My Locker sits next to Jason Harris’ reading class, locker number 24. I enter the last number of my combo, lift up the lever and kick twice at the bottom to jam open the door.  Okay, let me just say that my locker is a yearbook from the second day of school until we empty our lockers at the end of school. It is filled with my family/ friend pictures and smoke-free stickers. About seven family photos scatter on the top of my blue narrow door. Settle your eyes to the middle, and you will see a homemade calendar made by my friend Luann. She posted known birthdays and holidays through out the school year.

Folders and notebooks galore!!! There are three notebooks, two folders and two reading books on my eyebrow high shelf. All seven school supplies lean to the left and have been there ever since they got there, except maybe a notebook for reading. I love school, and that’s why I’m in the Future Teachers of Alaska club and my FTA water bottle settles in the far right corner with a family photo hanging in front of it. Some more pictures of my family take up space in the back giving me memories of my siblings, my mom and dad. My hat has a reserved spot in my locker, and that is right in the middle of the shelf hiding my broken down Bobby Jack watch I got during the summer.

Another thing about my locker is that it’s a closet. Ever since the first quarter, my sister Olga’s old UAF sweater hangs on a ‘J’ hook to the right over my FTA shirt that was given to me during the second quarter. I come to school with ski-pants because of the frigid cold that we are having and they are folded up at the bottom covering my little library. Yeah I know!!! I have a library in my locker so what. I have seven books that I got from the library in the school and RIF books. The left side of my locker is kind of lonely because my FTA book bag just dangles on the hook; only during school hours my does pink jacket cover it. In between below my shelf is posted a picture of Mabel Nassuk.

At the end of the school year my photos will transfer to my bedroom wall. That wall contains my 5th grade happy grams and some more family photos. The notebooks, well I don’t know but they probably will be used up for Jason’s class. The sweater and shirt are going to rest in the closet at home.

How are you all doing today? Me I am doing fine myself. My name is Troy Otton, I am 16 years old and in the tenth grade. I am 5’ 6 1/2’’ tall, black hair, kind of chunky. I am from a little rural village called Koyuk. It is located on the North bank of the Koyuk River where it drains out into the Norton Sound.

I currently attend the Koyuk Malemute High School. This school approximately has about one hundred and ten students. Compared to other schools in the Bering Strait School District our school is pretty small. The only two people I hang out with are Clarence Dewey who is in front of me and Aidan Douglas who is beside Clarence.

If you compare Alaska and South Carolina, you wouldn’t find a lot of similarities but more differences. For instance the weather, up here in Alaska the weather is fricken cold. You wouldn’t believe how cold it is here compared to South Carolina. During the winter period, it stays below zero throughout the whole winter. (Last year it dropped to –47.)

Koyuk is kind of boring at times or should I say all the time. For fun around here we play sports, hang out with friends, subsistence hunt, and ride around on ATVs and snow machines.

Wrestling is a challenging sport in which you must be physically and mentally ready. Watch your grades in school and you can travel a lot in one school year.

Wrestling practice makes you physically strong. It teaches you moves that will make you beat your opponent with random moves. It starts off with exercise and working out your muscles so you don’t run out of gas while wrestling somebody. The coach will tell you to be fast and aggressive when you wrestle someone.

You can’t be scared when you wrestle someone. Be confident so you don’t lose a match and make it to state. The teammates will encourage you and tell you what to do in order to outsmart your opponent.

If you know what weight class you are in, you can’t overeat because the coach will know what weight class you are in and if you are over weight at the next weigh in from the previous one, you will be disqualified from the tournament. Can’t munch out, but just have three meals a day with no junk food. Eat healthy to be healthy.

In one year you can travel six times from Koyuk. Two times to Nome, two times to Kotzebue and one time to Unalakleet. If you get 1st or 2nd at regionals, you will make it to state where the best wrestlers are. Wrestling to me is a sport, which challenges you the most and is the most exciting.

How is the weather down there? Up north in Koyuk, Alaska the weather is getting chilly. My name is Nikko Adams and I’m a junior at Koyuk Malemute High School. Our school is only 1A, but in sports and other activities we compete with other schools that are 2A and 3A schools.

