MARCY OKADA: Ok, so we’re here today at Charlie’s Hall in Eagle Village. My name is Marcy Okada, and I’m with the National Park Service, and it’s July 19, 2022. We’re also here with Karen Brewster with UAF Oral History Program. And we’re also here with -- we’ll be interviewing Bertha Ulvi and her sister, Ruth Ridley, today.

Um, so we’re going to start off with, um, the beginning. When you were born, where you were raised. And we -- as we start this interview, we encourage you to share as many stories as you would like to.

Um, it’s good we have both of you here today, so you guys can play off of each other.

KAREN BREWSTER: Because they’re -- we should say they’re sisters.

MARCY OKADA: Um, yes. Um, Ruth and Bertha are sisters, so --

KAREN BREWSTER: Um, and maybe Ruth and -- could you just say something so we know what your voice sounds like? And then we’ll ask Bertha -- so for the transcriber, they’ll know whose voice is which.

RUTH RIDLEY: I was born -- Ruth Ridley. I was born 1950.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. And Bertha.

BERTHA ULVI: My name is Bertha Ulvi. I was born August 7, 1944.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. Go ahead, Marcy.

MARCY OKADA: Ok, so we’re gonna start off with your personal background. Um, who your parents were, and who your other siblings are.

Where you were born, and where did you -- where you were raised. So maybe what we’ll do is we’ll have Bertha go first since she’s older, and then Ruth picks up afterwards.

BERTHA ULVI: My name again and -- ?

MARCY OKADA: Oh, or your parents, who your parents were.

BERTHA ULVI: Ok. My name is Bertha Ulvi. My parents were Susie and Louise Paul. And -- and my siblings are -- my oldest sister was Mary.

Their last name?
MARCY OKADA: Sure.
BERTHA ULVI: Mary Edmunds (sp?).

And my -- my next oldest brother was Matthew John. And my sister was Sarah Ann.

RUTH RIDLEY: (whispered) They’re deceased.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, they’re deceased, those -- those three. And my -- and then there was my sister Ethel, Ethel Beck. Then myself, Bertha.

Then my brother Anthony Paul, but he’s deceased, too. And my youngest sister Ruth Ridley.

And -- and when -- when I was born, my mom said I -- we moved to Snare Creek in 1944.

RUTH RIDLEY: (whisper) Coal.

BERTHA ULVI: Snare Creek first.

KAREN BREWSTER: You can -- you can talk, Ruth. You don’t have to whisper. Go ahead.

RUTH RIDLEY: Snare Creek would be back from Coal Creek.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. What do you mean by "back from?"

RUTH RIDLEY: Well, Coal Creek’s right there, and then Snare Creek is kinda, little ways --
KAREN BREWSTER: Inland?
RUTH RIDLEY: Towards Woodchopper.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. Marcy has the map to help.

RUTH RIDLEY: But they had, um -- they mined there, too.

KAREN BREWSTER: For me, who doesn’t know the area. There’s Coal Creek. And Woodchopper. But Snare Creek’s not on the map.

BERTHA ULVI: Well, Snare Creek was just like --
RUTH RIDLEY: Half an hour?

BERTHA ULVI: Snare Creek wasn’t a camp. That’s where we, as a family who moved down, lived there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: There was the Juneby family down there. David. And then our family.

So there was three family who lived there. And they all worked for Patty at the dredges.

RUTH RIDLEY: Ernest.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ernest Patty?
BERTHA ULVI: Yep. Ernest Patty, yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: I forgot his name, sorry.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

RUTH RIDLEY: And that’s where -- didn’t they say there was Patty’s cabin there. Their house used to be there --
BERTHA ULVI: No, not at Snare Creek.
RUTH RIDLEY: Right there by the road.

BERTHA ULVI: Not at Snare Creek, because ’member the camp was -- you were too small though --

Snare Creek, our house is there, and there’s a road that goes back there to Coal Creek.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: And that’s where the mess hall, where they feed all the people.

And then later on, while we were still living in that little, little place, they move -- they moved that Coal Creek past down -- past our place down the tailings where --
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: It’s standing right now.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. And did --

BERTHA ULVI: I mean, where it’s -- it is right now.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BERTHA ULVI: Because --

KAREN BREWSTER: So did Snare Creek run into the Yukon, or Snare Creek runs into Coal Creek?

BERTHA ULVI: Probably Snare Creek, we -- it’s just a little, little creek that runs into Coal Creek.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, because it’s -- it’s just a little set up where they -- they put all the workers like my dad, and Harry David, and Willie Juneby.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: And the -- all three families moved down.

MARCY OKADA: So you guys lived near each other?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.

MARCY OKADA: Ok. And you grew up with each other?
BERTHA ULVI: Yes.

MARCY OKADA: Ok. And you said you moved there in 1944, the year you were born?
BERTHA ULVI: Yes.

MARCY OKADA: And so you lived out there -- from --

BERTHA ULVI: Quite a while, 'til 1950, when --
RUTH RIDLEY: Eight.
KAREN BREWSTER: 1958, you said --

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, we -- when the school was going to start.

MARCY OKADA: So you guys moved in to go to school? Or --
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, I -- yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: What?

KAREN BREWSTER: You guys moved from Snare Creek back to --
RUTH RIDLEY: Eagle.
KAREN BREWSTER: -- Eagle to go to school?
RUTH RIDLEY: For them to go to school, yep.

KAREN BREWSTER: You weren’t old enough for school yet?
RUTH RIDLEY: Hm-mm.

BERTHA ULVI: No, she stayed -- Well, my mom had to move back up, too, but my dad stayed down there.

And all -- all the David kids and Juneby kids and us. We all had to move back up to -- back to the village down.

MARCY OKADA: Ok. So when you were out there growing up, what -- what were some of the things you were doing as a little kid?

BERTHA ULVI: Just play around with the -- with one another. You know, we -- we did things like -- I don’t know.

RUTH RIDLEY: Pick berries.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, we picked berries with, like, this elder guy Harry David, down the road. We’d pick lot of raspberries, which grows on the side of the road. Then with my dad and us, we picked blueberries and lowbush (cranberries).

And then when they go fishing, we’d go, too.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: In those creeks. In the --

RUTH RIDLEY: Grayling fishing.
BERTHA ULVI: -- tailing piles.
RUTH RIDLEY: Grayling fishing, yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, grayling fishing.

RUTH RIDLEY: We didn’t do no salmon fishing, huh?
BERTHA ULVI: Hm-mm. That’s way down at the river.

MARCY OKADA: Ok, so grayling. It was just with a pole?
BERTHA ULVI: Uh-huh. With just homemade fishing rod.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: With just the line and the hook.

KAREN BREWSTER: So people weren’t setting nets or fish wheels for salmon?
BERTHA ULVI: No. Huh-uh.

KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. Do you know why?
RUTH RIDLEY: In the creek?
KAREN BREWSTER: No, in --
BERTHA ULVI: In the tailing --

KAREN BREWSTER: In the Yukon.
BERTHA ULVI: See, you know how --
RUTH RIDLEY: We don’t have a boat.
BERTHA ULVI: -- the creek goes down, and some of the water gets stuck in the tailing --
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: And some way, there’s a lot of graylings in those.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, they get stranded?

BERTHA ULVI: They get stranded in there, and then they just multiply in there, and that’s where we get a lot of our graylings.
KAREN BREWSTER: Cool

RUTH RIDLEY: But we didn’t fish in the Yukon River.
KAREN BREWSTER: In the Yukon.
BERTHA ULVI: No.
RUTH RIDLEY: ’Cause we got no boat.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
RUTH RIDLEY: No boat around there. And, but we --

BERTHA ULVI: But that’s a long ways, too, from Snare Creek down to Slaven’s Cabin, huh?

RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, but later we even live in Slaven’s Cabin.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: When we went down.

KAREN BREWSTER: And people didn’t set nets on the river? On the Yukon? You had to have a boat?
BERTHA ULVI: No, they didn’t.
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: They don’t fool around like that. They just work at the mining camp. Like -- like they --
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

BERTHA ULVI: Like my dad and Harry, and Willie, they don’t -- They’re busy with --
RUTH RIDLEY: But they --
BERTHA ULVI: -- worked on a dredge.

RUTH RIDLEY: -- they hunt for moose, and I don’t know if caribou.

BERTHA ULVI: I never heard of caribou down there.

RUTH RIDLEY: Even when you were small?

BERTHA ULVI: Some, I thought they said. Around Snare Creek.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, up high.
BERTAH ULVI: On the side, yeah. But they got -- they get few like that.
KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

BERTHA ULVI: But those days, they don’t go buy their license and nothing.
RUTH RIDLEY: Go all over.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, like we could -- if we’re hungry, we get some porcupine.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.
RUTH RIDLEY: And there’s a lot of porcupine.

BERTHA ULVI: And beaver. We got a beaver pond if you get hungry. But we -- we don’t bother the beaver that much, because they’re so --

They’ll just carry wood right by you, huh, Ruth? Yeah, they get -- they get trees from up in the side, they -- and then they just go across the road right in front of you. They’re not scared’a you.
KAREN BREWSTER: No.
BERTHA ULVI: So we don’t want to shoot at them. My dad tell us, no. (inaudible)

MARCY OKADA: So your -- your dad, he would take off work and go moose hunting in the fall? Or you said whenever --
BERTHA ULVI: No.

RUTH RIDLEY: If they run into it, and then --

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, they don’t go hunting. Because see, we’re supplied by the -- by the company.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: You know, we get groceries and stuff like that from the -- from the camp. What my mom needs or Louise Juneby or Bessie. They get -- they go up there, and they go shopping. So what they get, it comes out of their husbands’ paycheck.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

RUTH RIDLEY: So they don’t try to do it much. Like when we go in summertime, back down there and then my mom takes, like, 50 pound of flour, like that and stuff. And then once in a while, we get like a roast or white man roast, you know, like that.

But one time my dad came back, he said, "Louise, there’s moose walking around." It was July, and there was a moose walking around the island down there. So my dad went one way, and my mom went the other way, and she got it.
KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

RUTH RIDLEY: And then they just put it, a little cache down there, and we go down there and make sure it doesn’t spoil and smoke it.

