Monday, June 10, 2013 at 11:53PM ;)
"We dance to wipe the tears away." So said drummer, singer and Tanana Chiefs Conference President Jerry
Sunday, June 9, 2013 at 10:16PM 
The potlatch for Katie John ended in Mentasta this morning just a few minutes before 4:00 AM and I took this picture from my car shortly afterward. The food, phone, gas, lodging referred to is the Mentasta Lodge, about nine miles from the village and it is where I spent Friday night.
I hadn't intended to. I had made no lodging arrangements at all. I had just figured I would show up in the village and something would work out. I have done this sort of things many times and it always has. However, I had gotten almost no sleep the night before I left home and I was exhausted, fighting the need to sleep, from the beginning of the drive to the end.
When I reached the lodge, I thought, "well, I'm sure there will be no vacancies but I really do need to get some decent sleep and I might not if I wind up on someone's floor or couch and stay up all night visiting." So I stopped. "No, no vacancies," the woman informed me. "There is a big potlatch going on in the village."
So I headed back to the car, but just as I closed the door, the woman came running out. Someone had just called to cancel. So I paid $74.00 for a tiny but comfortable room in a log cabin and then headed into the village where a traditional dance was taking place ahead of the funeral. I returned to the lodge about midnight, shortly after the dancing ended and then got what for me was a pretty decent sleep.
Good thing! I would not sleep again for 28 hours.
I had told myself I would leave Mentasta at 10:00 PM Saturday night, no matter what was happening at the potlatch, as I would already have a lot more pictures than I would know what to do with. If I left at 10:00, I could be home somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00 AM, could sleep for five or six hours, then get up and post all the back-logged Katie John stories I have been working on by midnight or so Sunday night and then go back to bed, get up Monday morning, drive Margie to Anchorage to resume her babysitting duties, come back to Wasilla, do a quick edit of the funeral and potlatch and make a post by Monday night.
But come 10:00 PM at the potlatch, the singing was beautiful, the drumbeat strong, the dancing full of spirt and energy. There was no way I was going to leave - not until everything was done, not until the gifts had been given, the rifles danced with.
It was all so beautiful. Yes, there was bitter sadness, but Dr. Katie John had lived a great, good, generous and loving life. The greatness and goodness she had cultivated in nearly a century of life now manifest itself at her death in a great outpouring of love and beauty, wonderful to witness and experience.
So now it was 4:00 AM. It was all over. I was headed toward home. I now planned to get there as fast as I could, take a two to three hour nap, then get up, get to work and still carry out my plan.
Well.
I got home about 10:30. I didn't want to go to bed because I feared I might fall asleep for a long time if I did. So, about noon, I laid down in the living room on the recliner Jacob and Lavina gifted me following my surgery, almost one year ago. News programs and talkshows were on the TV. A lot of people are pretty excited about how the NSA has been scooping up the metadata of all the citizen phone calls they can get into their data banks.
I closed my eyes, thinking I would open them again in two hours and get to work.
But once I closed my eyes, I could not open them. To say I fell into a deep sleep would be an overstatement. It is hard to fall into a deep sleep when a cat keeps walking back and forth across you, sometimes stepping on areas made tender by the aftermath of surgery that went awry, or upon male parts.
Still, I was so tired I could not open my eyes or get up for four-and-half hours. There were segments of time when I fell into solid, blessed, sleep. I wanted to sleep forever.
When I did get up, even though it was very late afternoon, I had to have bacon, eggs, hash browns and coffee. So I took Margie and went out and got some while she ordered dinner. Abby's does not do breakfast in the afternoon, so I went Mat-Su Family Restaurant and it was quite delicious.
After I returned, I started my picture download. I had filled four-and-half 32 gigabyte flash cards and, as I interspesed the downloads with a good long walk and a few other things, I did not finish the download until the current hour.
Sunday is nearly over now. Despite my good nap on the recliner, right now I function in a bit of a daze. So this picture and this probably nearly incomprehensible written excuse is all I am going to post tonight.
I could literally spend a full week editing and working up a good couple of posts on just the funeral and potlatch. That is what I would like to do, but I know Katie had so many friends and admirers all over who would like to see it. Plus, if I am to continue making a living, I've got to move on and get back to my paying work. So I will do a funeral/potlatch post tomorrow, then figure out how to work in the other related material.
