These block prints are from a small book created by Romer and Riordan as part of their project. It was edited, designed, and Risograph printed by Riordan, and contains excerpts from the conversations and personal memories gathered, as well as a series of block prints carved by Romer in response to those memories.
first memory. It’s asking a lot of them because, you know, our stories are important. The story of their first awareness, asking them to give a story they feel is significant to explain how they understand home, that is asking a lot. But when we do share our stories it is really energizing. O’MALLEY: What were you able to learn about the way
that culture influences people’s sense of home? Jimmy, earlier you were saying there’s no such thing as homelessness in the village? RIORDAN: Not really, right? Or maybe there is, but not
in the same way as in Anchorage. As I understand it, people will be able to say they’re staying with somebody. I mean, it’s a family member. There’s couch-surfing, there’s a lot of people sleeping in the same single-room house. This is not to say that the same issues that cause homelessness don’t exist. ROMER: It’s been like that forever. People don’t have a
standard or definition of home the same as in the city. I don’t think it’s even placement in one place for the Yup’ik people. They just said, “Our home is here, like the whole
entirety of the region.”...The nomadic aspect of it brought a lot of that into it... I think because of the way you can travel and live on the land, you can place them anywhere in that region and they will call it home. Like when I come to Bethel, the first thing I do is go to the river, because it places me in the region. More than my parents’ old house, the Kuskokwim makes me feel at home. O’MALLEY: Can you draw conclusions from what you’ve
gathered?
RIORDAN: No. We’re not looking for conclusions. We’re
thinking about this project more like a sort of engine. It’s creating this energy, and we’re not trying to, it isn’t moving toward an end, or like a final, singular form or an answer to a question. But instead it’s an opportunity to form relationships and do a lot of other smaller projects, all sort of revolving around these ideas of home and memory and our initial question. It is an active conversation. ■ Julia O’Malley is a freelance writer who lives in Anchorage. Find her at juliaomalley.media. A L A S K A H U M A N ITI E S F O R U M S P R I N G 2 01 9
5