English Transcription:
Katie Basile: I’m going to move on to the weather.
Sam Berlin: Then to weather.
Annie Nelson: To weather.
Sam: She’s going to ask about our weather outside.
Katie: What changes have you noticed in weather patterns in your lifetime?
Sam: In your life, how has the weather changed?
Annie: Here are the strange names that we were born in time to see:
Me, Aluaryaq, Yuk’ucak, Puk’aq’s wife Qamiq’aq, with us, the sun always shone hot in the summer.
Now it’s gone.
In our early childhood long before we got married.
Lowtide on the Kuskokwim would also be like this.
The sun dried the sand.
As we went holding hands there, we’d almost reach it [?].
People over there. I’d tell them, "Let’s listen to them."
We’d sit and hear strange names. Meqsuguaq... only old men, you know the ones who walk supporting themselves with their knees.
No [standing] straight, only like this.
Meqsuguaq, Qaluvialler, Aangiiyaaq, Masualuk, Uutartuyuilnguq.
They’d speak of things.
And one of them, I’ve recognized it more clearly since yesterday.
Then I heard first that a girl froze to death.
Then the next day I heard of a man, then that evening a woman.
And what is this? Bethel, Kwethluk.
When I heard of those, I sat and pondered
One of those old men, after pulling back his sleeve like this, filled his hand with sand.
Then after filling it, he scattered them saying this:
"How pitiful, our descendants. There will be this many deaths."
Now, we’re standing in the middle of it.
Then in addition to that
We didn’t go away after he did that, and after they spoke
Though they wanted to go, I’d hold them back. I said to them, "What did he say? We’ll remember it in the future."
Some were eager to go, "You won’t experience them."
I ignored them and stayed. Then one of them said
"How pitiful, our descendants. When the land becomes thin, it won’t be cold anymore. Also, the sun will rotate."
I was amazed yesterday. It [?].
Also, though my friends were eager to go, "They’re nothing. You won’t experience them."
I’d tell them, "If I live long enough..." "You won’t live long enough."
I let them go and they went.
One of them said, "When the land is thin, when it doesn’t get cold anymore..."
You see, I can’t say the name of this wind in Yup’ik.
They said the wind wouldn’t shift.
They said the weather would change, and they said the specific wind in Yup’ik.
They said when the wind stops shifting, from then, it will rain without shifting, snowing.
I don’t know the Yup’ik name for that certain wind.
It doesn’t shift.
Before winter, it would rain hard from there.
I would tell these without keeping it to myself
"It’s supposed to rain from the south. Long ago when I was growing up, the rain came from the south. The cold came from the north."
What they said would change changed.
After they said that, they said that they wind would blow from one direction.
They said that the world would change, including the people.
And they said that those with mothers will start killing their mothers or their relatives.
That’s the end of that.