Index to full series. * Designates the main, story-telling, posts:
Friday, June 7, 2013 at 9:00PM 
I stayed up very late last night - or rather until early this morning - determined to get this project together and organized enough to allow me put up all my posts in this series on Katie John in time to leave for Mentasta and arrive there before midnight tonight. I planned to schedule the posts to come out sporadically from now into Sunday, by which time I would be home from the funeral.
I had a total of five stories left to post, the first two of which would require a substantial number of words. The remaining three would need just a few words to set the context for the pictures.
I did in, fact, post all the images for the first stories in draft form but without the text. I figured it would take me a few hours to construct the text for each and then I could do the remaining posts fairly quickly and leave for Mentasta.
When I got up a few hours after going to bed, I realized it wasn't going to work. My brain was not up to working with all those words at high speed. The tires on the Ford Escape were practically bald, needed to be replaced and so did the transmission fluid. Margie had scheduled all this for yesterday, but when I showed up to get it done, the mechanic who was supposed to do it hadn't come in. We had to reschedule for today.
Plus, there are a number of other things I need to do before I leave. Right now, it is 11:00 AM but I will schedule this post to appear tonight at 9:00 PM. By then, I should be drawing close to Mentasta. Maybe I will even be there, but I doubt it. It is a five hour drive. It used to take me two hours in the Running Dog.
After I return, I will complete all the posts I have planned for the series, but I will not rush myself. I will miss the immediacy of having posted before Katie's funeral, but this blog is not a news operation. Hopefully, I will create something with value that will last, a site interested people can find their way to for years, perhaps decades, to learn or remember.
The above picture is an outtake from the second of the two draft posts I had uploaded the pictures to. I took it on July 15, 2001, shortly after Governor Knowles arrived with Katie at Batzulnetas and went to see her fishwheel at the place where Tanada Creek flows into the Copper River. This is the place she had fought so hard to assert her right to fish at - just as her father and ancestors before had done.
Now, she faced one more potential obstacle that could remove her legal right under US and Alaska law - but never under Indian law. Governor Knowles could appeal to the US Supreme Court on behalf of the State of Alaska. Were he to do so and win, Katie would have no guaranteed legal right to fish at this place anymore.
When the governor arrived, there were two salmon in the box. He climbed down and plucked this one out. The story of how Governor Knowles would lose a fish for Katie and in so doing hand her a victory that would uphold the right of her, her family, Native and rural subistence fishers across this state to fish, hopefully forever, should follow three posts from now.
Index to full series. * Designates the main, story-telling, posts:
Thursday, June 6, 2013 at 11:02PM ;)
During a birch bark class, Gary Galbreath, who just made a canoe, needs a little reassurance, and is about to get it.
In July of 1999, I had a contract with the Rural Alaska Community Action Program (RurAL CAP) to produce Alaska's Village Voices, a tabloid newspaper. Katie John was doing legal battle with the State of Alaska over her right to fish at Batzulnetas, where her family had long fished and had never agreed to give up the right. She was also hosting a culture camp for young people, mostly Ahtna Athabascan but at least one transplanted Iñupiat, too.
I traveled there, took a few pictures and wrote a story. Here, as part of the series I am posting to commemorate the life and accomplishments of Dr. Katie John, is the story, along with some of the pictures:
Although the sun shines brightly on the many-colored tents pitched alongside Tanada Creek at Batzulnetas Camp, the light is dim back in the woods where Katie John kneels on the forest floor with her teenage granddaughter. Mosquitoes buzz about in suffocating numbers, biting at every opportunity. Katie pays these whining pests no attention as she and Angie David busily dig about under the moss with their bare hands, find the spruce roots they are looking for, yank them from the ground and roll them into neat coils.
These will be the threads Angie and other Ahtna Athabascan young people will use to stitch carefully cut sheets of birch bark into baskets and miniature canoes.
Throughout Alaska, Katie John, matriarch of five generations of Ahtna people, is known for her successful legal fight against the United States and the State of Alaska. She fought because she wanted to do what she had done as a child with her parents and siblings – namely, to catch salmon at her childhood home of Batzulnetas. As a result of her victory, the federal government took over the management of fish and game from the State of Alaska in October of 1999, after the Legislature refused to allow Alaskans the opportunity to vote on an amendment to the State constitution to bring it into compliance with a federal law that mandates a subsistence priority for Rural Alaskans.
;)
Moose being smoked as it waits for Katie's students to come and learn from it.