And, we were having nice moose meat.
KAREN BREWSTER: Mm. Yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: By ourself. Just our family. Nobody else was around.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So you would smoke the moose meat to preserve it?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, because that’s the way it -- it -- um, stayed from not --

KAREN BREWSTER: Spoiling?
RUTH RIDLEY: It won’t spoil. And we don’t have no freezer or ’frigerator or nothing like that.

KAREN BREWSTER: And did you use the hide?
BERTHA ULVI: No, I don’t think so.

RUTH RIDLEY: No. My old grandma, my mom’s mom, she was like a hundred-something. She used to just do the smoking of the hide. Not my mom. My mom knew a little bit, but not that much.

KAREN BREWSTER: And so, what was your father’s first name?
BERTHA ULVI: Susie.
KAREN BREWSTER: Susie?

MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm. Do you know how he got his name?
BERTHA ULVI: I don’t, actually.

RUTH RIDLEY: They said his name was Jose.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
RUTH RIDLEY: And then they finally -- then they call him an Indian, Jew-say. Those Indian. ’Cause he --

When him and my mom were going to get married in 19 -- he was like, 10 or 11 years older than Mom. And she was 16. And his parents didn’t like him marrying her.

And my grandma and grandpa, her mom and dad, didn’t like her marrying him. So his parents moved all the way to Old Crow. That’s where we have relatives.

BERTHA ULVI: That’s where Karma is, with all the relatives over there right now.

RUTH RIDLEY: And -- and our last name is Paul.
MARCY OKADA: Right.
RUTH RIDLEY: Like Susie Paul and Louise Paul.

But they even went to Old Crow and changed their name to Josie (sp?).

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh. But so, how did he spell Susie?
RUTH RIDLEY: S-U-S-I-E.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, just like the -- that’s interesting. Huh. That’s a good story.

So what did he -- he worked for -- for the mining camp at Coal Creek?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.

RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, he was a CAT operator. That big, big CAT. The 24 --

BERTHA ULVI: TD-24 is the name of that big CAT. He’s a stripper. He goes down, strip ahead of the dredge. All the trees and stuff like that, he’ll knock all that, and then the dredge will -- then the water come down, and that’s where the dredge goes.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. It’s interesting that growing up out there, you ate a lot of white man’s food because the company paid for it.

Did you eat traditional foods?

BERTHA ULVI: We -- we ate quite a bit of traditional food.

RUTH RIDLEY: We didn’t eat that white man food that much.
BERTHA ULVI: No, not that much.

I mean, we -- we eat a lot of grayling, and like, every -- like every night, he -- he takes us for a ride and we get porcupine.
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: And we loved --

RUTH RIDLEY: Are you talking about when -- when I was there growing up or way back?

BERTHA ULVI: Even though you were growing up there?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: This was before Ruth was born?
RUTH RIDLEY: No.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: I don’t know. Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. That was before Ruth was born. I don’t know that much myself because I was born ’44, and I was just a baby.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

RUTH RIDLEY: But I think, you know, like if we got meat, the meat was expensive.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: To get from --

And that’s probably all we ever got from them, because Mom took her yeast and powder to make biscuits and stuff like that, and we didn’t have no garden down there.
BERTHA ULVI: Hm-mm.
RUTH RIDLEY: And so we didn’t -- we probably didn’t each that much vegetables, huh.
KAREN BREWSTER: Lots of berries.

MARCY OKADA: So when you picked those berries, did you store them?
RUTH RIDLEY: Huh?

BERTHA ULVI: My mom is the one that makes a lot of jelly.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: And around the camp down there, too, they always just leave stuff like jars and stuff like that.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: But not the modern kind like now. But after she wash it, she put the jelly in there, and then you put that wax on top.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: That’s how she’d do all, and then she brings it back -- back to Eagle, too, what we pick for her.

MARCY OKADA: Hm. How -- how were you guys preparing the porcupine you were catching?
RUTH RIDLEY: Boiling it.
BERTHA ULVI: Dad --
RUTH RIDLEY: Singe it, then boil it.
BERTHA ULVI: My dad singe it first.
MARCY OKADA: Ok. And then boil it.

You guys were eating the tails, too?
BERTHA ULVI: Everything.
MARCY OKADA: Mm.

BERTHA ULVI: After you singe it, it just tastes good.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: And we used to have --

BERTHA ULVI: But don’t eat the tail. It'll make you mean. (laughter) They say that about porcupine tail.
RUTH RIDLEY: We used to have a --

KAREN BREWSTER: It’s all the quills.

RUTH RIDLEY: We used to have a guy from Circle. He had a big, uh, he had a boat with a big -- whatever they call it.
BERTHA ULVI: Brainstorm?

RUTH RIDLEY: Barge. Barge in the front.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: That way he could bring in, um, dredge parts or CAT parts, you know.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
RUTH RIDLEY: ’Cause it’s heavy.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

RUTH RIDLEY: But he used to come up, I don’t know how many times a week. But he come up and go over to Coal Creek, or he always stay with us or come visit us.

I don’t know if they had him do any grocery shopping before he come up, but.

BERTHA ULVI: I don’t know that. You mean Bill Strack (sp?)?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: I don’t know about that, but he always bringed a bunch of stuff from Circle, you know.

KAREN BREWSTER: What was his last name?
BERTHA ULVI: Bill Strack. He used to run that Brainstorm. It’s a big freighting barge and stuff like that.
RUTH RIDLEY: It wasn’t a Brainstorm. That Brainstorm is owned by another company that come on th -- from Canada, I thought.
BERTHA ULVI: Oh.
KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

MARCY OKADA: Any other foods you remember? Any other fish besides grayling?
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-mm.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm. We didn’t -- we didn’t catch no rabbits or anything like that.
MARCY OKADA: Ptarmigan? Grouse?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
MARCY OKADA: No?

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, you were only out there in the summer ti -- no, when you first went to, um, live out there --

BERTHA ULVI: When we first went down there, to tell you the truth, I don’t -- I think we came back up, but there, too, that --

I was born, and I was -- they say I was like one year old. I always remember calling my brother. And he had -- he got meningitis. He died.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.
BERTHA ULVI: In Fort Yukon.

My mom took me as a baby, and she took him down to Fort Yukon to the hospital.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: But he died down there.

KAREN BREWSTER: That’s too bad.

RUTH RIDLEY: But we came -- must’ve come back because ’member that time when you --
BERTHA ULVI: You weren’t even born.

RUTH RIDLEY: ’Member that time when your face got burned by the kerosene lamp? Were we waiting for -- or you guys were waiting for the airplane?

BERTHA ULVI: I don’t -- I don’t think so. I know we came back up with Horace. He came down, got us with his boat, with the Junebys.

RUTH RIDLEY: That’s our -- Oh, I don’t know that.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, that was quite a while ago. There was just, like, few of us kids. Like -- like, for instance, that’s my oldest sister, and Matthew John, and Ethel, and myself, and Tony.
KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: I think that we were just with my mom and dad. And certain -- like, Junebys, too, they had a big family, but there’s just Charley, Isaac, Sara, Adeline, Johnnie. Five of them. And Bessie had Danny and Shirley, and Greek (sp?), yeah? Three of them, that’s all.

KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. So did you live year-round at Snare Creek?

BERTHA ULVI: No, not that I know. But before -- after that, well, let me think.

Like that time we had to come back up, and we spent time up here after the -- after the camp closed down in October, we -- we all come back up.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: Even my dad and, them. But later on, when -- when that -- they need wood to run that dredge and stuff like that, they'd keep back some of the guys and my dad happened to be one of them, to cut wood.

RUTH RIDLEY: For the -- that’s for the steamboat.

BERTHA ULVI: Oh, something. I think. I thought it was for Patty when Dad was cutting wood for him.

KAREN BREWSTER: And so, he cut that wood in the winter?

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, we had to stay in wood camp that time. That’s when she was born, but she was just a baby that time.

RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, I think Mom said she even had to cut wood for that steamboat. You know, it’d stop in --
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, her and dad.
RUTH RIDLEY: -- Coal Creek, too.

KAREN BREWSTER: So there was a -- a wood camp at Coal Creek?
BERTHA ULVI: Woodchopper.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wood -- Oh, that’s why the name. Ok.

MARCY OKADA: Do you remember, you know, the -- was it a cabin you lived in when you were little? When you guys were out at camp, like --?

BERTHA ULVI: Snare Creek?
MARCY OKADA: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: I could -- we could still see part of that cabin down there.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: I made a trip up there when my ex-husband was working for Park Service. Dana (Ulvi).
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: So I went up there in -- it -- those days, I thought it was a big cabin. Now it’s just small. But then there’s just like two logs that’s all showing. They -- they tore down the rest.

MARCY OKADA: Hm. Ok. Who built that?
BERTHA ULVI: I don’t know. Maybe some miners down there or something.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

RUTH RIDLEY: I know we even had some miners living around, too.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, around us down there. There’s a lot of old people that grows garden.

Like just Adamik (sp?). And George MacGregor. And what’s that other guy’s name? Phil Berail?
MARCY OKADA: Oh.
RUTH RIDLEY: Oh, yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, he’s got a -- he works down there for a long time, too, so when we went down there, they -- they named those cabins after our dad.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm. At Coal Creek?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. Coal Creek. Did you see that?
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, that’s -- were you down there when it -- we were doing that?

MARCY OKADA: No, but they’re -- they're -- like you said, there was -- you guys had a ceremony.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
MARCY OKADA: And, um --

BERTHA ULVI: We stand in front of, like, my dad’s.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: They made this post office my dad’s cabin. When we were down there, you know, that was a post office. And then, you know Coal Creek, right?
MARCY OKADA: Yeah. Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: Ok, post office and then this cabin right here is where they -- they deal with the coal and stuff and the mess hall and all that -- all that buildings down the -- down that trail is all where people live. The mine, the workers.

RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, that big -- that cabin that’s big and the toilet that’s right there in that cabin. That’s where we slept. That was our sleeping place.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

RUTH RIDLEY: And then down farther there was another cabin, and that was -- Mom used as a -- as a kitchen.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

RUTH RIDLEY: And she cooked there and baked there and stuff like that.

MARCY OKADA: So your dad was off at work. Your mom was baking and cooking. Did -- did you folks have any chores as you got older or --?

BERTHA ULVI: Oh, yes. We got chores. But my mom didn’t bake there.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: ’Member? We had to go to, uh, down to the river to -- there’s that big, uh, wood stove. She always make so much bread before, and then we walk back up to the camp with her.