One of my favorite sports to join is Native Youth Olympics. This sport has at least eleven events: One foot high kick, Two high kick, wrist carry, Alaskan high kick, seal hop, toe kick, scissor broad jump, Indian stick pull, stick pull, arm pull, and foot pull. Some of these events involve an Eskimo ball made out of regular cloth or seal skin and long and short sticks. I like to do wrist carry, seal hop, Indian stick pull, and Alaskan high kick.

I will only tell you how to do two out of the four events I like. The rest you can look up on the internet okay. Alright, to do wrist carry you need to sit down with your legs crossed Indian style and let two people hold a long stick that’s round. Put your wrist on the stick and hold your arm, let them carry you and hang on as long as you can. Seal hop is my favorite. All you have to do is lay down flat on your stomach and get in a push up position. Move forward by pushing with your feet, using your abs the same time, and do half way pushups.

Native Youth Olympics is a sport to test how good of a hunter you are.  One foot high kick and two foot is to see how high and far you can jump.  Stick pull is for how strong you are and seal hop is like for conditioning. These games have been going on for more than a century. Teach these events to your friends, you’ll have lots of fun doing each event.

My favorite place is at my Iglutalik camp. My family goes to camp every summer to gather food, go on a family outing, or just to get away from Koyuk. During the summer we get to the camp by boat and during the winter we go with snow machines. In the summer we go through the Norton Bay and into the mouth of the Iglutalik and go up the river a little ways to get to the camp. In the winter, we just cut across the river ice, go through the land for a few miles and we’re at our camp!

I just love it when I get to the camp for the first time every summer. My parents built the camp on poles so it can withstand the fall storm. Across the river from the camp is a little island that is filled with crane, seagull, duck and tulik eggs. There are a lot of wild animals that we see such as: bear, moose, caribou (winter), and wolves (if your lucky!). A lot of birds fly around both day and night: swallows, tweeties, ravens, eagles, mouse hawks, hawks, cranes, seagulls, swans, geese, and ducks at the camp every summer.

We also hear a lot of different sounds during the day and before we go to bed. During the day, we hear a lot of boats passing all day long. Once my younger sister wakes up for the day, she makes a lot of noise either talking all day or playing with her dog. After my parents cut up the fish they caught, they throw the fish bones and heads in the river. After a few minutes, hungry seagulls come around making the noise they make fighting for fish eggs. Before we go to bed, lying and tell stories, all we hear are the loon ducks “crying.”

When we first get to the camp we can smell the fresh willows that are starting to grow. Sometime I’ll smell the seal and know there is one swimming in the river.

The weather at our camp is very nice. Most of the summer, the weather is hot and sunny. With this kind of weather, we can do a lot of different things such as: going swimming, taking a boat ride more up the river to eat, pick berries or just relax in the warm sun. The temperature is like 80 degrees. In the winter, the weather is sometimes below 0! The weather is not always sunny or warm; sometimes it’s windy and rainy. On these days we just stay inside the cabin and wait for it to clear up before we can do anything.

Some of the foods that we gather at this camp are: fish, berries, moose (summer), caribou (winter), beluga, seal and ducks. My parents make sure they get enough food to last us the winter.

At this camp we do a lot of different things to keep us busy. The land is flat so us kids, we go behind the cabin to play Eskimo baseball. Older people visit my parents when they are passing by just to sit down and drink a cup of coffee. When the day is hot, and there is my dad’s brothers kids we love to go swimming! Iglutalik is just a nice place to get away from the crazy village!

Koyuk is a small town in the nose of Alaska. The population is around 350-380, somewhere in there. Its almost as if everyone is related, but we aren’t; most of us are.  We all love to hang out with each other. We’re really close, I guess I can just say, “One big happy family!” There’s really nothing to do around here. We just find ways to entertain ourselves. Especially the boys; they’ll do anything that sounds either fun or just plain stupid. The best way I can describe them is the Alaskan Evel Knievels.

They come up with all these crazy and creative ways to do things. Hhmmmm, let’s see, they love to play basketball on our junky ball court. And water skip with snow machines. It’s kind of cool actually.  My cousins made a few video clips and posted them on “Youtube”. They’ll do pretty much anything to keep their minds busy.