Today, in this peaceful, quiet setting, Katie John continues to fight – not for herself but for her grandchildren. “These young kids, they don’t know how we lived,” Katie explains after returning to camp. “They don’t get the chance to learn their own ways. They grow up different than we did, they learn different things, but not how we lived. It is pretty hard for our young people to get back to our ways. Pretty soon, all our ways are going to be gone. Us old people are going to pass on and there is going to be nothing left. There’ll be nothing. They don’t know their own Indian way of life, these young people. They’re just going to be lost, that’s all.”
This is what Katie is fighting for now - to teach the young people the knowledge that long sustained their ancestors living here in the shadows of the great, snowy, Wrangell Mountains. For one week each summer, Katie brings the youth of Mentasta to Batzulnetas, where they learn how to butcher moose, catch salmon in a fishwheel, cut fish, and construct birch bark baskets and canoes.
“When they grow up, they can look back and remember they see all these things at Batzulnetas,” Katie explains.
Angie sits down beside her grandmother. “This is a new experience for me. I’ve never pulled spruce roots before,” Angie says. Then she smiles at Katie. “Look, Grandma! I’m dirty!” Katie smiles back.
;)
Katie and granddaughter Angie David gather spruce roots.
In May of 1898, when Katie’s mother was young, the people of Batzulnetas had spent winter in the “upriver country” hunting moose. As they were returning, they came upon a white canvas tent pitched at the bottom of a hill. There, they met a man with hair so red that it looked as if he were wearing a red fox-skin hat. The red-headed man gathered up a handful of spruce needles, dropped them to the ground, then pointed to himself. The Ahtna took this to mean that many white people were coming into their country. The red-headed man then invited them to sit, brought out sacks of flour and ate bread with them.
The Alaska Gold Rush had begun.
Katie checks out spruce root braiding of one of her campers.
On October 15, 1915, as recorded by a white trader, Katie became the eighth of ten children born to Charlie and Sarah Sanford. She recalls her childhood life at Batzulnetas as a good one. Her people lived free, unbridled by western law. “We catch all the fish we need. Nobody tell us how many fish we can catch.”
At the end of fishing season, the Sanford family would travel elsewhere in the country. In the mountains they would catch sheep, and in the places where they were abundant, caribou and moose.
;)
Campers cut a moose head, which will be cooked for dinner.
“In the springtime, we come back here, build our bridge, set up our fish trap. It was lots of work in those days; we work all the time. I like it better. It’s a better life than today. Today, you got to use a car. Anyplace you step out on the land, you got to use sno-go. In those days, we walk, walk, walk, and travel with dogs. We don’t stay in one place. We catch fish, moose, any kind of game – sometimes rabbit, sometimes porcupine. We catch caribou. We wait until they get fat, until they are in good shape. It is all clean game. We live by the land. Nobody tell us, ‘don’t do this, don’t do that.’ Anything we want to do, we do it. We don’t need someone’s law to tell us. We Indians have our own law. Our law is strong. We take care of the animals ourselves. When an animal gets a baby, we don’t bother it.
“We care for the animals, we have to make sure they are in good shape. Sometimes we burn the brush. We make everything new, all new grass for the animals to eat.
“My old days, I like better!”
Gene Henry also grew up at Batzulnetas. At the time, he came every summer to help out at camp.
Katie’s education was all on the land. “I never see one day of school,” she recalls. “I don’t know English words, nothing. When I was 15 years old I never talk one word of English. At 15, I go to work at a mining camp. I clean house, I pick up clothes, I wash clothes, but I don’t know how to get paid.” She soon learned that washing one pair of pants, or one shirt, would bring her 25 cents. She did this on a washboard, but didn’t mind.
“It was easy for me when I work for the whites,” Katie says. “I can’t understand when they talk, so I watch their hands. I learned.” In this way, with no formal instruction, Katie John picked up the English language, which, despite her protests that she can not understand “high English,” she uses quite well.
;)
Angie David cleans moose stomach.
By 1942, the Japanese had invaded and occupied parts of Alaska. In that year, Katie recalls, “the Army start up a road. They built a really good road in one summer.” The purpose of that road was to support the military in the fight against Japan, but it also opened up the country to large numbers of non-Native people – including those who recognized neither Indian law nor Indian knowledge.
It was on that road that the game warden who shut down her parents’ fish camp at Batzulnetas traveled.
;)
Camper washes bowl with water from Tanada Creek.
“After that law comes all kind of law,” she recalls. “Law, law, law! They tell us, ‘don’t do this… if you do this, you break the law, you go to jail.’ They make us scared. Sometimes we’re starving, we want to get meat, but we can’t; we’re scared. You know how I feel about law? Our people got a good law, right here, but they don’t see our law.”
