“My mother saw them. She was Athabaskan, not Inupiaq like father. She believed in the old ways. Father became a Christian many years ago, and my brother and I are also Christians. Neither the Tonrar Kiisiwok nor the Enukins seem to like being around Christians. My mom could no longer take the night terrors, so she walked out onto the thin ice just south of town. It broke away from shore and drifted out to sea. Father only arrived in time to cry out to her before she drifted out of sight. There was nothing he could do. It is the old way, that when an elder no longer could carry their own weight, they would set themselves adrift on the ice. It seems so harsh now in modern times, but life was always a constant struggle to survive before white men came and brought electricity and mot
