Hazel Apok: Interview Outline: Section 2 Growing up in Kiana, education, and getting married Tape Reference Number: H2002-09-13 Hazel spoke with Bill Burke in Fairbanks, Alaska on April 3, 2002.

Hazel Apok: I grew up in Kiana (map). I went to grade school through 8th grade in Kiana. I had to leave the community to go to high school. The first year I went to Mount Edgecumbe High School, which is in Sitka. The second year I went to Victory High School, and that's about 95 miles from Anchorage. It's a -- the Baptist missionary back home paid for my tuition and whatnot to attend my sophomore year, but couldn't afford to do it for my junior year, so I ended up at Lathrop High School here in Fairbanks. After my junior year that summer I attended Upward Bound at the University of Alaska. That year they had six scholarships to go to high school in Hawaii, and I was one of six chosen to go. So I ended up graduating from Kailua High School in Hawaii. After -- after high school graduation I attended college - Fort Louis College in Durango, Colorado.

At the age of 16 I had lost my adopted father whom I was very close to. And when I look back on it, I -- I realize that it took me five years to grieve for my father. And because of all of that that was going, on I dropped out of college and went back home to my mother who was living in Kotzebue at the time. I got married and -- and had children and lived in Kotzebue for about 11 years. I got a divorce and left Kotzebue and ended up in Barrow working for the North Slope Borough for 6 and a half years, but living in the region for 9 years, I spent some time in Atqasuk and -- and in Barrow. And in one of my travels in working for North Slope Borough I had to go to Anaktuvuk Pass. And in the wint -- during winter you gotta come through Fairbanks to go to Anaktuvuk Pass. So I met my current husband here in Fairbanks. And with his work and whatnot, we ended up back home in Kiana, and I believe it was in the early '90s when we moved there. So I'm back home now and I'm really enjoying it. I really -- I look around in the community now and wonder why I -- why I ever left or why I ever stayed away for so long.

I think my rearing was unique in that I grew up with an older couple. I only knew how to speak Eskimo until I had to go to school. Just listening to the other elders and the different time lines would jog my memory because I have vivid memories about things that happened as a as -- a baby, literally, and I believe it was because my parents talked to me, you know, all the time and kept that memory alive about different things that happened. I remember things when I was probably about a year and a half old and two years old. I remember when I was little enough for my grandma -- Nellie Woods came to visit in Kiana, and she held me and carried me up to the airport. We had to walk up the hill, and I was little enough for my Grandma to -- to carry me up. I remember looking around and -- and I had to be that young.

Just from listening to Ruth Sandvik's interview, she said her -- her mother died in 1953. And things happened in my home -- I was born in '51, so things happened in my home and I was only two years, but I -- I remember them to this day. And I -- and I, like I said, I remember these things because I believe my -- my parents were a lot older and they repeated these things, you know, and kept the memories alive.

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