MARCY OKADA: So that wood stove was on the -- on the Yukon River?
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, at Slaven’s Cabin.
MARCY OKADA: Slaven’s Cabin. Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, they had, I don’t know. I don’t see it in there no more. I don’t know what happened to it. Or maybe it’s in there, but it don’t work.

RUTH RIDLEY: And you had to watch when you walked. There used to be a road down, but then when we were down there, it’s like all that -- what they call it? All that ice melted, and ah, man, the --
BERTHA ULVI: Permafrost.

RUTH RIDLEY: Permafrost. Big holes. You couldn’t walk on those. You had to walk on the side.
KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.
RUTH RIDLEY: And it was deep holes, too.

KAREN BREWSTER: When did that happen?

RUTH RIDLEY: When we were down there. We didn’t -- it didn’t happen then. It probably happened before.

BERTHA ULVI: We take off, like early in the morning with her. She carries a gun. And we just go down there and get her wood. And she’ll -- she'll bake there.

Then my dad was not too far from there, coming down with a CAT, so we have lunch down there with him. And sometime the boss come with him.

KAREN BREWSTER: And so what kind of chores did you guys have to do as kids?

RUTH RIDLEY: We just played and played.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.

MARCY OKADA: But you’re the youngest, so -- But did the older kids have chores?

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, but like, if she wants fish for supper, my brother and I will go -- go down that -- down the tailing through the creeks and get her grayling.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, but she gets like potatoes and stuff like that, uh? From the camp.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: From Woodchopper. That’s an active one, then.

That dredge was working on that site.

RUTH RIDLEY: And up here, my grandpa and grandma had a fish camp, so we were down there. So they sent us fish.

And then they sent the company fish, too, to serve to --
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
RUTH RIDLEY: -- the workers down there.
MARCY OKADA: So that was -- that's --

RUTH RIDLEY: They’d buy fish from my grandpa, yeah.

MARCY OKADA: And who were your grandparents?
BERTHA ULVI: And they always said--

MARCY OKADA: Oh, sorry. Who were your grandparents?

RUTH RIDLEY: Joe Malcolm and Eliza. That was my mom’s mom and dad.

BERTHA ULVI: But they always sent us, like a care package with a bunch of good st --
RUTH RIDLEY: Like candy. And pop.

And cigarette for my mom and dad. Or did they have cigarette for --?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, they had cigarette.

RUTH RIDLEY: And they had, like, um, big chocolate candy, the chocolate --
KAREN BREWSTER: Chocolate bars.
BERTHA ULVI: Hershey.

KAREN BREWSTER: Hershey’s chocolate bars?
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm. Big ones.

BERTHA ULVI: At the post office, they sell that, so we could get some candy. And then --
RUTH RIDLEY: And we --
BERTHA ULVI: They’ll get us big bag of oranges.

RUTH RIDLEY: And we live in Coal Creek, so we go over to Woodchopper on Friday, and they have a movie.
KAREN BREWSTER: Mm.

RUTH RIDLEY: So we watch movie, and people that were on day shift come and watch it, too, but the night shift, they gotta be -- they have night shift, day shift on the --
BERTHA ULVI: On the dredge.
RUTH RIDLEY: Dredge, so --

And we used to go over there, when we go to Woodchopper. We’d go around and visit all these guys. All these old guys.

And they keep their cookie or whatever from their lunch box. Or orange or apple for us.

MARCY OKADA: And do you remember ever having to haul water or get anything? Like you said, you got the wood.

BERTHA ULVI: We just used that creek water.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. We -- we packed water. Lke my brother, he’d pack water for my mom.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: Just right there.

MARCY OKADA: Get wood for her to bake -- bake in that wood stove? She was baking in that wood stove, and --
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
MARCY OKADA: Like you said, he would go and --

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, there’s a lot of wood down there, too, because that company, it -- it take care of the staff that was down there.

MARCY OKADA: Um, how would your mom prepare the grayling?

BERTHA ULVI: She cleans it, and then she scale it. And then she bake it with corn meal.
RUTH RIDLEY: Fry.

BERTHA ULVI: Fry it. She fried on stove.

KAREN BREWSTER: Fried it. That’s good, fried grayling, huh?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Good food?

BERTHA ULVI: Put it in corn meal, make it crunchy.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, instead of flour, you put it in corn meal?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. I put it in corn --
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.
BERTHA ULVI: -- meal. I --

KAREN BREWSTER: So do you still get grayling around here?

BERTHA ULVI: They do, but nobody seem to go fishing.

RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, we used to all go way out the road, go fishing. Some old guy from Germany, he used to take us all out for picnic and -- but they don’t even do that no more.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-mm.

MARCY OKADA: Were there games you kids would play, or any special celebrations or occasion? Of course, when you had a birthday, or do you just remember?

BERTHA ULVI: No, we didn’t have no games or nothing. We just played like house.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: And you get old -- old stuff like you’ll find, and you know, like playing house.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm. Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: But we play with, just like, lids for pans and stuff like that. But we never did have any toys.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Did you have dolls?

BERTHA ULVI: Only time we had doll is when she had -- when they -- this, you know, Red Cross. They -- they sent us bunch of stuff for Christmas.
KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

BERTHA ULVI: And on -- they fixed this little box for us, and we, you know, they’ll give you crayons and coloring books and pencils, papers, all that, you know. We play with those later on, but to begin with, you don’t have nothing.

RUTH RIDLEY: But we had movies, you know. See movies, and we always like -- we watched cowboys and Indians, and we don’t want to be Indian because they got killed. We rather be cowboys.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ah. That’s terrible. That’s terrible.

MARCY OKADA: Ah. Um, did you have -- always have a dog around, or --?
BERTHA ULVI: Yes, we had two dogs.

RUTH RIDLEY: We had dog teams.
MARCY OKADA: Ok. Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: When he was cutting wood, we had dog teams, and we just -- we all get in there and he’d take us up to the -- that guy caretaker, he was a caretaker, Lester Gingrich (sp?), his name. He’s a caretaker there at Woodchopper.

And we always visit him if we run out of food because there’s a lot of food that they store away. So they get some food from him, too.

MARCY OKADA: So dog team was used for transportation?

BERTHA ULVI: Uh-huh. He had like how many, three?
RUTH RIDLEY: What?
BERTHA ULVI: Four dogs?
KAREN BREWSTER: Your dad?
BERTHA ULVI: Uh-huh.
RUTH RIDLEY: Three, probably.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. But we all get to ride on when we were little -- little people.

KAREN BREWSTER: Did you learn how to run your own dog team?
BERTHA ULVI: No, we didn’t have no dogs.
RUTH RIDLEY: Hm-mm. It was important. It’s for the grownup to run them.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

RUTH RIDLEY: But one time, my mom and me and my nephew Harold and my sister --oldest sister Mary, we went to Woodchopper to stay with Dad. And Bert and them, they stayed up here in the village with my grandma and grandpa, Liza and Joe, ’cause it was too -- nobody want to stay down in Woodchopper by themself.

And my dad always had hard time hearing. So my mom always worry about him hearing, you know. They had big grizzlies around there. And so, we went down there 'til Christmas. Then we’d come back up with the airplane.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

RUTH RIDLEY: But they had a person caretaking in Woodchopper and one in Coal Creek because they had the little cabins that they put, like, food and stuff like that. Canned food that you have to build fire every day, so it don’t freeze like tha, too.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: You know what, I’m sorry to say, it’s five to twelve.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. Can we take a break? Can we come back after?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
(break for lunch)

MARCY OKADA: So we’re continuing this interview. My name is Marcy Okada. I’m with the National Park Service. We have Karen Brewster here from University of Alaska Fairbanks Oral History program. And --
BERTHA ULVI: Bertha.

MARCY OKADA: Bertha Ulvi and Ruth Ridley. We’re going to continue the interview this afternoon on July 19, 2022. Um.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MARCY OKADA: Trying to think where we left off. I know we were talking about whether you always had dogs around. You mentioned your dog had a -- your father had a dog team, about three to four dogs. You used those dogs to get around.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.

MARCY OKADA: Were they also used as pack dogs, or --?

BERTHA ULVI: No, just put ’em in a harness on the sled.

MARCY OKADA: Ok. Um, were they considered like family pets also?
BERTHA ULVI: Yes.

MARCY OKADA: Ok, so you grew up with dogs?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
MARCY OKADA: Always?

KAREN BREWSTER: Did you guys as kids have to help take care of the dogs?

BERTHA ULVI: Yes, we feed them for -- for my mom.
RUTH RIDLEY: That’s in Coal Creek?
BERTHA ULVI: Woodchopper.
RUTH RIDLEY: Oh.

KAREN BREWSTER: What did they feed the -- what did you feed the dogs?

BERTHA ULVI: My grandpa fish here, and he sent us dry fish for them.

MARCY OKADA: Ok. Um, you were also growing up with the kids from the Juneby and the David family. And was there a lot of, um, interaction and play time with -- with those kids?

BERTHA ULVI: We played all the time. Because there’s not much work for us after my oldest sister was there, so she did all the house work and for my mom.

RUTH RIDLEY: And their -- our oldest sister and the Juneby oldest daughter, they were just almost the same age, so they were little buddies. And Bert and one of the Juneby's --
BERTHA ULVI: Adeline.
RUTH RIDLEY: -- daughter, Adeline.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.

RUTH RIDLEY: They were little buddies.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: And Sarah and Ethel.

RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah. And Sarah Juneby and Ethel our sister, they were little buddies. They’re the same age, like. And they’re still the same little buddies.

MARCY OKADA: So growing up, you were speaking Han to each other? It was just mostly Han language in your --?
BERTHA ULVI: Down --
RUTH RIDLEY: What?

BERTHA ULVI: Mostly, like sometime, we -- we talk our language.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: When we were little kids.
MARCY OKADA: And your --

BERTHA ULVI: 'Til when we start going to school, we had to -- even grade school, we had to learn how to speak English.

MARCY OKADA: But out at Snare Creek, Woodchopper, you guys, when you were playing and growing up with your -- you know, your parents and those other families, were you speaking Han to each other out at Snare Creek?
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm. Yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: Yes.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

RUTH RIDLEY: Because our parents, they just talk -- talk Han with each other, so we had to understand, too.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: But mainly for us, our family, we had to speak our language a lot. We knew more because of my old grandma. She -- she don’t know how to speak English.
MARCY OKADA: Eliza?
BERTHA ULVI: Eliza.

