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Cold River Spirits
A wryly humorous and inspirational story about a proud Alaska Native family struggling to survive in two worlds. Athabascan Sam and Louise Harper and their ten children make a soul-grinding transition into a modern white-dominated society where they face bigotry, poverty, and illness.
Jan Harper Haines explores her family’s powerful conflicts between the past and the future. Her grandmother Louise, the matriarch, adheres to ancient traditions and believes the spirit of all Athabascans will return one day to the waters of the Yukon River. Yet, Louise’s own daughter, the author’s mother, moves into the future becoming the first Native woman to graduate from the University of Alaska.
Jan Harper Haines explores her family’s powerful conflicts between the past and the future. Her grandmother Louise, the matriarch, adheres to ancient traditions and believes the spirit of all Athabascans will return one day to the waters of the Yukon River. Yet, Louise’s own daughter, the author’s mother, moves into the future becoming the first Native woman to graduate from the University of Alaska.
207 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 2000
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November 13, 2021
Jan Harper-Haines’ Cold River Spirits is fascinating and filled with informative details as an ethnographic book which gives a good picture of the Athabascan struggles and experiences which clashed with other cultures.
Louise had the strength necessary to be an Athabaskan woman who raised a daughter, Flora Jane, who became the first Alaska Native to graduate from the University of Alaska.
Cold River Spirits shows different levels of past and present generations through the dynamics of human interaction by crossing cultural lines as well as racial ones
Haines demonstrates that Athabascan culture's children belong to the mother’s clan instead of the fathers, who were expected to live with the wife’s family. During that time husbands would hunt with the sister’s brother, who would become hunting partners for life. The mother’s brother would train the sister’s children which would perpetuate their customs and clan. However, Harper’s family took a completely different direction. It became a mix of Athabaskan life mixed along with Western influence.
Harper deepened my understanding of death:
“unbidden—her mother telling her about her great grandmother. When the woman was old, about forty-five, weary, and ill, she decided she’d had enough. It was time for the big sleep. So she gave a party for her best friends, serving tea and food and giving each a gift. Moccasins, mittens, a jacket, beads, something of hers. After the guests left the woman’s son took her to a shelter he had built on the frozen . There, alone, she spent her final hours. So simple, Louise thought." Nowadays, hospitals hook you up to all kinds of tubes,
Furthermore, Harper-Haines describes the beauty of departure as a natural event of live and death. She describes death as simple and almost sweet - a big sleep, as hibernating bears. The party seemed to be more of a happy description to the hereafter than a sad event. Almost like a rite of passage, whereas the elder is leaving or separating from the live group to join the dead group. The final hours are the consummation by being alone in the frozen river shelter.
Emilia En L'air, author of Suitcase to Heaven
Louise had the strength necessary to be an Athabaskan woman who raised a daughter, Flora Jane, who became the first Alaska Native to graduate from the University of Alaska.
Cold River Spirits shows different levels of past and present generations through the dynamics of human interaction by crossing cultural lines as well as racial ones
Haines demonstrates that Athabascan culture's children belong to the mother’s clan instead of the fathers, who were expected to live with the wife’s family. During that time husbands would hunt with the sister’s brother, who would become hunting partners for life. The mother’s brother would train the sister’s children which would perpetuate their customs and clan. However, Harper’s family took a completely different direction. It became a mix of Athabaskan life mixed along with Western influence.
Harper deepened my understanding of death:
“unbidden—her mother telling her about her great grandmother. When the woman was old, about forty-five, weary, and ill, she decided she’d had enough. It was time for the big sleep. So she gave a party for her best friends, serving tea and food and giving each a gift. Moccasins, mittens, a jacket, beads, something of hers. After the guests left the woman’s son took her to a shelter he had built on the frozen . There, alone, she spent her final hours. So simple, Louise thought." Nowadays, hospitals hook you up to all kinds of tubes,
Furthermore, Harper-Haines describes the beauty of departure as a natural event of live and death. She describes death as simple and almost sweet - a big sleep, as hibernating bears. The party seemed to be more of a happy description to the hereafter than a sad event. Almost like a rite of passage, whereas the elder is leaving or separating from the live group to join the dead group. The final hours are the consummation by being alone in the frozen river shelter.
Emilia En L'air, author of Suitcase to Heaven
Displaying 1 of 1 review