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Once upon an Eskimo Time
Discover the stories of a remarkable 109-year-old Eskimo woman who grew up on the Bering Sea in northwest Alaska.
183 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1986
6 people are currently reading
103 people want to read
About the author
Edna Wilder
5 books1 followerEdna was born March 25, 1916, to Arthur and Minnie Tucker in Bluff, a small mining community on the Seward Peninsula.
Her father came from England and entered the North by way of the Chilkoot Pass during the Gold Rush stampede in 1898. Her mother was an Inupiaq Eskimo.
Her father provided for her education by obtaining books and correspondence classes from England. Much of Edna's time as a young girl was spent learning to provide food for the family by hunting, fishing, and gold mining with her father. She became a keen observer of nature during the hours she spent roaming the tundra.
Edna married her first husband, Dan Wilder, in Nome in 1941, and they moved to Fairbanks in 1942, where Dan was a draftsman for the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska. They raised their two sons, Arthur and Robert, in Fairbanks. Edna supplemented the family income by fur sewing which she learned from her mother.
Their family friend and neighbor was Ted Lambert, a well-known Alaskan artist. When she expressed an interest in his work, he extended an invitation to Edna to observe him painting. This time proved to be well spent, and Edna found herself drawing on her childhood observations of nature for material and her artistic career began.
She continued to expand her career with the addition of sculpting in wood and soapstone. In May 1967, Edna was a performing artist in The Art in Action program in the Alaska-67 Centennial Celebration at Alaskaland - now Pioneer Park - in Fairbanks.
The Fairbanks flood in 1967 presented many challenges for Edna. Her longtime home in Fairbanks was destroyed, and a new home needed to be built before winter. She lost her husband, Dan, to cancer within a few months. Her artwork became a means of making a living.
In 1970, she was invited to become the first Native instructor in the Art of Skin Sewing class at the University of Alaska. She did not feel there was an adequate textbook to cover the material she presented, so she wrote her first book entitled Secrets of Eskimo Skin Sewing.
In 1979, she married Alexander Cryan, who was her loving companion for the rest of her life. No longer needing to work full time as an artist, she began focusing on her writing.
During her time at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, she also took classes in journalism. Remembering the advice of her journalism instructors, especially Jimmy Bedford, she drew from her own background to write about her mother's lifetime, Once Upon An Eskimo Time and The Eskimo Girl and the Englishman.
(from http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/news...)
Her father came from England and entered the North by way of the Chilkoot Pass during the Gold Rush stampede in 1898. Her mother was an Inupiaq Eskimo.
Her father provided for her education by obtaining books and correspondence classes from England. Much of Edna's time as a young girl was spent learning to provide food for the family by hunting, fishing, and gold mining with her father. She became a keen observer of nature during the hours she spent roaming the tundra.
Edna married her first husband, Dan Wilder, in Nome in 1941, and they moved to Fairbanks in 1942, where Dan was a draftsman for the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska. They raised their two sons, Arthur and Robert, in Fairbanks. Edna supplemented the family income by fur sewing which she learned from her mother.
Their family friend and neighbor was Ted Lambert, a well-known Alaskan artist. When she expressed an interest in his work, he extended an invitation to Edna to observe him painting. This time proved to be well spent, and Edna found herself drawing on her childhood observations of nature for material and her artistic career began.
She continued to expand her career with the addition of sculpting in wood and soapstone. In May 1967, Edna was a performing artist in The Art in Action program in the Alaska-67 Centennial Celebration at Alaskaland - now Pioneer Park - in Fairbanks.
The Fairbanks flood in 1967 presented many challenges for Edna. Her longtime home in Fairbanks was destroyed, and a new home needed to be built before winter. She lost her husband, Dan, to cancer within a few months. Her artwork became a means of making a living.
In 1970, she was invited to become the first Native instructor in the Art of Skin Sewing class at the University of Alaska. She did not feel there was an adequate textbook to cover the material she presented, so she wrote her first book entitled Secrets of Eskimo Skin Sewing.
In 1979, she married Alexander Cryan, who was her loving companion for the rest of her life. No longer needing to work full time as an artist, she began focusing on her writing.
During her time at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, she also took classes in journalism. Remembering the advice of her journalism instructors, especially Jimmy Bedford, she drew from her own background to write about her mother's lifetime, Once Upon An Eskimo Time and The Eskimo Girl and the Englishman.
(from http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/news...)
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 18, 2022
I read this while my husband and I spent the summer in Anchorage, Alaska, and it gave me a greater appreciation for the indigenous people of the state. This book takes place much farther north than Anchorage so we didn't really experience this exact landscape but the author set the scene so beautifully, I felt like I was really there.
Edna Wilder shared this collection of episodes from her mother's life as a young girl growing up in a traditional Iñupiat village on the Norton Sound. It reads very much like an oral storyteller sharing her family history, which feels like the perfect format for this biography. She also included some traditional tribal fictional stories that I appreciated even though I didn't always understand them.
What struck me most was the way that this group lived completely in tune with nature. Every chore had a season. Don't waste anything. Be grateful for what you have. Don't take more than you need. I was stunned to see that this even extended to sharing with animals. The women of the village would raid a mouse's winter hoard for nuts or something but they would leave something they had in abundance in its place so that the mouse didn't suffer a shortage.
The strong sense of family and community was also striking. In such a harsh landscape, each person is expected to pull his or her own weight but they can also count on the community for assistance if they need it.
I could never survive in this environment but reading this book made me wish that our modern society had retained more of these traditional values. Help each other. Work hard. Respect the earth and the creatures surrounding us. It doesn't seem that difficult and yet here we are.
The oral history feel of this book won't be for everyone but I highly recommend it if you're interested. I plan to read the sequel, about the author's parents meeting for the first time (her father was English) and their life together.
Edna Wilder shared this collection of episodes from her mother's life as a young girl growing up in a traditional Iñupiat village on the Norton Sound. It reads very much like an oral storyteller sharing her family history, which feels like the perfect format for this biography. She also included some traditional tribal fictional stories that I appreciated even though I didn't always understand them.
What struck me most was the way that this group lived completely in tune with nature. Every chore had a season. Don't waste anything. Be grateful for what you have. Don't take more than you need. I was stunned to see that this even extended to sharing with animals. The women of the village would raid a mouse's winter hoard for nuts or something but they would leave something they had in abundance in its place so that the mouse didn't suffer a shortage.
The strong sense of family and community was also striking. In such a harsh landscape, each person is expected to pull his or her own weight but they can also count on the community for assistance if they need it.
I could never survive in this environment but reading this book made me wish that our modern society had retained more of these traditional values. Help each other. Work hard. Respect the earth and the creatures surrounding us. It doesn't seem that difficult and yet here we are.
The oral history feel of this book won't be for everyone but I highly recommend it if you're interested. I plan to read the sequel, about the author's parents meeting for the first time (her father was English) and their life together.
September 17, 2018
I am a high school student living in Barrow Alaska and I read this book for my Iñupiaq literature course. This book is amazing! So many things happened to Nedercook in this book. The book tells us the things that she had to go through, how she lived, and the way they lived. It tells so many details of her day by day life. I think that if anyone gets a chance to read this book they should go for it. It is truly an amazing book. One thing to know about this book is that it is a true story. I read the second book that talks about Nedercook when she was a teenager and an adult and liked it even more than this one but still recommend reading this one so you can know what life was like for her as a child.
May 6, 2019
Once Upon an Eskimo Time shares is the true story of a girl named Nedercook. The story shares what things were like for her in her daily life for one year. Her daily life consisted of hunting animals, fishing, and gathering herbs. I thought it was quite unique as you get to learn the different techniques that they use to hunt, and how technological they were when it came to using traps and different kind of tools. It's not all about the hunting either, you get to see how their culture is, and how they interact with one another as a family and village. I have thoroughly enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it, if anything I said piqued your interest. I'm a student at Kiita learning community, in Barrow, Alaska and I read this for my class.
December 29, 2018
An enlightening true story written in a matter-of-fact manner that mirrors the storytelling style of her mother and her ancestors. Wilder paints a vivid picture of a year in her mother’s life in Alaska before the first white man appears in her village. Little things that happen that year foretell the change to come. It’s bittersweet that the year is bountiful and full of the best of their way-of-life and the reader knowing it’s about to change forever.
May 28, 2023
One of the absolute best books I have ever read. The story is entirely happy, and I wish I could live in that society. The imagery, the stories within a story, the family members, and little Nedercook are perfect. This is a great example of the Indigenous literature that I want to see more of in the literary world.
December 11, 2020
Great depiction of subsistence life in Alaska and Eskimo culture.
October 30, 2022
Insight into Eskimo culture long past. I especially liked the folktales within.
Peaceful industrious society raising strong independent girls!
Peaceful industrious society raising strong independent girls!
August 30, 2023
Very sweet book and a great look into pre-European contact Alaska Native life
December 31, 2024
Not very well written, but fascinating in that someone could record first-hand stories of precontact subsistence life in Alaska.
August 22, 2019
Eskimo life and stories
A story told by a teen year old Eskimo girl of her life in the mid-1800, before white contact. Interesting book.
A story told by a teen year old Eskimo girl of her life in the mid-1800, before white contact. Interesting book.
August 23, 2014
This is one of my favorite books! It's the story of one year in the life Edna Wilder's mother when she was a child before any white people had arrived in her area of Alaska. I love the details of what life used to be like for a child in Alaska. If there were one thing I wish I could change about the book it is that whenever Edna wrote dialogue she made her ancestors sound like cave men. I wish I could have asked her why she did that as every time I read the book I am embarrassed by how the Iñupiaq people sound.
December 18, 2014
The book Once Upon an Eskimo time is a good book if you’d like to learn about the Inupiaq culture and how they survived back when there wasn’t any technology! My personal connection to this book is the hunting. I connected to the hunting stories because I've hunting the same animals they did such as: caribou, walrus, seals, and bearded seals. The only difference is that we have technology that they didn’t have such as guns, motor boats, fourwheelers, and snowmobiles.
March 4, 2015
I am a high school student and am Iñupiaq. I think that people should read this book because it shows what it would be like back in the day without any houses and lights on the tundra. I think that it would be cool to hunt without any guns and I think it would be cool to hunt with bow arrows and spears how our ancestors did it. One of my favorite parts of this book are the stories that her dad tells her. They are traditional Iñupiat stories that I had never heard before.
August 21, 2013
What a beautiful, simple honest book about how Eskimos lived and survived in the past. It explained some ways I had wondered about, and included information about old healing methods using tundra plants and tundra foods.
Now I want to buy The Secrets of Skin Sewing. Edna's wealth of lore, history and knowledge needs to be preserved and shared.
Now I want to buy The Secrets of Skin Sewing. Edna's wealth of lore, history and knowledge needs to be preserved and shared.
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April 15, 2013Great book covering a year in the Alaska tundra.
January 13, 2014
This is the first 5 star I've given. I will reread this book anytime! Such a great depiction of that time for Natives! Great storyteller! Great work!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews