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Sarah Kunaknana

Sarah Pausanna Kunaknana was born in 1921 in Barrow, Alaska to Harriet and Paul Pausanna, but when she was only two months old her parents moved east to Cross Island (Napaqsralik) on the Beaufort Sea coast. As was typical of families at the time, they traveled a lot in search of food resources and often moved seasonally following the animals. Her father, originally from the Utuqqaq area near Point Lay, was a successful whaler in both Barrow and Cross Island, and also hunted polar bears, seals, and trapped foxes. One of Sarah’s earliest memories is living in the Prudhoe Bay area, but they also lived around Kuukpik, Fish Creek (Iqalukpik), Ikpikpak, and traveled inland on the rivers toward the mountains. Sarah learned about subsistence hunting and fishing, food preparation, and environmental conditions from her parents and from her husband, Samuel Kunaknana. Sarah and Samuel Kunaknana lived in Barrow so their children could go to school, but latter settled in Nuiqsut, Alaska. Sarah Kunaknana died on April 16, 2009. For more about Sarah Kunaknana, see Qiñiqtuagaksrat Utuqqanaat Iñuuniaġniŋisiqun: The Traditional Land Use Inventory for the Mid-Beaufort Sea, Volume 1. (Barrow, AK: North Slope Borough, Commission on History and Culture, 1980).

Date of Birth:

Jun 9, 1921

Date of Death:

Apr 16, 2009

Sarah Kunaknana appears in the following new Jukebox projects:

Sea Ice in Northern Alaska

Interview Title	Abstract	Archive #: Oral History	Project	Date of Interview
Sarah Kunaknana	Sarah Kunaknana was interviewed in July 1978 by Kenneth Toovak and Ron Metzner in Barrow, Alaska for a project related to potential oil development of the Alaskan continental shelf. The original interview was in Inupiaq. The interview was translated into English in 1979 by Molly Pederson and appears in the Historical References to Ice Conditions Along the Beaufort Sea Coast of Alaska (Scientific Report, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1979). The original Inupiaq recording and English transcript appear separately below. Due to lack of a new transcript with timecodes, they are not synced for simultaneous listening and searching. In this interview, Sarah talks about sea ice conditions on the northern Beaufort Sea coast, in particular between Beechey Point and Flaxman Island and around Cross Island. She discusses how the wind influences the ice and tells the story about her brother getting lost on the sea ice. She also talks about living a subsistence lifestyle where they moved around the countryside following the game animals, and about whaling around Cross Island.	97-64-01_SIDE B	Sea Ice in Northern Alaska	Jul 1, 1978