RUTH RIDLEY: So we talk to her in Han, and she answer us back in Gwich’in, so that’s why we could understand Fort Yukon people, too.
MARCY OKADA: Oh.

KAREN BREWSTER: So she was Gwich’in?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

MARCY OKADA: Huh. So technically, you’re trilingual ’cause you were talking to Grandma in Gwich’in. Han to your parents.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
MARCY OKADA: And then English at school.

KAREN BREWSTER: Did your parents speak Gwich’in also?
BERTHA ULVI: Yes.
RUTH RIDLEY: They could speak it.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, Mom did.
KAREN BREWSTER: Your mom must have.
BERTHA ULVI: Hm, mm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, my dad, he was like a preacher, and when he goes to Fort Yukon, he’ll switch from Han to Gwich’in fast. Talking.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, hm.

MARCY OKADA: Hm. So your dad being a preacher, was he traveling around a lot for that?

RUTH RIDLEY: Just Fort Yukon and --
BERTHA ULVI: For training.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: He was just a lay reader. Like, lay reader, and he had service for us in the village.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: Those days there’s a lot of people in the village, but we lost so many people, you know, elders.
KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: And a lot of young people due to alcohol. But it’s -- it's -- there’s just who you see back there, not very many of us in the village right now.
MARCY OKADA: Mm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. So when you first grew up at Snare Creek, Bertha, before Ruth was born, you were out there in the winter time, too, or you came back to Eagle Village with your grandma in the winter?

BERTHA ULVI: We -- we come back. Like we all come back from Woodchopper. My dad used to cut wood here for elders.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: And stuff like that, too, down in the old village. He cut wood, and he takes good care of the old people.

KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. But so you always, even before you came in for school --

BERTHA ULVI: That’s not -- this is why I keep my name. It used to be Bertha Paul.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: I would like to make it back to Bertha Paul because that’s my family’s name.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right. Right.

But even when you were little before you guys had to come in for school, your family came back from Woodchopper?

BERTHA ULVI: Some. After she was born, then they stayed wintertime just once or twice.
RUTH RIDLEY: Just once, I think.

BERTHA ULVI: Oh yeah, just one time they stayed down Woodchopper for -- for the winter.

MARCY OKADA: How -- Do you remember that winter?
BERTHA ULVI: She remembers it.
RUTH RIDLEY: Me.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.

RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, it was just like my mom, my dad, and my sister Mary and my nephew Harold and me. We lived in that Woodchopper.

And then like my dad go build fire in that building that had little place that had canned food and stuff that would freeze.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: He was --

RUTH RIDLEY: And then on the other side in Coal Creek, there was, uh, my -- my mom’s first cousins. First cousin Pete and his brother-in-law, um.
BERTHA ULVI: Charlie Silas.
RUTH RIDLEY: Charlie Silas.

And they had to do that over there with the food that it don’t freeze. And some -- sometime they come over and visit us, probably to get their mail if any mails came for them.

KAREN BREWSTER: So your dad was like the winter caretaker --
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: -- for Woodchopper?

And he got paid by the company to do that?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: And Bertha, you were already in school here?

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, grade school. My -- my sister Ethel and my brother Tony and I. We stayed with Grandma.

RUTH RIDLEY: And they stayed with Grandma, so they had to understand what Grandma’s talking about.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: And Grandpa wasn’t around?
BERTHA ULVI: Oh, Grandpa is around.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, Grandpa used to tell us stories and stuff like that.

KAREN BREWSTER: So what -- what was life like in the winter? What -- what did you guys do?

BERTHA ULVI: We played with other kids. Like no TV, nothing like that in those days. So we just play outside all the time. But at the school, they have projector, and they have movies.

And, you know, kids, we slide down and everybody -- There was more kids those days, too. Like Micah (Malcolm), for instance, he was young like us, too, so --

KAREN BREWSTER: Did people run trap lines?

BERTHA ULVI: My grandpa did, long --
RUTH RIDLEY: Long time --

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, long time ago. When we were little, I remember Grandpa used to bring in marten and all kinds of -- we didn’t know where he getting all the stuff from, but that’s when they were trapping for that.

RUTH RIDLEY: Probably out the road and up that way, huh?
BERTHA ULVI: Up this way.
RUTH RIDLEY: And then up --
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, Eagle Creek.
RUTH RIDLEY: Into Canada.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, my old grandma, she’s from Black River, over around Fort McPherson.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: That -- And Grandpa met her in Fort McPherson. That’s where they got married.

KAREN BREWSTER: That’s a long way from here.

BERTHA ULVI: She was married before, and she had six kids from her first husband. And then there, with our grandpa on Mom’s side, there’s eleven of them.
KAREN BREWSTER: Phew.
BERTHA ULVI: I mean, five.
KAREN BREWSTER: So, eleven kids?

BERTHA ULVI: So she -- Grandma had eleven kids. And before Mom died, all her brothers and sisters are gone. Mom was the last one.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah.

RUTH RIDLEY: From that tuberculosis.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BERTHA ULVI: Lots of sickness those days, and they can’t go anywhere, so they just die off.

KAREN BREWSTER: But Fort McPh -- to travel to -- from here to Fort McPherson? Your grandfather was from here originally? Where was he from?

BERTHA ULVI: Fort McPherson --
RUTH RIDLEY: (inaudible)
BERTHA ULVI: -- that’s where they met each other.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: Because Grandma was from Black River.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right, but --
BERTHA ULVI: Someplace back --

KAREN BREWSTER: And your grandpa was from Fort McPherson or --?
BERTHA ULVI: Uh-huh.
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: So how did they end up coming here?

RUTH RIDLEY: Well, my mom always said that my grandpa said he had heard the school is diff -- better in United States than Canada, so that’s why they move here.

And it’s not only that, but it’s -- my grandpa Joe Malcolm and his brother.
BERTHA ULVI: Ed Malcolm.
RUTH RIDLEY: Ed Malcolm. And they had -- Ed had lots of kids, too, so they brought both families here. And that’s why we’re here.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So when -- time you guys were growing up, people weren’t running traplines anymore?
RUTH RIDLEY: Not really, huh?

BERTHA ULVI: Mm, they probably did, but not that much. Tony did a little bit, but -- my brother did a little bit, but not that much.

But after when the fur came back up, when I was married to my ex-husband, we go out trap -- trapline. I forgot what year, though, too. I forget those things.

KAREN BREWSTER: And where did you guys go?

BERTHA ULVI: Oh, we go -- we’ll go out Champion, out past that summit. You came through that summit?
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: We have to walk in there and quite a ways we walk, and this -- just a little cabin’s there, and we stay there, and he traps out of there.

And toward the last, we went down to this guy at the store. His dad had a mining camp. We went down to that mining camp. There’s a airport there, and he got a nice, big building, and there’s a lot of martens in there. So that’s where he was trapping for like two to three years there, and then he --

Now nobody traps around here.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right. ’Cause the prices are --
BERTHA ULVI: Not that good, I don’t think.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MARCY OKADA: Speaking of trapping and furs, um, did your mom do any skin sewing?

BERTHA ULVI: Yes. Mom -- she’s the one that taught us how to bead, do bead work and stuff like that.

MARCY OKADA: Ok. What -- what was she sewing?

BERTHA ULVI: Just like, moccasins. But Grandma was the main one. She always, every year, each of us get brand new boots.
MARCY OKADA: Mm.

BERTHA ULVI: But she don’t do beadwork that much. Maybe in her younger days, they said they did their --
MARCY OKADA: This is Grandma.

BERTHA ULVI: They didn’t have no beads, those days, but they used porcupine quills, and she said they -- they color it with some kind of red berries out there. And they find it some places, and they dye it, and that’s how they -- they were doing it.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

BERTHA ULVI: Not only her. A lot of people. I see it on her little bag. Remember those little mail bags --
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: -- she always hang by her bed?
MARCY OKADA: Huh.
BERTHA ULVI: I see that’s kind, but I to right now today, I won’t know where it is.

MARCY OKADA: But you learned -- you learned skin sewing and bead work from your mom?

BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm. That’s what we should be doing, her and I. We -- we say we gonna do something, and when we get together, it’s just like we want to play dice.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yahtzee.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yahtzee.
BERTHA ULVI: (laughs)

KAREN BREWSTER: So when you were growing up in the -- your mom and grandma were sewing, what were they making the boots out of?

BERTHA ULVI: Moose skin, because Grandma was just -- she could do, like, two moose skin in a summer.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BERTHA ULVI: By herself. But as kids, we -- we’d go and scrape on it, but, I tell you, that’s a lot of work. And how she could handle that herself.

RUTH RIDLEY: And she even smoked a caribou. That’s for string, you know.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
RUTH RIDLEY: Like that, so.

KAREN BREWSTER: So would she soak the moose hide first?

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, and then she used the brain, all that. We didn’t know. To right now today, if somebody told me, I wouldn’t know.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: But I know they used the brain. But that’s what Karma (Ulvi, Bertha's daughter) comes out. She -- she wants this -- a lady in someplace that want to come and show us how to do moose skin.

KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. So yeah, you would -- she would clean it and smoke it in the summertime, and then she’d have it to make -- do the sewing in the wintertime?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.

And she do, um, probably couple in the summertime, and they, her and grandpa, had fish camp, that camp right on the other side of Eagle Bluff. And they used to get like 600 salmon in morning, same at noon and same at six o’clock in the evening. Sometime they have to stop the fish wheel. It was too much fish.

And they even get people from the village to go down to their fish camp and cut. And then when they go home, Grandpa sent some salmon with them that’s cut and dry and all that.

BERTHA ULVI: We eat salmon three meals a day. And they would -- Mom, oh, when my dad come visit us down there, he’d buy meat so Mom cook us meat.

MARCY OKADA: So when your grandma was tanning the moose hide, was that used for jacket, or --?

BERTHA ULVI: No, just footwear.
MARCY OKADA: Footwear. Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: Slippers, and --

KAREN BREWSTER: You said boots.
BERTHA ULVI: Boots. Canvas boots.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: The long type and then the one that’s wrap around. Mostly the men wear those wintertime.