;)
Emma Northway leads a class in birch bark basketry.
Even as this was happening, Katie witnessed something which struck her as both strange and painful. Sport hunters followed the new road into her country. “They shoot a moose and take just the head. When we shoot a moose, we eat everything – even the head, the hoofs, the stomach… everything. We don’t want to see any waste. We take everything but the horns. All they take is the horns, then leave the rest to waste. They just want to shoot an animal. To see this… it hurts.”
;)
Still, Katie had a life to live. She married Fred John, settled down in Mentasta and raised 26 children – 14 of her own and 12 adopted. A friend recalled stopping by Katie’s home to visit. “She was washing all those diapers by hand. She was feeding all those children and the house was clean. It was like an Army camp.”
Katie and Fred John raised their children on the food of the land – moose, caribou, sheep and, of course, salmon – but they had to go elsewhere to catch their fish. In 1964, Katie returned to reclaim the camp at Batzulnetas as a Native allotment, but when she tried to fish there, the State shut her down. The Federal government denied her allotment claim. The family then put a fishwheel in the Slana River.
“Then they make a law you can’t fish in that river either,” Katie recalls. “Crazy laws! They really get crazy with those laws!”
;)
Brittany Patrick doing bead work.
In 1960, the one-year old State of Alaska had closed the entire Copper River drainage system north of the village of Copper Center to salmon fishing. The State did this to insure plenty of salmon for commercial and sport fishers downstream and in Prince William Sound.
The closed area included all of the traditional fishing camps of Katie John and the Upper Ahtna people. Under Alaska law, the only place they could go to catch salmon was down to Chitina.
;)
Katie and her campers.
There, Katie saw tourists catch salmon, cut off the heads, strip out the insides and then discard both. “It makes me sick to see this. We eat the whole fish. They cut the fish and throw half of it in the river! It makes me sick. It hurts us! I don’t know how we hurt white people. I don’t know why they want to make us all outlaws.”
Just as her ancestors had fought for Batzulnetas, so too did Katie. She took the government to court and after a 12 year legal battle, received title to 80 acres at Batzulnetas, inside the boundaries of Wrangell/St. Elias National Park.
Yet near the place where Tanada Creek flows into the Copper River stood a sign: “No subsistence Fishing.” Although Katie’s ownership of Batzulnetas was now recognized, the State still would not let her fish there.
Katie could not understand this. She knew there were plenty of fish in the upper Copper and in Tanada Creek. She knew her people had caught those fish for untold centuries without ever threatening the species. Now people who did not know her country were telling her that if she fished to feed her family, she would endanger the entire salmon population. A game official told her that by the time the salmon which spawned in Tanada Creek reached her camp, they numbered only 2,000. If the population was to survive, each one of those 2,000 must be allowed to pass by and spawn upstream.
Katie’s own observations told her that at least 20,000 to 30,000 salmon came to Batzulnetas each year.
“He don’t believe us,” Katie recalls. “I tell him, ‘I know the country more better than you. You just think you know. I do know.’”
;)
Late in the evening, Katie finds some time to relax a bit.
In 1980, Congress passed ANILCA and with it the rural subsistence preference. In 1982, Alaska adopted a rural subsistence preference. Yet Katie was still prevented from fishing. Downstream, people flocked from the cities to dipnet at Chitina. Large commercial boats, many from Outside, plied Prince William Sound and hauled in huge catches of Copper River salmon. Whatever the law said about a “rural subsistence preference,” the State was giving sport and commercial fishermen a preference ahead of Katie John.
In 1984, Katie John again went to court – this time to force the State to obey its own law and not interfere with her right to fish at Batzulnetas. She went to the newly opened office of the Native American Rights Fund in Anchorage. There, she met a young Chippewa attorney, brand new to Alaska, by the name of Bob Anderson. In consultation with other attorneys such as NARF’s Lare Aschenbrenner and Bill Caldwell of Alaska Legal Services, Anderson began to research Katie’s case.
“When we read ANILCA, Title VIII, we concluded it must mean that before they can cut off a subsistence user such as Katie John, they must cut off other users first,” Anderson, who is now a consultant to the Alaska Federation of Natives, recalls. “Otherwise, why bother putting the words ‘rural preference’ in the law in the first place?”
NARF hired a biologist to study the fishery. He concluded it could easily support a subsistence operation at Batzulnetas and would not even dent commercial, sport or “personal use” fishing takes.