We don’t have street markets or those huge malls. Instead we have stores, very small ones.  They’re so small you wouldn’t be able to get lost.  Even if you tried. But still they do have all the supplies we need, except maybe the clothes or shoe styles we want. Hehe, you know….that old school thing. There’s one very small store here, it’s like a restaurant and store combined, and it has only three tables and it also has one couch. And she also has a television there.  The name of the store is “Corinne’s Videos”, but we all know it just as “Corinne’s”.  She named the store after her cause she started off just letting people rent videos for $4 a night. But now she sells a whole lot more than what she started off with.

What is life like in your town?  What do you do to entertain yourselves?

My favorite place would have to be by a hill called Mush Bowl up the Koyuk River where my family’s camp is. I think my parents chose a perfect spot to build a camp because of all the stuff we can do and actually see. The cabin is built on the side of a hill next to Mush Bowl. Standing on the steps, you can see most of the lakes shining in the sunlight across the tundra. Throughout the day, you can see a lot of birds fly by, birds like crane, geese, swans, sea gulls, ravens, different kinds of ducks, tweeties, camp robins, and an occasional eagle or hawk. During this time of year, all the waterfowl birds (mostly ducks, geese, and swans) swim together in the shallow parts of the river in huge flocks. You can also see three other camps from our little cabin. A few boats pass heading back to town or going further up the river. We don’t really see any big animals, but there are usually signs of them hanging around when we’re not there. Like fox, moose, and bear tracks.

When the fish start running, my parents set a net for salmon, silver salmon & “humpies” right at the beach. One of my sisters and myself help my mom cut the fish to hang dry in a little cache. The cache is just like four poles standing in the ground, evenly spread out, to form a square, with a roof on it. Poles on the inside, run the length of the cache. After the fish are dried, we store them in the freezer for winter. We pick berries for the winter too. Blueberries and salmonberries are my favorite! You just have to walk around in the back of our cabin for yummy blueberries.

I have two brothers and three sisters, so it gets pretty loud. It’s my sisters and baby brother that are the loudest, but camp wouldn’t be the same without them. They’re a lot of fun when we’re swimming. I swim to a little island almost in middle of the river with my two oldest siblings. When it’s not too loud, my dad usually listens to the radio KNOM, the Nome station.

I know my camp doesn’t sound like much, but I really enjoy it there. I’ve only been to camp once this year, but I still consider it my favorite place around Koyuk. And I’m sure it will be for a long time.

There is a place not too far from my hometown that I like to go to. We mainly use boats to get to this area. We people like to call this location Iglutalik.

Iglutalik is an area where quite a few people go to fish, hunt, and camp. My family mainly camps at Iglutalik, well; we go camping mainly to fish. We fish for silver salmon, dog salmon, king salmon, humpies, trout, and white fish. The fish we like to fish for at our camp are king salmon and silver salmon.

The types of boats we use are up to 24 feet long. My family uses a 24-foot boat. It has a kind of small motor on it, I cannot remember what type of motor, but our boat has a blue canvas on it. Also, my brother uses a 14-foot Lund Boat with a 50 horse Yamaha, I think.

About three summers ago, my family built a cabin that we still have in Iglutalik. It took us the whole summer of 2005 to build this cabin. It is made from our old school supplies. We got a new school so my family was able to take from the old school. Our cabin is about 25×15 feet. I am not sure, but that is the closest I can guesstimate.

We also have a trampoline at our camp; it is exciting to jump on. The only problem for me is that my little brother gets me kicked off. He is about 6 years younger than me. I don’t know why I get kicked off our trampoline, but I do. I just think it’s cause my mom and dad think I might make my brother cry. Most of the time, I only jump on for about five minutes.

Another thing I like to do there is go swimming.  When I go swimming, Ben (my little brother- adopted) and I like to jump out of our boat. At first, Ben will be scared to jump, but he will end up jumping after a while. Also, while we are swimming, our parents might take us knee boarding. Knee boarding is pretty fun. Ben and I are the main ones who get to kneeboard.

Lastly, when we fish at our camp, we might set net or rod and reel. I kind of hate setting net because it is a lot of hard work. Also, you have to check it every day or two. On the bright side, we might catch more fish that way instead of rod and reeling. Rod and reel is fun because you can battle the fish. But, it might take a while to get a bite. I don’t go fishing very much though.

