Velma Wallis
Life
Velma Wallis was born in a family of thirteen children and grew up near Fort Yukon in the village of Old Crow. The village lies at the confluence of the Porcupine River in the Yukon River, about 200 kilometers northeast of Fairbanks and a few kilometers from the Arctic Circle. Wallis was educated belonging according to the traditions of their ancestors of the Athabascan language group from the Indian tribe of the Gwich'in.
She was thirteen years old when her father died. Velma Wallis left the school to help her mother in the household and in the rearing of five younger siblings. The deeper bond with her mother, who still speaks the Gwich'in language, you gave a lot of information about the history, customs and legends of their ancestors. So her grandmother had further downstream survived in her thirteenth year of life in the Circle City - area during a cold spell a famine in which their parents and other siblings, as well as many tribesmen had died. Wallis's grandmother and an aunt had up to the fishing camp can fight Chalkyitsik alone, where they were taken by a shaman. Wallis processed this family history are published in their 1993 book Two Old Women ( later German edition: Two old women).
As the smaller siblings were raised, Velma Wallis lived temporarily in the village of Venetie and took their education after. They passed an examination that corresponds to the state high school graduation, but decided to move to a secluded trapper's hut and live there largely alone. The cabin was of her father, who was active in his lifetime on the hunt for fur animals as trappers, been removed created about twelve miles from Fort Yukon in the wilderness as a base and used. Wallis remained for eleven years in this trapper's hut, and sometimes even wintered there. She tried as a fisherman, hunter and trapper.
Velma Wallis now lives with her husband John and their children Jeffrey and Laura Daagoo Brianna in Fort Yukon on the Arctic Circle.