KAREN:  As a Yup'ik health aide, did you feel like you ever had -- were ever discriminated against in the Western system? 

PAULA:  Well, when I first started, we used to have lots of itinerary nurses that goes to villages.  And the -- the public -- I mean, these nurses were kind of, what do you call that in English, afraid that they -- they going to lose their jobs, that the health aides are going to take over. 

So I was discouraged from becoming a health aide by some nurses.  They felt -- the nurses felt threatened, that they might lose their jobs. 

And -- and not only in health care this happened, now that we have more Yup'ik people going to college and becoming teachers, teachers are kind of threatened that they are not going to be having these jobs anymore. 

So one -- one experience I had was when I went to St. Mary's, the nuns had -- the nuns and the priests told us that our Yup'ik way of living is superstition.  Our Yup'ik way of living is wrong. 

And -- and before school started the -- the none -- the Superior talked to us and told us that tomorrow school starts, and starting tomorrow, you have to talk English.  And every time you caught talking Yup'ik, we're going to give you a black mark after your name.  And if you have three black marks, no movies for you on Sunday. 

Naturally, we couldn't just learn to speaking English overnight.  And you become -- I became very quiet.  I try not to talk at all because if I -- I didn't know how to talk any other way, any other way than Yup'ik.  And I was 15.  The only language I know is in Yup'ik.  So it makes you feel kind of thirsty for conversation, thirsting for communication, all this feeling of separation. 
And then it was my speech was kind of affected by that, trying to be quiet.  And so -- but now I'm -- I'm fluent no matter what -- what anybody say I can -- I can talk in fluently English and fluently in Yup'ik. 

KAREN:  So those classes you taught by teleconference, were those in English or in Yup'ik? 

PAULA:  They were both in English and Yup'ik.  And I know who speak what, so if I have totally Yup'ik people, I talk Yup'ik, and they ask questions in Yup'ik, so it was much more learning than just English if it was given in English. 

If we have people, like people from Grayling who are Indians, then I speak English all the time.  You know.  During.  But I let them -- I give them -- they could talk to each others in -- in their language.  You know.  That's the way to learn, you know.  Understand things. 

KAREN:  Did you end up doing a lot of Yup'ik translating? 

PAULA:  Oh, yeah. 

KAREN:  In bilingual? 

PAULA:  Uh-hum (affirmative).  Today I'm translator.  I've been translating -- when I retire, I just retired from work, I'm still counseling, mentoring, and translating. 

KAREN:  And who -- what are -- what's the mentoring? 

PAULA:  Mentoring, if there's dysfunction in families, I mentor or if mis -- behavioral problems for little children. 

Like this winter, little kids burned somebody's house, went in there.  And the elder told me that those four couldn't do it by themselves, they have to be an older person to force them.  But those little kids just told their parents and grandparents that there was just four of them. 

And the -- the trooper came and talked to them and those little kids never -- just four of them tell that there was just four. 

And their grandparents asked the elders if elders could talk to those four children.  And all the elders had excluded, so I saw them, four children, and sure enough somebody, some older person had done a -- you know, kind of forced them to break into the house and start the fire. 

And so to make sure that they don't repeat what they did and to understand exactly what they did, I have to talk to them, you know, let them understand that because you did this, these people don't have home no more.  Because you burned the house, they have -- they no longer have clothes, no longer have food that they gathered into their house and put them in the freezer. 

And let them understand what's right and wrong, and work towards healing and, you know.  And so those are the mentoring things I did, you know, like little kids breaking up into other people's property and I talk to them and they feel good about unloading, too, those little kids.

And there's also little kids who have a lot of hurt from traumas or from alcohol, they -- their parents use.  There was 12 or 11, mostly 10 years old last year I talked to them, and that's mentoring and counseling, you know.  And I -- I had also a couple who are older than me. 

My colleague mentoring because I guess both of them had grow up with dysfunctional families.  And they, in return, their married life was dysfunctional.  So we did some mentoring and they are doing good. 

KAREN:  Yeah.