I pretty much like everything we do at camp. I didn’t mention all the stuff we do over there, but you get the idea, I think.

My favorite place around Koyuk is a camp at a beautiful place called Iglutalik. The mouth of the Iglutalik River is about 12 miles from Koyuk and we get there in the summer by an aluminum boat. We drive across the bay from Koyuk to the mouth of Iglutalik. Then we drive three more miles up the Iglutalik River to my favorite camp. The camp was my late grandmother’s camp, but now it belongs to my uncle Roger Nassuk Jr.

On nice days, there’s a mixture of beautiful bright colors. The sky is blue, grass, leaves, plants, and trees are green, the tundra is brown, and flowers are purple, pink, white, and blue. Wildlife fills the area. Many different animals roam the Iglutalik wilderness; birds-ducks, geese, swans, cranes, swallows, tweeties, seagulls, ravens, arctic turns, eagles, hawks, and owls. It’s exciting to see a few wolves wandering outside the cabin, although it rarely happens. Grizzly bears walk on the banks and beaches along the river looking for fish and berries to eat. Foxes sit on the Iglutalik hill guarding their food filled holes in the hill. Seals pop their heads in and out of the river. These animals may be beautiful, but in our culture we go subsistence hunting. We hunt moose, caribou, seal, ducks, geese, cranes, and much more. We set nets and rod and reel for fish in the river-mostly salmon. They all make delicious meals!

Across the river from the camp, there’s an island my cousins and I enjoy swimming to. Most of the time, we find duck and seagull eggs on it. We take them back to camp and either boil them or fry them. Lakes and ponds surround the nice, tall, cozy cabin made out of logs and plywood. Other camps neighboring ours are set more up or down the Iglutalik River.

After a boat ride farther up the river, we get to clear, fresh water where rocky and sandy beaches make good places to sit, have a picnic, and enjoy the wonderful view and fresh air. We find nice places on the bushy tundra filled with blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, and salmonberries. We pick as much as we need and eat them whenever we want to. They are all so delicious! Blueberries and salmonberries are my favorite. Salmonberries are orange berries that almost look like raspberries.

During the winter, we take snowmobiles to Iglutalik for either a day trip or a camping trip. Most people go in the winter to ice fish, hunt caribou, or to set traps for lynx, wolverine, and marten. To ice fish, we use jig sticks, which are sticks with a fishing line tied and wrapped around it. At the end of the fishing line, we tie a fishing hook (just like a rod and reel).  We make a hole (about the size of a basketball) in the ice with an auger or an axe and put the hook in there. We jig the stick or just let it sit until a fish is caught!  Iglutalik is a great place to make a camp. After camping and boating to other places around Koyuk, I realized that Iglutalik is my favorite place in Koyuk!

Hello students of South Carolina,

My name is Clarence Dewey from Koyuk, Alaska. I am writing about wrestling cause I’m a wrestler and have had lots of experience throughout my career. Wrestling is a physical sport; people can break bones, get hurt, tear ligaments, and receive other minor injuries. The age you can begin wrestling around Koyuk is 5th grade (10-11 years-old). But I started in fourth grade because that was the age or grade limit then (they changed it the next year to 5th grade).

Junior high on down to 5th grade goes to Unalakleet for a tournament for like a week. Unalakleet is 90 miles south of Koyuk.They wrestle kids from all over this region. High school wrestlers train all winter to go to a lot of tournaments. We travel to Kotzebue, Nome, Unalakleet, Wasilla, and finally Anchorage for the state tournament.
Our coaches (former wrestlers from long ago) work us hard. Man oh man; they make sure we can barley walk out of practice. It pays off at the end though.

The way we travel to different places is by a small plane. The plane is a twin engine that holds 9 passengers. We take warm gear, cause the planes sometimes are cold and for safety-just in case it crashes. Our airports are about a mile long and made of gravel. The way we get down to the schools is by snow machines, ATV’s, and trucks.

We overnight at the school, so we bring our own sleeping bags and sleep in the classrooms. Sleeping on the floor is pretty hard, and I tend to get sore the next day.