KAREN:  Now, so when the doctors started coming regularly. 

JOYCE:  First it was one a year, and then they -- so they were coming twice a year.
 
And it -- they went, you know, back to Anchorage and told about this program that was developing with the village aides, as they called them.  And the Native Service Hospital decided to take it on as a -- as a project.  And they developed the program for training.  Maybe a four-week course, and then send me back to -- they had to have -- you would have to have so many hours of actual service before you would get to have another session of training.  I was actually one of the last to get training.

KAREN:  Oh. 

JOYCE:  Because I was doing so many other things.  I wanted to have training in the summer, and that wasn't when they offered their training courses mostly.  But I was -- we had a program of activities here.  I was teaching kindergarten every morning, and I was operating the health service. 

KAREN:  Wow. 

JOYCE:  All of it unpaid.

KAREN:  I was going to ask, did you get paid? 

JOYCE:  No, I didn't get paid for any of it.  It was -- it was -- let's see.  I had been here.  In 1968 was when they first paid health aides. 

KAREN:  Wow. 

JOYCE:  And I had served here 10 years in Ouzinkie without any salary whatsoever.  And we kept learning more things and wanting to know more.  I had never imagined I would be so -- get so involved in it, be so intensely interested in it.  When I was younger, some of my high school classmates took nurses training, and I was not well enough.  I wasn't strong enough for all that's required in nurses training.  But this program, I was doing everything.  It wasn't like nursing in a hospital, it was going into people's homes and -- and having people come here.  And dealing with all kinds of things.  It could be anything.  And a lot of it was preventative, but a lot of it was emergency things.  And I was thrilled with it, to tell you the truth.  I was just really excited, couldn't wait to get training.  I wanted to learn to do suturing, for one thing.  And felt it was really needed. 

KAREN:  And so why did you like it so much? 

JOYCE:  I don't know.  It was just a way of helping people.  And I liked the whole thing -- first of all, when the doctors came, they would give the instructions, they would give people their medicines, and they would not -- most of them wouldn't even use them until they came and asked me what's it for, how am I supposed to do this.  I was explaining everything to people.  Being an interpreter for the doctors.  And it wasn't that people didn't speak English, they did, but they didn't understand the doctor's terminology. 

KAREN:  I know. 

JOYCE:  So that's -- I really enjoyed, I guess, the teacher in me just enjoyed carrying these -- the doctor's instructions down to where people could use them.  So I was excited about the whole thing, and wanting to learn more and more.  In the first session, they don't -- they didn't teach suturing, and I wanted to learn.  I said, can't you teach me now?  And I think they have a different set of procedures now. 

KAREN:  So what did they teach you in the first session, do you remember? 

JOYCE:  A bit of everything.  A lot of physiology.  And I remembered everything I had learned when I was in 7th and 8th grade down there.  Those things, it was very easy for me, that part of it.  And oh, all basic things, the things they knew we were doing, they -- or needed to do, they were teaching us.  It was a very well-designed program.  They were experimenting, they were working on it, but I have been very proud of what they do.  I really have. 
And it was exciting to go to training and be with people from all over Alaska, you know, the Aleut, the Eskimos, the Indians.  My partner for several sessions was an Indian from Southeastern.  And --

KAREN:  What was their name? 

JOYCE:  Huh? 

KAREN:  What was her or his name? 

JOYCE:  I -- right now, I can't think of the name. 

KAREN:  Okay. 

JOYCE:  She was from down in Southeastern, and she was Tlingit, I believe.
 
KAREN:  Right.