. Now is the time to change. Velma teaches us how; talk openly and honestly of how we feel. Talk of what makes sad or happy.

Velma has shared something very deeply personal. In her telling she has demonstrated the power of sharing. And that power of sharing has been a cultural heritage of our people long before the white man. We all stand taller when we share.

Thank you Velma for a very good book. Good job!

Patrick J. Honea
Fairbanks, Alaska

Rating:
Summary: What it was like grow up as a Native American in Alaska
Review: Raising Ourselves: A Gwich'in Coming Of Age Story From The Yukon River is the personal testimony of Velma Wallis (a full blooded member of one of the Gwich'in clans that had settled where the Porcupine River flows into the Yukon) on what it was like grow up as a Native American in an Alaska dominated by white teachers, traders, and missionaries. The endless battle against despair, alcoholism, and the loss or forgetting of all the ways that were once practiced permeate this courageous and thoughtful memoir. Raising Ourselves is a welcome, engagingly written, and very highly recommended addition to academic and community library Native American collections.

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Summary: A Caring and Realistic Portrait of a Rural Alaskan Village
Review: This is a fine follow-up to Alaskan Indian Velma Wallis's best selling book "Two Old Women," which is based on a story her mother told her, just before she would go to sleep in their two-room cabin in Fort Yukon in the Alaskan north country.

It was a cabin she shared with her parents and 12 brothers and sisters, and in this book, she helps us to see every nook and corner of that cabin, including all kinds of interesting items under the beds, and that Alaskan staple, the chilly Outhouse.

She describes the struggles her parents make just to keep the family fed and warm ---a real subsistence life-style. Then the changes in the 1970s, when television and a liquor store came in.

Early in the book, she says that there were many times in her childhood when she was happy, but also a good number of times when she was unhappy because of the alcoholism affecting those around her.

As a resident of rural, or "bush" Alaska, I feel that we could all use many more stories about village life in this last frontier, especially stories told by the Native people who live there.

I share another reviewer's conclusion thanking Velma for her courage and insight. Also her appreciation of the tiny details in our daily lives, and finally, her sense of humor. No matter how difficult the winters or family circumstances can become, I've learned that a sense of humor always helps.
I'm eagerly waiting for your next book Velma, and a movie as well.

Rating:
Summary: The Facts of Life in An Alaskan Village
Review: This is Velma Wallis' third book. Her previous works, "Two Old Women" and "Bird Girl & the Man Who Followed the Sun," deal with traditional stories told by the Gwich'in people of Fort Yukon. Her latest, "Raising Ourselves: A Gwich'in Coming of Age Story from the Yukon River" is an autobiographical account of her growing up in Fort Yukon, Alaska. The book offers a very open and candid look inside not only the community of Fort Yukon, but also into the intimacies of her immediate and extended families.

For thousands of years, the Gwich'in people lived semi-nomadically along the Yukon, Porcupine and Black rivers until, within the course of two generations, they found themselves settled into a static community surrounded by evidence of modern day life. Wallis represents this "lost generation" caught between wanting to move forward into the modern world and yet yearning to retain the traditional ways of hunting, trapping and other forms of traditional knowledge. Through her, an outsider can see the struggle within the village and it's people as they are forced to adapt and evolve to the new ways.

The major issue that strikes the reader squarely between the eyes is the epidemic of alcoholism in Fort Yukon. It is not something that only affects the adult community, but as Wallis points out, teenagers and even children in some cases. One paragraph in particular brings the issue home:

"After days of drinking and fighting came the slow, painful task of sobering up. My mother's swollen face would gradually heal. My father's face would go blank as if nothing had happened. That was an emptiness about our cabin as in the aftermath of war - a war no one had won." (p. 107)

As a result of her parents' almost continual drunkenness, Wallis and her siblings were forced to quite literally raise themselves as best they could. Relying on their ingenuity, and each other, she and her fourteen siblings managed to make it to adulthood (a fifteenth child had been killed in a tragic accident).

"Raising Ourselves: A Gwich'in coming of Age Story from the Yukon River" paints a fantastic story about growing up in bush Alaska. Descriptions of children cutting firewood, hauling water by the bucket from the river to the cabin, and even the family outhouse hold the reader's attention and keep the pages turning.

Wallis herself paints a picture of being a self-reliant, rebellious individual who, right from the start knew that she would have to take on the world on it's own terms. Somehow she managed to avoid many of the pitfalls through her own tenacity, and win. In the end, the book is obviously an attempt to deal with not only her past but that of her people as well, to begin the process of breaking away from the demons and healing the wounds of alcoholism.


Rating:
Summary: Sad, but true.....
Review: This story reminded me of my own growing-up years, not in Alaska, but on a reservation, nevertheless. It is a powerful book and reminds me of the strength our people have to survive, despite the odds, and interference of another culture. Velma, thanks for sharing in an honest and sensitive way, and letting us know we were not alone.

Rating:
Summary: An unbelievable glimpse into Arctic living
Review: Velma, once again thank you so much for having the courage to bring your stories to paper. I bought this book because of my love for the Gwich'in people. I knew about the sustinance living and the tents with the stoves, the hunting, the alcoholism and various other things, but this book puts everything I had heard, and more, into the perspective of a complete picture. You get the feeling you know the people involved because she has described her entire family in detail. Drawing us in so close to her inner world, she gives us the sense that we are experiencing a Gwich'in childhood in the village with her. In addition, the tragic stories of the liquor problems in Fort Yukon are heartbreaking. I now have a better understanding why some villages chose to go "dry."
Mostly, Velma's story left me with the lesson: that we all have dysfunctional families in one way or another, and as much as you can love them, sometimes you just have to face that you can't change them. But what you do have the power to do is to look in your heart for what makes you happy and follow your dreams and live out your potential. Only you can do that for yourself. And all you can do for your family really, is to just love them.

Rating:
Summary: An unbelievable glimpse into Arctic living
Review: Velma, once again thank you so much for having the courage to bring your stories to paper. I bought this book because of my love for the Gwich'in people. I knew about the sustinance living and the tents with the stoves, the hunting, the alcoholism and various other things, but this book puts everything I had heard, and more, into the perspective of a complete picture. You get the feeling you know the people involved because she has described her entire family in detail. Drawing us in so close to her inner world, she gives us the sense that we are experiencing a Gwich'in childhood in the village with her. In addition, the tragic stories of the liquor problems in Fort Yukon are heartbreaking. I now have a better understanding why some villages chose to go "dry."
Mostly, Velma's story left me with the lesson: that we all have dysfunctional families in one way or another, and as much as you can love them, sometimes you just have to face that you can't change them. But what you do have the power to do is to look in your heart for what makes you happy and follow your dreams and live out your potential. Only you can do that for yourself. And all you can do for your family really, is to just love them.