MARCY OKADA: The high ones? The ones that come up high on the leg?

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, those are the long boots. But the wrap around is just around your ankle.
MARCY OKADA: Ok. Ok.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, did she ever make jackets or vests or dresses or anything? From the moose hide?

RUTH RIDLEY: She only made one little jacket for my little nephew. Little, um, little coat --
KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.
RUTH RIDLEY: -- with the deal. And there was just tie, you know, to tie it up like that.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
RUTH RIDLEY: Harold.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.

RUTH RIDLEY: That’s all I remember. I never remember no --
BERTHA ULVI: Hm-mm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Hats, what about beaver hats or --?
BERTHA ULVI: Oh, yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: Oh, yeah. Beaver.
BERTHA ULVI: Oh, yeah. They’d make those, too.

MARCY OKADA: Hm. And -- and gloves, maybe?
BERTHA ULVI: She makes those big gloves.
MARCY OKADA: Oh, the big mitts?
BERTHA ULVI: Mitts.

KAREN BREWSTER: Out of beaver?
BERTHA ULVI: Out of moose hide with beaver around it.
RUTH RIDLEY: Or wolf.
KAREN BREWSTER: Or wolf, oh yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: So people would catch wolves?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, in their trapline, I think.

MARCY OKADA: There anything -- does anything stand out in your mind, you know, um, as we talk about these animals, um, any incidents, like that grizzly bear story, and -- You know, as you’re out there on Snare Creek, Woodchopper, anything you remember about unusual wolf activity or grizzly bears being around a lot?

BERTHA ULVI: Oh, yeah. We get a lot of bears come around in the camp, but they just --

One morning, my mom woke up, and my brother always get up and he always want to go outside to go bathroom. And by that warehouse, where they put all the groceries and everything, just like somebody just threw big tarp there.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

BERTHA ULVI: And then when she said that she look, and that grizzly bear was just moving its head with three cubs. All laying there, resting.

She don’t know what to do. She just told my brother, just shoot up in the air. And they went down toward the creek and up on the other side.

Good thing we didn’t go out there and she could’ve -- it’s just from here to your truck, probably. That far, they were laying down. That’s our sleeping cabin now.
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Was that a regular thing, that bears would come around?

BERTHA ULVI: They always around there because a lot of berries and stuff like that. That’s a plentiful place for berries.

RUTH RIDLEY: And we would come back from Woodchopper, we always -- Dad always go slow so we could see if anything was running away from our house, or --

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, there’s a lot of bears now. I don’t know. Because those days, they throw garbage, you know, from the camp. They throw it over. And there’s a lot of bears at that dump all the time, too.

KAREN BREWSTER: Grizzly bears, or black bears?

BERTHA ULVI: Black bears, mostly. But once in a while, you’ll see grizzly, too.

MARCY OKADA: Nowadays? You’re talking about nowadays, now? Or --
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. I don’t know now, because we’re not down there that --
MARCY OKADA: Oh.

BERTHA ULVI: We were just down there for that ceremony they had for our dad’s.
MARCY OKADA: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: But growing up out -- down there, were you instructed to look around for bears and be careful?

BERTHA ULVI: Yes, we’re -- we're always careful. Like him and I, we were -- he was like twelve years old, and I was two years older than him, but he always carried the gun.
KAREN BREWSTER: Your brother, Tony?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.

And we kinda watch where we go. We don’t separate. We fish by each other and stuff like that.

MARCY OKADA: Were there any -- I mean, were there any other rules that your parents --You know, you said you guys played a lot. You went out and played a lot outside. Were there any rules your parents told you?

BERTHA ULVI: Well, that’s when we were with the other family.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: That’s at the Snare Creek, when we were growing up. But we’re around the house where we know not to go too far.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. So -- so we’re always together and --

KAREN BREWSTER: Any other bear encounters?

RUTH RIDLEY: Hm-hm. Not that I know of. But I was, too, I was a baby --
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: -- when that grizzly --

KAREN BREWSTER: I -- I was wondering about gardening. ’Cause you had mentioned that, you know, down at Snare Creek and Woodchopper, you guys didn’t have a garden. But up here, did people have gardens when you were growing up?
BERTHA ULVI: Here in the village?
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: Oh, yes. She helped my mom all the time. Mom had big garden. Everybody in the village had garden.

RUTH RIDLEY: Everybody in the village. There was a teacher that was -- the year before -- probably when I was five years old ’cause I couldn’t go to school, but that teacher, he was here in first -- he went to town, or somebody, I don’t know, and that one guy gave them this big patch right in town for all the, um --
BERTHA ULVI: Students to --
RUTH RIDLEY: Huh?

BERTHA ULVI: The students -- they're like the Malcolm.
RUTH RIDLEY: Oh, yeah. That’s right.
BERTHA ULVI: David Juneby and the Paul family and --
RUTH RIDLEY: Everybody had --

BERTHA ULVI: We supposed to grow potatoes.

RUTH RIDLEY: Potatoes. And they grew potatoes. And -- and then one time, we had a, um, some kind of elder deal downtown, gathering, and they were having stories and stuff, and my mom said, "And we used to walk three miles down just to weed our garden and stuff. We didn’t know we had better dirt in the -- " (laughter)

BERTHA ULVI: In the village.
KAREN BREWSTER: You had better dirt up here?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, we had better soil up here.
KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.
RUTH RIDLEY: It’s like sand downtown.
KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, we didn’t live here.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: We went -- we lived down in our village. We don’t want to leave our village to come up here.

MARCY OKADA: Was that Mission Creek area?

BERTHA ULVI: No, it was -- you passed it. You see where --
MARCY OKADA: Oh.
BERTHA ULVI: Just --
MARCY OKADA: Oh, yes. After the flood.

BERTHA ULVI: The old village. It’s -- 2009, it flooded and took everything out of the --
MARCY OKADA: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: So that’s where we don’t want to move, because that’s where I was born and raised.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
MARCY OKADA: Yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: In Mom’s old cabin.

Most of us, like my sister Ethel, Mary, and -- not Tony and her. They were born in Fairbanks.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, that must’ve been hard to have to move up here into the trees.
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, we miss our -- across there all that bright mountain and then the river, you see all the drift -- people drifting down. And now you don’t -- you can’t see nothing.

RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, after we move up here, there were like 200 canoes that went down. We didn’t even know nothing about that.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, speaking of drift going down, do people collect wood from the rivers?

BERTHA ULVI: Yes, we used to. Yeah, we used to get wood after Dad -- my dad drowned in Fairbanks, like in November sometime. He went and took my oldest sister over and something happened.

But her (pointing to Ruth) and I, we were in high school in Oregon. So when they call for us, they found Dad there in April.
MARCY OKADA: Mm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, no.

BERTHA ULVI: So we -- they sent us home to be with Mom.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. How did people collect the wood from the river here?

BERTHA ULVI: Just with a big shrop (sp?).
RUTH RIDLEY: Just drag it up.

BERTHA ULVI: With a hook. Long, drag it with a hook and a -- We call it "shrop." (sp?)
RUTH RIDLEY: Uh-huh.
BERTHA ULVI: Anyway.
MARCY OKADA: And fun?

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. Shrop. We catch it with that, and then, like, if you catch a big one, you tie it and then the next one come, it gathers together and later on, it -- it dries on the beach. And then they pack it up.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: So when you’re using that "shun" (sp?) to get it, you’re standing on the, um, riverbank?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Or you’re in a boat?
BERTHA ULVI: No, just on the --

RUTH RIDLEY: On the river, down the bank.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. The beach or on the bank.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm. On the beach.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. And then they dry it up and use it for? What do you use it for?
BERTHA ULVI: Wood.
KAREN BREWSTER: Firewood?

BERTHA ULVI: Firewood, just in our stoves.
RUTH RIDLEY: The wood for smoking under the cache.

KAREN BREWSTER: What kind of trees would it be?
BERTHA ULVI: Spruce.

KAREN BREWSTER: Does it make good smoke for -- ? You smoke fish with it?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, it was dry, so it don’t taste like nothing.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

BERTHA ULVI: But down fish camp, Grandma used alder. Alder.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. For smoking?
BERTHA ULVI: Alder willow, huh?
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: When it’s big, she’ll -- she'll get a whole bunch of it, and she put it under the cache. Man, I just imagine them, so old and yet so much fish, and knew how to take care of it.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Did they have their fish rack and smoking down at camp?
BERTHA ULVI: Uh-huh. Last time I saw it, the whole fish -- fish cache, it’s -- it's so rotten it fell.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: But they had -- it’s a big fish cache.

RUTH RIDLEY: Almost as big as this.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, almost as big as this --
RUTH RIDLEY: And then two story.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, right.

BERTHA ULVI: And then when this dried, they put it up to the top.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: But there’s two fires going underneath. And --

KAREN BREWSTER: And it’s just the two of them doing that?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, but they get --
KAREN BREWSTER: Or would you guys go help?
BERTHA ULVI: They get --
RUTH RIDLEY: Then we --
KAREN BREWSTER: You said other people that would go help.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, they were there. Mom bring us down there. She got -- they got their tent on this side of the fish cache, and they got one on that side for Mom with all of us in there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

RUTH RIDLEY: And they got Grandpa’s brother, Ed Malcolm, he passed away, but his sons. They had how many sons?

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, they think of Grandpa their uncle, so they all come down and they --

RUTH RIDLEY: Fix up the cache, put up the cache, put up the tents and all that. And they go and check the net and -- ’cause it’s paddling across. And paddle back. But that’s --

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, I was going to ask, it was with a net they were fishing or with a fish wheel?
BERTHA ULVI: Fish wheel.
RUTH RIDLEY: Fish wheel.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. That’s what I thought.

BERTHA ULVI: Grandpa makes those fish wheels, too.

KAREN BREWSTER: So do you guys have to help cut up the fish and hang it?

BERTHA ULVI: We don’t cut those days. They do, and then, but we pack it up the bank.
RUTH RIDLEY: Up the bank.
BERTHA ULVI: Then Mom be sit -- standing up there, she hangs it up.

RUTH RIDLEY: And they got little stove, like this, that’s getting old, you know, got a crack in it. And I used to have my little frying pan ’bout that big on it.

