Theresa “Tiny” Devlin’s memoir offers an intimate look into an Interior life shaped by family and cultural values during a little-explored period of Alaska’s history.
“Tiny’s Stories: An Athabascan Family on the Yukon River” by Theresa “Tiny” Nellie Demientieff DevlinBy Theresa “Tiny” Nellie Demientieff Devlin. Cirque Press, 2023. 139 pages. $18
In what was surely an unusual arrangement, the entire family lived on its paddlewheel boats and barges in the summer, servicing villages that included Tanana, Ruby, Galena, Nulato, Kaltag, Shageluk, Anvik, Holy Cross, and St. Mary’s. They even traveled the Innoko River to the mining town of Flat. As Tiny writes at one point, “It amazed me, as I’m sure it did most of the people in the villages, that we all grew up to adulthood and none of us drowned.
As she got older, Tiny became more aware of how she was perceived in the world. Once, in one of the villages, she was taunted with cries of “You’re not Native!” and began to wonder why other children would say that to her. “What is it that makes a person Native? I realized then that we didn’t speak our Native language and I wondered why.”
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