Raising Ourselves

Velma Wallis shares the love, loss, and struggle that mark her

coming of age in a two-room cabin at Fort Yukon, Alaska, where

she is born in 1960, the sixth of thirteen children. Family life is

defined by the business of survival: Haul water from the Yukon.

Kill a moose. Chop firewood. Feed the sled dogs staked around

the cabin. Run the trap line. Catch salmon. It is a time of innocence

and laughter, too, as the children escape into a world of

play under the midnight sun.

The once-migratory family ...