And then I put the little -- I don’t know what I put in there, but I go down the bank and collect those fish hearts.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: And put it in there and just fry my own little fish up.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, cool. And what -- those were king salmon?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah. Big salmon. They had some kind -- it’s almost that big.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, my. That’s like four, five feet? That’s big.
RUTH RIDLEY: It is.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, they’re pretty big.

RUTH RIDLEY: They even had to use a saw, you know, to cut through it. It’s too big.
KAREN BREWSTER: Mm.

RUTH RIDLEY: But now they’re not like that anymore.

MARCY OKADA: Do you remember any challenges growing up? You know, like just from Snare Creek and then moving into town when you finally did move into town? Eagle.

BERTHA ULVI: Well, I don’t know. We had to just do what our parents tell us to do.
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, we -- I mean, if they -- we don’t want to go to Coal Creek, we can’t say anything. We gotta go.
MARCY OKADA: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: And if they want -- like we didn’t like sometime to go down to fish camp because all these kids, you know, they’re growing up. We’re growing up. We don’t -- but we have to go down fish camp and help.

RUTH RIDLEY: And we stay down there all summer.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: 'Til the salmon’s over.

BERTHA ULVI: But sometime like around, like Fourth of July or something like that, we’d come up to the village and we spend the night up here. But it’s always going back down anyway, huh?
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: And what -- what was the season for the -- when were the salmon running, from -- ?
BERTHA ULVI: Like from July to late August, I think, uh?
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Did you do chum salmon in the fall?
BERTHA ULVI: I don’t know if they --

RUTH RIDLEY: I think they did, but they -- after we left the village ’cause we got dog team, so they had to get some dog salmon.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

RUTH RIDLEY: But we never fish for dog salmon when we were there.
BERTHA ULVI: Hm-mm. Just king.
RUTH RIDLEY: I think probably Grandpa and Grandma and my uncles, probably.

KAREN BREWSTER: ’Cause by fall time, you were back in school, right?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm. Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: Or out at -- ? Ok.

RUTH RIDLEY: Because they used to bale ’em, you know, tie ’em up in big bale. And those back bones of dog salmon were like, eh, for dogs.
KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

RUTH RIDLEY: And then they had to bring all those dogs back.

BERTHA ULVI: They dry all the fish heads. Those are dog food.

KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. So the king salmon were for people, and the dog salmon were for dogs?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.

MARCY OKADA: Do you remember break-up pretty --? You know, break-up time of year, pretty vividly?

BERTHA ULVI: Oh, we were here all time when the break-up.
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: You gotta be prepared. We had one close one before that big one.
RUTH RIDLEY: It just --
MARCY OKADA: Oh.

RUTH RIDLEY: Oh, that one, ’member, it was just even with the bank.
KAREN BREWSTER: The ice moving?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah. It was just even.

BERTHA ULVI: You could see right -- right across, right on the river, but it didn’t go over the bank.
KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.
BERTHA ULVI: We were lucky then. But then there was a --
RUTH RIDLEY: But they used --
BERTHA ULVI: -- another little one that came up in the house about that much.
KAREN BREWSTER: Two feet of water?

BERTHA ULVI: Just enough to ruin the refrigerator and, you know -- So everybody had to get new refrigerator that time.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you remember the years?
BERTHA ULVI: Hm?
KAREN BREWSTER: Do you remember what years those were, like based on how old you were or other things?

BERTHA ULVI: Remember when you move into -- they give you that refrigerator from Matthew? It didn’t go back there, ’member? You had to switch. She was old enough then. She --
RUTH RIDLEY: I don’t remember.

BERTHA ULVI: ’Member when you move into Grandma’s place. You --
RUTH RIDLEY: Oh.
BERTHA ULVI: Yes.

KAREN BREWSTER: So what year would that have been, about?

RUTH RIDLEY: How big were the kids?

BERTHA ULVI: Were there kids? ’Member when you and I, we -- we were going to go back and ask those guys what they gonna do with that refrigerator. ’Member they said you could have it. They told you.
RUTH RIDLEY: Hm.

BERTHA ULVI: They were remodeling Matthew’s place, ’member? That white building up there.

But anyway, I think that was back in 19-something, eh?
RUTH RIDLEY: 19-something.
KAREN BREWSTER: That helps?
(laughing and talking over each other)
BERTHA ULVI: I don’t know, but I remember it was like kinda --

KAREN BREWSTER: Like 1970s or 1990s or --?
BERTHA ULVI: Maybe 19 --

In 1970, I became the health aide.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: So I was busy round in the village, too.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: So that’s about time when you -- when she moved over.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: And they give her Grandma’s house.

Mom was alive.
RUTH RIDLEY: I’m sure.
BERTHA ULVI: She had the other house, and then 'til she give it to Harold, huh?

KAREN BREWSTER: So that tells us that one flood was around the 1970’s?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: And what about that one where you were looking across and it was right to the banks?

BERTHA ULVI: That was about the same time. Ahead of that, maybe, I don’t know, but a lot of time it gets like that, and it’ll just go back down.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: But this last one, it almost got one of the boys, too. Mark E., going home. And he had to run from the old village down to Golden Eagle where the airport is.
KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

BERTHA ULVI: They had a house there, and he was going to run back down with a bike.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BERTHA ULVI: Only thing he see is water coming, so he just jump out and start running through the woods, up to the big airport.

And looking back, he saw this big water just coming behind him.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.
BERTHA ULVI: And it scary.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. That was the 2009?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, 2009. We were in Fairbanks.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

BERTHA ULVI: I was in Fairbanks. Only thing I saw in my cabin was just the stove pipe and the roof. Nothing. Sad. We don’t want to move up here, but we had to.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MARCY OKADA: So we talked a lot about, um, Snare Creek and your childhood growing up, and coming back and forth between Snare Creek, Woodchopper, and here.

But you had mentioned going to school in Oregon. So is that Chemawa?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.

MARCY OKADA: And um, so you guys went Outside for school, but then when you were done with high school, you came back?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.

MARCY OKADA: What was that like, going out and then coming back?
RUTH RIDLEY: We cried.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, we did. We don’t know nobody and getting into these big planes. We cried a lot.

MARCY OKADA: Ok. And then you came back and you lived here. Um --

BERTHA ULVI: No. Yeah, we did until she got married, and her husband work in Fairbanks, so she went -- she live in Fairbanks.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: She’s still living in Fairbanks.

KAREN BREWSTER: When did you move to Fairbanks?
RUTH RIDLEY: 1968.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
RUTH RIDLEY: I got married in ’68.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Were there things you missed about Eagle Village?

RUTH RIDLEY: Especially like food, you know. Native food, I like, miss and -- I miss my sister and speaking Han.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

Did you continue to do subsistence activities in Fairbanks, or did you come back here every year?

RUTH RIDLEY: I come back here every year.

BERTHA ULVI: After she got married, she comes back and visit and we do bead work. When we get going, we could do a lot of bead work, her and I.

KAREN BREWSTER: And berry picking?
BERTHA ULVI: But, right --
RUTH RIDLEY: Oh, yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: Which is coming up pretty soon. August, we go --
KAREN BREWSTER: Secret places.
BERTHA ULVI: Up there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Secret places.
(laughing)

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. We go past Summit.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: And that’s where we -- we always find ’em. But last year, nothing.
KAREN BREWSTER: Uh huh.
MARCY OKADA: Huh.
BERTHA ULVI: And all the cranberries, nothing.

MARCY OKADA: Why do you think that is?
BERTHA ULVI: I don’t know.
MARCY OKADA: No berries. Huh.

So you come home to -- to get food and reconnect and beadwork with your sisters and --?

RUTH RIDLEY: Oh, yeah. And then come back and help my mom. Just her and my nephew lived with each other. And Bert got her own family, and Ethel got.

So I come back and work around the house for her and --
BERTHA ULVI: She had two kids. We each got a boy and a girl.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: Ethel got a boy and a girl. She (pointing to Ruth) got boy and a girl. I do, too.

MARCY OKADA: And so your side is, you came back to Eagle Village, and you stayed. She was in Fairbanks, but you met your husband, and you --
BERTHA ULVI: Here.
MARCY OKADA: Here.

KAREN BREWSTER: When you were married and raising your kids here, you were continuing to do subsistence? You mentioned a trap line.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, he’s right there doing it. He -- him and this other guy down there, Bill Goebel his name, they -- they make their --

RUTH RIDLEY: Did they make their own fish wheel?
BERTHA ULVI: The fish wheel, yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: They made their own fish wheel. He -- they get quite a bit of fish, but they got a lot of dogs for trapline, too, so we -- it’s mainly chums.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

BERTHA ULVI: So we -- I have to be down there with Bill Goebel in the afternoon, because my ex-husband was working for Park Service, so he -- he was up there all the time. So we -- I cut fish with him. And then at night, they hang it up.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, he do a lot of things that -- they always tell him, how you know how to do this like trapping? You just come from California, you know.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: But he -- he learns fast.
MARCY OKADA: And who --
BERTHA ULVI: But not --

MARCY OKADA: Who did he learn from?
BERTHA ULVI: Just from people around here.
MARCY OKADA: Like --
BERTHA ULVI: Well, this, like Willie Juneby.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: Elder guy, he was still alive, he tells them what to do and stuff like that, so they -- they learn from him.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you know how many fish you guys would get and put up for a summer? When you were -- ?
BERTHA ULVI: Goodness, I don’t know.
KAREN BREWSTER: -- out there cutting them and --? ’Cause you were --

BERTHA ULVI: Quite a bit because see, they -- they both got dogs. So, when they get like three hundred dog salmon, they gotta split it.

They split it and take half and half for each one of them.

KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. And then were they also getting fish for you guys to eat?

BERTHA ULVI: Oh, when there’s good dog salmon, nice red, I save it.
MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: And then when the king come, I was living over here in the corner. There's -- We -- He built me a little place. I jarred fish and stuff like that, so I make like two, three cases of fish.

KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. And those king salmon came through their fish wheel?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: Sometime you catch a king with the dogs, but -- but mainly they said you could catch big -- big king salmon in the nets.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BERTHA ULVI: But now they just got nets. But you can’t fish right now.
KAREN BREWSTER: I know right now you can’t fish, but --

BERTHA ULVI: But we -- we -- from the sonar, they give us certain amount of fish. Like if there’s six, they gotta send two to Canada.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BERTHA ULVI: Two here, and two in the city.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BERTHA ULVI: If there’s just --

KAREN BREWSTER: But back in the '70s, after you got married and you were raising your family, they were getting king salmon?
BERTHA ULVI: And dog salmon.
KAREN BREWSTER: And dog salmon.
BERTHA ULVI: Yes.