NARF took this information to the State of Alaska, hoping to cut a deal which would allow Katie to put up a fishwheel and avoid further litigation. The State would not consider it. “They managed everything for the downstream dipnet and commercial fishery,” Anderson says. The battle moved forward.
And so Katie John, a back country Athabascan Elder who had grown up with no formal western education, took on the most knowledgeable, educated and skilled men that the State of Alaska could produce – and she won. Her right to subsistence fish was upheld. Yet, in 1989, in the McDowell case, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the State’s “rural priority” violated the common use clause of Alaska’s constitution and thus was illegal. The State dropped the priority and fell out of compliance with ANILCA. As a result, the Federal government took over management of all game on federal lands. The feds denied that they had the responsibility to manage fisheries, claiming that even where they crossed federal lands, the waterways came under state jurisdiction.
Katie John disagreed. She sued to force the federal government to live up to its responsibilities under ANILCA, and to take over management in federal waters.
;)
Katie John hugs her grandson, Emmanuel Baker, at Tanada Creek on his seventh birthday.
Anderson feels the Alaska Native community could have sent no better warrior than Katie John out to do battle for them.
“Katie John is honest, sincere, really smart and knowledgeable. She really wasn’t interested in picking a fight. She is just a person, living up here, who wanted to live as she always had. She is the clearest case of what Congress had in mind in ANILCA. She has a huge family and has earned everyone’s respect. You can sit with her and she can point out on a map all the places she has used.”
Thanks to Katie John, this fishwheel turns on the Copper River at the village of Chistochina. With her is Bob Anderson, her original NARF attorney. Heather Kendall-Miller had now taken over that roll and would hold it through the remainder of Katie's life. No fish were harvested while I was at camp. In two more posts, fish will be harvested at Batzulnetas.
Judge Holland ruled in Katie’s favor. “The ruling was sweeping, extending all the way out to the three mile limit.” Anderson notes. In celebration, he joined Katie in taking down the “no subsistence fishing” sign. Yet, the fight was not over. The State appealed.
In 1994, the 9th Circuit Court upheld Holland’s ruling on slightly more narrow grounds. The State petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a reconsideration of the ruling, but was denied. The federal government had the responsibility to protect subsistence fishing on all waters flowing across federal lands.
Yet, five years later, the federal government has still not taken over management, thanks to the controversial series of moratoriums engineered through “riders” attached to Congressional spending bills by Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. Stevens wanted to give the State the opportunity to amend its Constitution and come into compliance with ANILCA. He did not want the State to lose jurisdiction. Despite polls showing the majority of Alaskans in favor of a rural priority, the legislators refused to allow any ballot measure amending the constitution to move forward.
By 1998, Senator Stevens expressed great frustration with the Alaska Legislature. He warned them that this was their last chance to comply, that there would be no more moratoriums in Congress and that if there was no amendment to bring Alaska into compliance with ANILCA, the consequences would be great. Stevens vowed he would not step in to prevent a federal takeover. The consequence to State management would be devastating, Stevens predicted. Bruce Babbitt, then Secretary of the Interior, warned that even if Stevens went back on this promise and squeezed another moratorium through Congress, he would recommend to President Clinton that he veto it.
Yet, with each moratorium, urban legislators opposing a rural preference became more convinced that in the long run they could overturn ANILCA, either in the Courts or through federal amendments. If they held out long enough, they believed, Clinton would be replaced by a Republican president who would not veto such an amendment.
Then, in a secret meeting closed to any Native participation, Babbitt and Stevens cut a deal for one more moratorium. The State of Alaska was given another year, until October 1, 1999, to put an amendment on the ballot. The State failed to do so and the feds took over management.
In the early days after winning her suit, the family of Katie John felt as if they were being subjected to extra scrutiny by game officials. One summer, Katie’s daughter Nora and her husband Charlie David used a rope and buoy to mark out a swimming hole for the kids in Tanada Creek. Soon, a helicopter landed, depositing an angry game official who demanded that they remove their “net” immediately.
While Katie would like to use a net, “just a ten foot net” she has fished only with a wheel. Even that has come under scrutiny. After posting the registration number prominently on the side, game officials landed at the camp and told the family to post it atop the fishwheel, so that it could more easily be read from passing planes.
Even with her court victories, Katie and her family still feel the loss. For the time span of a full generation, they were denied access to an important part of their life. During this time, they were unable to utilize Batzulnetas and the country of the upper Copper River for subsistence. They were unable to teach the young the skills they needed to know.
“We keep hearing about our victory,” says daughter Nora. “Tell me, what did we win?”
Today, Katie has established what seems to be a good relationship with the National Park Service. Park rangers have come to Katie’s summer camp and held classes with the kids. Once, they dissected “owl pellets” – which the birds cough up much as a cat coughs up a hairball – to see what the owls had been eating. The park service has helped clean up grave sites. It also issues a subsistence moose permit to the camp which assures that the children can learn how to prepare a freshly-killed moose without fear of being arrested by game officials.
Most significantly, the Park Service put up a nearby weir to count the number of salmon passing through Batzulnetas. The surveys took place during two dry years of low water and smaller than average salmon runs. Each time, the Park Service counted in the range of 30,000 fish.
Katie John had been right all along.
Index to full series. * Designates the main, story-telling, posts:
Wednesday, June 5, 2013 at 11:31PM ;)
Towards the end of the post I put up earlier today, just before I left to drive to town for the Anchorage memorial service for Dr. Katie John, I wrote something which folks who know me probably found almost impossible to believe:
"It's kind of odd, but right now I don't even feel like taking pictures there. I feel like I just want to go, sit, listen and quietly pay my respect."
I felt heavy inside. For many reasons.
After I arrived, I read these words in the program:
"Our Mother was a deeply traditional woman. The family asks that no photographs be taken of the casket and that people refrain from touching our Mother inside the casket. We apologize if this offends anyone but these are the wishes of our Mother."
I was not offended. I felt relieved.
I took a seat at the back beside my friend fisherman Bob Heinrich of Cordova, President of the Native Village of Eyak, thankful that I did not have to worry about it, that I could just sit, listen, think and feel. Still, I had to get at least one picture to document that on this day in this place, The Anchorage Baptist Temple, Katie John was honored and remembered by family and friends. Without moving from my position beside Bob, I composed the scene so the casket was blocked from view by the head of a woman who sat a row in front of me as Katie's face appeared on the monitor to the upper right and her son, Fred John, who stood at the podium, welcomed all who had come.
"It's hard to sit up here and talk," Fred stated. "It's pretty heavy on me and my family." What made it bearable, Fred said, was "The outpouring of love from people throughout Alaska and the Lower 48. It's been so awesome and been so overwhelming sometimes we just have sit down and shake our heads. I haven't fully grieved for my Mom yet. Sometimes I want to say it didnt happen. I'm still in denial. There's been so much outpouring of love for my Mom, to my family because of my Mom. I'm glad you're here to say goodbye to my Mom. She'd greet each one of you with a kiss and hug."
After the invocation by Eurare Kawe, Georgianna Lincoln delivered the eulogy, but first spoke of her personal reaction when she saw the headline and photo in the newspaper and read the story telling of Katie John's death. "A flood of emotions passed through me. First and foremost was grief - grief in losing a huge part of our Native family and the enormous void left in our native heritage and culture, for all Alaskans, FOR ALL ALASKANS... Then I smiled, thinking of Katie's huge, mischievous smile."
The officiating pastor was Yvonne Echohawk, one of Katie's adopted daughters. She spoke of her certainty that Katie is doing well on the other side, happy to be with her late husband, Fred John Sr., her mother, father, the siblings and children who preceded her in death and with Jesus.
Matt Hayashi sang a Special Song, I Will Rise. Former Governor Tony Knowles could not attend, but his statement was read. I might quote from it in my upcoming series. Congregational songs included How Great Thou Art and Victory in Jesus. Pastor Echohawk offered the closing prayer.
The casket was kept closed until after the service, then it was opened so all could pass by for the visitation. Katie was 97 years old, yet, when I stopped briefly, looked in, saw her face, the beauty and strength still manifest within, and thought of all the history and life she had lived through and witnessed after being born into a tiny community in the wilderness where few non-Native people had ever tread and English was a foreign language, how she raised her family totally on the food of the land and how ultimately, at an age when most people are content to be retired, took on the State of Alaska, demanded that the US government honor its obligation to protect her family and peoples' right to subsistence fish and hunt and how she now lay so still, I was overwhelmed by a level of emotion that surprised me.
I deeply felt the void Georgianna spoke of, yet recognized that in her over 250 descendants, spanning four generations, and in her legacy, Dr. Katie John will indeed live on, right here on earth. Her influence for good will be felt every day all across this state, Alaska.
Tomorrow, I will begin my little series recalling the events that led to her second victory. Then I will drive to Mentasta for her funeral.
Index to full series. * Designates the main, story-telling, posts:
