Born in 1960, the sixth of thirteen children, Wallis came of age in a two-room log cabin in remote Fort Yukon, above the Arctic Circle northeast of Fairbanks. She grew up in the raw, unsettled aftermath of a cultural invasion of her village on the Yukon River. From an early age, she begins to piece together an understanding of what happened to the Gwich’in people. For a thousand years, Gwich’in clans had followed migratory animals across the north, hunting them to survive. Two generations before, the people settled where the Porcupine River flows into the Yukon. In this new world, the Wallis family has a post office box and an account at the general store, and Velma listens to Wolf Man Jack on Armed Forces Radio. The drinking begins when the government checks come. |