KAREN BREWSTER: All in -- all in the fish wheel?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

But lotta people had nets, too, you know. Lotta people fished those days.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: Now there’s hardly not that much because they’re not supposed to.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

MARCY OKADA: Um, do you remember going to certain spots with your ex-husband?

BERTHA ULVI: He always went up by the -- by the border.
MARCY OKADA: Oh, so he went --
BERTHA ULVI: Canadian border.
MARCY OKADA: He went this way.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, this Eagle Village right here and --

KAREN BREWSTER: That was for fishing?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BERTHA ULVI: There’s a hole in the rock. They call it, that’s -- he put his net there, he gets a lot of fish. They used to live up there before I met him.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BERTHA ULVI: There’s a cabin. They built a cabin up there and stuff.

KAREN BREWSTER: Were they on the Kandik, or were they on the Nation?
BERTHA ULVI: No, they weren’t in Canada. They were on this side in the -- by Canada.
MARCY OKADA: Down this way.
RUTH RIDLEY: Border.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

When you guys were doing that, when you were married, did you still live in the village, or did you live out on the river?

BERTHA ULVI: Well, we live over here for a while. And then that Willie Juneby give him a land at Buckeye, so he -- he built a cabin there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: We live there for quite a while 'til he's -- After Willie died, the kids told us we can’t live there, so we had to move out of there.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, you worked as a health aide, Bertha.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: So how did you balance out being a health aide and raising your family and having to get food?

'Cause being a health aide is a more than full time job sometimes.

BERTHA ULVI: Oh, yeah. I managed some way. Sometime when there’s no -- no patients, nothing, if I’m cutting fish, I just put -- put notice on the -- on the door where I’m at.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BERTHA ULVI: So they’ll come get me. Where I’m not actually just in the clinic doing nothing, you know.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

BERTHA ULVI: It was just a little village, so everybody know each other. If something happened, they just come get me.

RUTH RIDLEY: And what you tell Mom about those people from town?
BERTHA ULVI: Don’t say nothing. That’s not you guys.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok, we won’t ask that story.

But being a -- did you like being a health aide?

BERTHA ULVI: Oh, yes. 'Til -- 'til one of the guys died on my lap, you know. And I -- on the way from here to Fairbanks, his last breath was by Glacier Peak and I had to hold a dead man into Fairbanks.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.
BERTHA ULVI: I didn’t like that.
KAREN BREWSTER: No.

BERTHA ULVI: I mean, I just felt so bad we lost him, but in a car wreck.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BERTHA ULVI: So after that I was a health aide for a while 'til then somebody took over. Then I could go out and trapline.
KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

BERTHA ULVI: I like it out in trapline, with my kids, too.

MARCY OKADA: You guys were trapping more this way? Or --?
BERTHA ULVI: Champion. Where’s Champion?
MARCY OKADA: I don’t think it’s on this map.

KAREN BREWSTER: I don’t have my glasses. Champion Creek, right here.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
MARCY OKADA: Oh.

BERTHA ULVI: It’s past -- on the summit. You gotta walk across.

KAREN BREWSTER: Here’s Wallcutt Mountain. Summit there. There’s Glacier Mountain. So it’s sort of west of the road.
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Up near the top there.

BERTHA ULVI: North Fork. Yeah, right in here.
KAREN BREWSTER: The North Fork. Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, North Fork, there’s a cabin someplace on the creek. And then he traps in there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. Cool.

BERTHA ULVI: He had dog teams and stuff like that. And Karma was just like one year old.
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: Where, you know, that backpack? A baby’s?
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: He put it on the pack board.
MARCY OKADA: Wow.
BERTHA ULVI: And that’s how he carries her.
MARCY OKADA: Oh, wow.

KAREN BREWSTER: On the -- while riding the dogteam?
BERTHA ULVI: No.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BERTHA ULVI: We just let dogs run because no snow by the time we go out there.

MARCY OKADA: Do you remember using -- You know, you guys grew up here, do you remember going into what’s Yukon-Charley now and going to any specific spots?

BERTHA ULVI: Well, only -- only place we go is to Nation town site.
MARCY OKADA: Ok.
BERTHA ULVI: That’s the other trapline. We go from here downriver to Nation town site, and then -- Where’s Nation?
RUTH RIDLEY: Nation is almost to --

KAREN BREWSTER: Right there? Is that Nation? Nation Bluff Public Use cabin?

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, that’s the one we stay there. And then next day we walk up to the mine. Eight miles up.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BERTHA ULVI: But there’s an airport there. A nice cabin. I stay there. He traps. He traps quite a -- like ten miles from the house and then from -- to that ten miles again down different place.

So it takes him like couple days. I stay in the cabin with Karma. Petey always stayed with Mom, my mom.

MARCY OKADA: How about you, Ruth? Anything growing --
RUTH RIDLEY: I don’t know nothing about that.
MARCY OKADA: Oh, ok.
RUTH RIDLEY: I was in the city.
MARCY OKADA: Yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, Ruth is always the city person.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MARCY OKADA: Do -- do you remember when this was created?
KAREN BREWSTER: When the Preserve was created?
BERTHA ULVI: Kinda like, yeah.
MARCY OKADA: Yeah.

RUTH RIDLEY: When the what?
KAREN BREWSTER: When the Yukon-Charley National Preserve was created, do you remember that?
RUTH RIDLEY: Mm, kind of.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, kind of. You know, we didn’t know.

KAREN BREWSTER: Like, how people reacted to it?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, a lot of --

RUTH RIDLEY: It was those downtown.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
MARCY OKADA: Oh.
KAREN BREWSTER: It wasn't that --

RUTH RIDLEY: They just hated everybody. They wouldn’t even talk to Park Service or whatever people. It just bad.
KAREN BREWSTER: But that --?

BERTHA ULVI: They put bad signs up and everything like that. I remember that.
KAREN BREWSTER: Huh uh.
BERTHA ULVI: But after that, I think they calmed down.

KAREN BREWSTER: But, how did you guys feel about there being a preserve there?
BERTHA ULVI: It didn’t bother me.

RUTH RIDLEY: I told everybody, if we didn’t have that, it would have ruined a lot of things. You know, like that Slaven’s Cabin down by the river, people would’ve ruined that. But the Park Service is watching that.

And Coal Creek, you know. All those things would’ve been ruined if they didn’t move in.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, lot of places, like Slaven’s Cabin, they remodeled it. And all those little cabins on the way down. I went in there. Nice floors and stuff like that.

There’s a cabin kind of back against the -- Man, that's a nice little cabin, they fix it up. There’s broom.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: Everything. Stove, just nice. If you go in there, you have wood ready to go.
KAREN BREWSTER: Nice.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, so they did pretty good on that.

RUTH RIDLEY: And especially with the price of gold going up, you know, people would’ve been fooling around all over the place down there.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. And so, at the time the preserve was created, you know, people downtown didn’t like it, but what about in the Eagle Village? What was the community’s --?

BERTHA ULVI: They didn’t say nothing about it. Nope. Mm-mm. We still go -- after that, we go down Wood Island and stuff like that. They hunt there.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

BERTHA ULVI: Is that in the park or no?
MARCY OKADA: It is.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, that is --
MARCY OKADA: It’s not on this map, but it -- yeah --
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, Wood Island, that’s a nice place for moose.
MARCY OKADA: Oh. Hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Have you noticed changes in the moose and how many moose are around?

BERTHA ULVI: There’s a lot of moose around here right now. Because, I don’t know, there’s a lot of those cows were here when they had their little ones, so we just almost bump into one yesterday.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: It was going to come out and then I just come around that corner. Good thing it didn’t come out there. We saw a little baby.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.
BERTHA ULVI: We saw a little young one.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: But, yeah, like hunting out at Moose -- at Moose Island. Wood Island. Have their numbers changed out there?
BERTHA ULVI: I don’t know. You just, if you want a bull that’s only --

But I went down there with a bunch of people.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: From the village. And they hunt, and then if they get one, that’s enough for everybody, so we all move back in the village.

RUTH RIDLEY: I know, I think we get a lot of hunters from Anchorage and all that places.
BERTHA ULVI: Out in the state.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, really?
BERTHA ULVI: Yep.

KAREN BREWSTER: So it gets busy around here in the falltime?
BERTHA ULVI: They don’t like it because then it don’t -- don’t let us get any caribou. Nobody in the village or downtown got caribou last fall.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.
BERTHA ULVI: Because they went the wrong way, the caribou did.

They went down Steese Highway.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, right. ’Cause it’s the Forty Mile Caribou (herd).
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, that went the wrong way.

But this time, it’s August 1st it’s going to be open. You could get two bulls.

KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. Do you know why -- do you have any thoughts about why the caribou --?
BERTHA ULVI: I don’t know. If somebody shot the leader.

RUTH RIDLEY: I know we tried to kill them there, too.
BERTHA ULVI: They let it go through first and --
RUTH RIDLEY: They won’t listen. They think they know everything.

And another thing that we don’t do, we don’t waste meat. We don’t go shoot a moose just because we see a moose. Unless we need it, you know, we don’t go crazy.
BERTHA ULVI: And then if you shoot a moose, it goes to everybody in the village.

Some guy -- some guy got me a moose. That preacher in Tok, last fall. I try to give everybody some. They don’t want to help me.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

BERTHA ULVI: They don’t want to help me cut it up. All these boys that you see back there. None of them wanted to help. So it was just Joanne, my niece, and Ethel, and I.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BERTHA ULVI: We dealt with that big moose by ourselves.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

MARCY OKADA: He brought -- the guy from Tok brought it all the way here?
BERTHA ULVI: He went hunting down river. He got it, and he brought it to us.
MARCY OKADA: Wow.

BERTHA ULVI: And we smoked it a little, three days, and then we cut it up.

MARCY OKADA: And then you shared it?
BERTHA ULVI: No.
MARCY OKADA: Oh.
BERTHA ULVI: They -- they don’t want to help us, I said, "Then you don’t get no meat."

