In Nome, one educator is ensuring that Native traditions aren’t just remembered, they’re lived.
Inside the halls of Nome-Beltz Middle-High School, most classrooms look the same. Rows of seats and desks face the front of the room, where teachers lecture by a whiteboard or from their desks. But one room stands out. It’s open and spacious, more like a workshop than a classroom.
This is Phyllis Walluk’s space. She’s the cultural arts instructor at the high school. Before that, she taught preschool, meaning that over the years she’s watched generations of students pass through her classes.
“They're still coming through the school, but instead of teaching the basic skills they need for school, now I'm teaching them to sew, to bead. So, I'm still teaching them the life skills,” Walluk said.
Walluk said she used to bring seals her son hunted to the school, where she taught students how to butcher and prepare them.
“They were able to take some seal meat home that they helped cut, and some students had never touched or seen,” Walluk said. “So, it was good for them to have that hands on. Not just sewing and beading.”
A giant, double-door refrigerator hummed along a wall in the class. It’s filled with fish that the students will learn how to smoke. Walluk said the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is also donating musk ox meat for her class, but she said she needs some help to butcher it.
“I can butcher everything else, but I've never done a musk ox. So it would be nice if somebody would come forward and say they can help,” Walluk said.
In her role, Walluk also teaches the students Native languages. Being from Gambell, she's a fluent St. Lawrence Island Yupik speaker. In most of the Bering Strait region though, various dialects of Inupiaq are the most common language. So, Walluk teaches both.
“I don't fluently speak it. I just know some words, but you know to incorporate that into my lessons too,” Walluk said. “Because, you know, not all our students are St. Lawrence Island Yupiks.”
Being a cultural arts instructor is a tradition for Walluk’s family. She said everything she knows comes from them, especially her mother.
“She worked exactly where I was. So that was over 30 years ago. So she was teaching here in this same classroom when I was in high school,” Walluk said.
Walluk has been teaching in Nome for over 30 years. She said her love for students is what keeps her from retiring.
“And like today, you know, the bell rang and that some of the girls just said, ‘ah, already time to go!’ And for me to hear that, it makes me happy that they like being in here,” Walluk said.
For Walluk, passing on these traditions isn’t just a job. It’s a way of keeping the region’s culture alive, one student at a time.
