(NOME, AK) – Alaska Native author Ernestine Hayes was in Nome to present a writing workshop and to discuss her work Monday night. The author is known for writing that weaves together her life experience and Alaska Native folklore.
She sat down with KNOM’s Maddie Winchester to talk about her work and her creative process. Hayes says Alaska Native involvement in the literary arts is ‘insufficient.’
“Alaska native voices should be instrumental in telling Alaska Native stories, Alaska Native history, all aspects of Alaska Native life,” said Hayes.
In that regard, Hayes said her newest book Tao of Raven draws from the well-known Alaska Native story about Raven and the box of daylight.
“He tricked his way into an old man’s house and stole the boxes of light – his grandfather’s treasure – that were in that house.”
She said her own life experience is also part of the story.
“We never hear it from the perspective of that brokenhearted grandparent and what they must have felt when Raven stole their treasure and left them,” she explained. “I became a grandmother, and I realized there was more to that story than simply something to entertain a child.”
Hayes and her mother moved from Southeast Alaska to California when she was fifteen. She has said the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act is what drew her back to the state after a 25-year absence – an experience she connects to another well-known story.
“It came to me, after I came back to Juneau, that the story of the woman who married a bear, who was gone for such a long time and returned, was one of the metaphors of my life,” said Hayes. “It’s difficult to know whether it would have been a good thing to change that metaphor.”
Born near Juneau, Ernestine Hayes is a member of the Tlingit Kaagwaataan clan. She was in Nome to present her work.
*This story was reported with help from Emily Russell and Maddie Winchester.
