'Two Old Women' author publishes memoir

Velma Wallis had a hard story to tell, one of alcoholism and cultural struggles, but the Fort Yukon author didn't shy away from the truths many have tried to ignore.

During the past 10 years, Wallis has become an international best-selling and award-winning author with "Two Old Women" and "Bird Girl and the Man who Followed the Sun," both based on Athabaskan legends. This week she is coming to Palmer's Fireside Books with her newest publication, a memoir that may surprise her fans with its honest and sometimes painful tales.

"Raising Ourselves: A Gwich'in Coming of Age Story from the Yukon River" is the story of how Wallis, the sixth of 13 children, grew up in a two-room log cabin in the remote village of Fort Yukon. It describes how she and her siblings struggled to survive in a community drowning in alcohol, and it tells of her growing interest in her ancestry and the traditional lifestyle of the Gwich'in.

Like many memoir authors, Wallis admits she was a little nervous about how her book would be received by her family, her community and her readers.

"Maybe about a week before it got published I thought to myself, 'Am I doing the right thing?'" Wallis said last week from her Fort Yukon home.

But since the book was released last month, she said she has been taken aback by the encouragement and gratitude she has received from readers. She said her mother long ago gave her blessing, telling her, "If it is going to heal you, talk about it."

Once the book was published, her other siblings accepted it and, in some cases, found it reopening old wounds that could perhaps heal better once exposed to air.

Even those few who were angry with Wallis for sharing Athabaskan legends in her first two books have responded differently to "Raising Ourselves."

"One woman hadn't talked to me in years, which I always felt bad about because she is a relative. She came up to me and said, 'Thank you for writing this book,'" Wallis said.

In another case, a Native leader approached Wallis at the recent Alaska Federation of Natives conference in Anchorage. He said Natives have spent millions of dollars on sobriety and have only been providing Band-Aids. He told her that instead they should have spent that money buying copies of her book and putting them into every Native home in the state.

"He really flattered me," Wallis said.

It is not just here in Alaska that Wallis is getting this kind of reception, however. She has spent the past weeks traveling through Washington and Oregon for book signings.

"I was a little leery about it when I started going outside Alaska," Wallis said. But in communities like Seattle and Longview, Wash., she said she found people, both Native and non-Native, who identified with her story on many different levels. One woman contacted her to tell her that the book had inspired her to share her own dark story of incest. Wallis said again and again readers are coming to her with stories from their own lives that mirror those she shares in "Raising Ourselves."

"It's amazing to me," she said. "It spells out that there is a lot of hurt out there, especially in the villages. There is a lot that hasn't been resolved that is crippling the villages."

Wallis said several incidents led her to eventually write the story of her own family and life. She recalled how when Bill Clinton was president he visited an Indian reservation in the Lower 48 and described how appalled he was by the Third World conditions there.

"I thought, 'How ignorant can you get?'" Wallis said.

Later, when she was touring the country with her first book, "Two Old Women," she was at a book signing in Seattle when a man raised his hand during the question-and-answer period. He said he had been a physician in an Alaska village and wanted to know why she was only writing the nice, pleasant stories about Natives. He said he had been appalled by the social and alcohol problems there and wanted to know why she wasn't addressing those realities.

"A lot of people out there recognize that yes, Native Americans are strong people, but there is one debilitating disease that is killing us left and right," Wallis said.

But more than anything, she said, she was inspired to write the book by the death of her brother, Barry.

"Even though I put myself out there for a lot of criticism … I had to do it. Number one because I had to heal, I had to find a way out of this darkness that descended upon me after my brother died," she said.

Throughout the memoir, Wallis describes how her brother encouraged her to reach beyond the village and how, in the end, he faced death alone.

It is this kind of touching honesty that has earned the book rave reviews.

"Wow! Velma Wallis' unsentimental honesty stuns the reader as she shares the good, the bad, and the ugly of growing up Native in Alaska," wrote author Priscilla Cogan. "This is an eye-opener, a fascinating and compelling story."

Author Jan Harper-Haines described the book as a "riveting account of Gwich'in village life, revealing peril and hardships as well as innocence and mysticism."

The hardback book, published by Epicenter Press, sells for $19.95.