MARCY OKADA: Hm. Any other changes with animals you think is happening? I know the salmon aren’t coming, but there’s enough moose around.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, but salmon you can’t -- you -- you can’t put -- you can't put net in there right now on your own.
MARCY OKADA: Yeah, there’s no subsistence.
BERTHA ULVI: No.
MARCY OKADA: There’s no fishing.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. No fishing, just --

KAREN BREWSTER: What’s that like, living here without being able to get salmon?
BERTHA ULVI: Well, I don’t know.
RUTH RIDLEY: Sometime you want a nice fresh --
BERTHA ULVI: Fish.
RUTH RIDLEY: -- fried salmon or something, and I never would’ve thought --
BERTHA ULVI: But they --
RUTH RIDLEY: -- we would get to this point.
BERTHA ULVI: You see that salmon, right here?
KAREN BREWSTER: Hm, mm. In the freezer? Yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.

That -- They got us that from some place this winter. Where they sent us, I don’t know, like five hundred boxes.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BERTHA ULVI: So we distribute through the village, and then what was left over, we shared with downtown.

And there, too, they had to say something about things like that. When Karma (Ulvi, tribal administrator) do all this, they asked her first, and then she said, we -- it’d be nice if we get fish.

So we filleted some back there, so she fries fish sometimes. Ruby (Becker, who cooks elders lunch at the tribal office). And they jarred a few back there, but I don’t know, she don’t serve that yet.

KAREN BREWSTER: But it’s different being given fish versus fishing yourself?
RUTH RIDLEY: Well, actually --
BERTHA ULVI: And it’s a different fish, so lot of people don’t like it.
RUTH RIDLEY: Different kind of fish.

MARCY OKADA: Oh. This is fish coming from Bristol Bay.
KAREN BREWSTER: Bristol Bay fish.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. It’s kinda dry.
RUTH RIDLEY: It's like a -- And it’s like little, little pokey bones.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, those pin bones.
RUTH RIDLEY: Not our big bones that you chew on.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, that’s interesting.

RUTH RIDLEY: And just think, I always say, how would we ever get to this point? ’Cause when we used to fish, we have the cache would be full of fish drying. Our cache upstairs, you know that one you climb up on?
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

RUTH RIDLEY: Would be just loaded with dried fish this way. And they even had little poles with salmon strips. You know.
KAREN BREWSTER: Hanging overhead?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: And eggs? The fish roe?
RUTH RIDLEY: We had to --

BERTHA ULVI: She got a bag, certain bags for that. So wintertime, they make juice out of it.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.
BERTHA ULVI: Grandma is good at that.

KAREN BREWSTER: Fish jui -- fish egg juice?
BERTHA ULVI: Uh huh.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah. It’s almost like a -- it’s rich, huh.

BERTHA ULVI: Real rich. But it’s good for in wintertime.
RUTH RIDLEY: Like a soup, almost.
MARCY OKADA: Oh, you use it as broth?
BERTHA ULVI: Mm-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MARCY OKADA: Ok. Hm. Is it good for ailments or anything, those juice?
BERTHA ULVI: Oh, it’s good for everything.
RUTH RIDLEY: It probably got a lot of vitamins.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, fish oil kind of idea.
BERTHA ULVI: Uh-huh.
MARCY OKADA: Especially in winter.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BERTHA ULVI: Fish oil tablets, you know, they said. Yeah, but this is you drink a cup of that, it’ll fill you up, too.

RUTH RIDLEY: Tell them about your trapping. When she -- they were going to go trapping, you know, they know in the wintertime, her and Adeline and them.

They just fatten themselves up. Just fat. Eating. And eating. They walk on the trapline, and they come back around Christmas or something, and they’re just skinny.

MARCY OKADA: So you were fattening up on fish?
BERTHA ULVI: Don’t listen to her.
MARCY OKADA: Oh, ok.
RUTH RIDLEY: One kind of food.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, it’s --
MARCY OKADA: Ok.

KAREN BREWSTER: Smart. Get yourself fattened up, and then you get skinny when you’re out there. Live off your own resources.

So that was the other thing I was going to ask about. No fish now. What gets subs -- does something get substituted? Obviously, the fish that was sent to you.

But if you -- if you can’t catch fish, are you eating more moose or more caribou, or more porcupine?
BERTHA ULVI: Mostly store-bought meat.
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah, white man food.

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, they get bunch of that. I mean, we -- we order that, too. So you substitute moose meat sometime, and then you get into pork chops.

RUTH RIDLEY: In springtime, we get ducks and geese. We’re not supposed to, but we do. Everywhere.

KAREN BREWSTER: Still, people do?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.
BERTHA ULVI: What’s that?

RUTH RIDLEY: In the springtime, we get into ducks and geese.
BERTHA ULVI: Oh, they say we could without the Native.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah, yeah. You can.
MARCY OKADA: In springtime.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.

MARCY OKADA: Do you guys go to the lakes and ponds?
BERTHA ULVI: Up on the big airport, that’s where they land.
MARCY OKADA: Oh.
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah. But this year, Karma got us six in nets.
MARCY OKADA: Oh.

BERTHA ULVI: That’s all we got, because she -- she’s just too darn busy. She can’t do lots of stuff like that anymore.

KAREN BREWSTER: But when you were growing up, and, you know, raising your families, did you hunt geese and ducks in the spring?
BERTHA ULVI: Not me. He did.
RUTH RIDLEY: The boys.
KAREN BREWSTER: The boys did.
RUTH RIDLEY: Like my -- my brother would --

BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, and then they give it to us. And then we’ll clean it and --
RUTH RIDLEY: We’re just plucking.

KAREN BREWSTER: So there were a lot?
RUTH RIDLEY: Like some days of plucking the ducks that they -- It's lots of them.

KAREN BREWSTER: So they -- they hunted a lot of them, then?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.

RUTH RIDLEY: My brother used to get 90-something.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, my gosh.
BERTHA ULVI: My brother was a provider for everybody in the village that time.

KAREN BREWSTER: This was Tony?
BERTHA ULVI: Like he could --
RUTH RIDLEY: He could just go -- When --
BERTHA ULVI: Caribou.

RUTH RIDLEY: Summertime, there’s no meat and stuff in the stores. So it took them a long time to get any hamburger or something, huh?

So he’d go out and get a fresh moose and just pass around to everybody.

KAREN BREWSTER: What kinds of ducks are they?
BERTHA ULVI: Like mallards and pintail. Canvas back.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.
BERTHA ULVI: Butterball.
MARCY OKADA: Butterball?
KAREN BREWSTER: Sounds like a turkey.

BERTHA ULVI: Butterball. They’re -- they're white in the stomach, but they’re black-headed.
KAREN BREWSTER: They have the big head?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: A bufflehead, maybe?
MARCY OKADA: Oh, ok.
BERTHA ULVI: Oh.

KAREN BREWSTER: Might be called a bufflehead?
BERTHA ULVI: Uh-huh.
KAREN BREWSTER: They good and fat? They taste good?
BERTHA ULVI: They’re fat, yeah.
MARCY OKADA: Huh.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

And -- and ever get swans?
RUTH RIDLEY: Once in a while.
BERTHA ULVI: We get swans here, but you don’t -- you don’t -- nobody shoot at them. They’re too pretty.

MARCY OKADA: Or geese?
BERTHA ULVI: Yeah, one time, that’s -- all these Tanana Chief with Victor Joseph came in. All his crew came in. They come in, and all of a sudden eight swans was in that lake back there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.
BERTHA ULVI: Everybody take pictures of them.

RUTH RIDLEY: And we’re in a mountainous area.
KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.
RUTH RIDLEY: So we hardly ever get any geese and that unless you go way downriver.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
RUTH RIDLEY: Where there’s sand bars and stuff like that. Or upriver.

KAREN BREWSTER: They don’t stop through here?
RUTH RIDLEY: Nope. Unless somebody is shoot -- if they’re flying low. And my mom used to shoot ’em out of the --
KAREN BREWSTER: Out of the sky?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Wow. She was a good shot.

RUTH RIDLEY: Yep. Good thing my grandma was alive, she’d do the cooking ’cause some of them are -- are tough, so you gotta boil them long time.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So that’s how you eat the ducks and geese, would be boiled?
RUTH RIDLEY: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: They didn’t bake ’em?
RUTH RIDLEY: Once in a while, my mom used to, like the mallards, um, stuff them and bake them like that.

One time that -- our preacher came. He said, "Oh, Louise, that duck looked nice." He didn’t know. He was standing in the doorway, she says, "Yeah, that’s from last fall." So she give him one of that to take home. It was from last fall with the --

KAREN BREWSTER: A little extra fermented, maybe? Well, and -- and traditionally, you know, a long time ago, did they hunt swans? Or has it always been, you don’t hunt swans?
RUTH RIDLEY: Hunt what?
KAREN BREWSTER: Swans.

RUTH RIDLEY: Probably if they were in the area, but we hardly ever got. Like I say, it’s too mountainous up this way.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. And what about grouse and other birds?

RUTH RIDLEY: Oh, yeah. They -- we always hunt grouse. Grouse and p-tarmigan. There was a old white guy lived out -- "Oh, that’s p-tarmigan." Instead of saying ptarmigan. He always say, "that’s p-tarmigan."
MARCY OKADA: Huh.

RUTH RIDLEY: We eat a lotta grouse and p-tarmigan.
MARCY OKADA: Hm.

BERTHA ULVI: How much longer?

KAREN BREWSTER: I was going to say, I think we just have one question. I have one question left.

We’ve sort of talked about, you know, your growing up and living here, and out on the, um, Snare Creek and stuff. And sounds like it was kind of hard. Was it hard work, or did you enjoy it?

BERTHA ULVI: When we were growing up, we enjoyed it. But after we grew up, it was work. But you know, you have to do things that you need to do.

RUTH RIDLEY: We always just had fun even though we didn’t have this or that. We didn’t have our little Kool-aid or whatever, so we learn how to drink tea and coffee.

KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. Labrador tea? Did you guys drink Labrador tea?
BERTHA ULVI: Sometime, with Grandma.
RUTH RIDLEY: She drinks a lot of that. But us, we just drink tea.

MARCY OKADA: So, ok.

KAREN BREWSTER: OK. Unless you have anything else you want to share with us to sum up.