KNBA - Anchorage

Toksook Bay, on Nelson Island in Western Alaska, is home to Yupik language, hunting, boating — and social media sensation “Noah Loves Kristy”, a couple married for almost 20 years.

Noah and Kristy Lincoln have six kids, plus a brand-new granddaughter. In their spare time, they reenact scenes from movies and TV shows with a twist of Alaska Native humor.

So far, they have over 40,000 followers on Facebook and 20,000 on TikTok. And it all began while they were out hunting for geese.

“We had our son take the camera and start recording,” Noah said. “It was all natural.”

Once the video rolled, Noah asked Kristy to do different bird calls. First, she made raven and goose calls. Then there was a request to mimic a mating swan.

“Be a sexy swan,” said Noah to Kristy in the video. Kristy broke out in laughter, as she made lots of silly sounds.

They posted the video to their Facebook page, where it was shared and reshared hundreds of times. It was then that Noah and Kristy knew they were on to something big.

“I thought, ‘Man, we can get so many people to laugh,’” Noah said. “Just me and my wife make the videos.”

Since the release of the popular show “Reservation Dogs” on Hulu, Indigenous humor has been trending on social media. But Native humor is a little different, and often draws upon subsistence hunting.

“Sixteen years I’ve been married. And my wife said she don’t love me anymore,” Noah pouts in one video. The door opens, and Kristy shouts back, “All I said is, ‘you’re not getting a new gun!’”

The videos have even popularized Kristy’s catchphrase “Gee, whiz,” delivered with a touch of sarcasm, which their social media followers tend to mimic in response to things Noah complains about in their videos.

Kristy enjoys acting in the videos with her husband but said it’s Noah who comes up with the ideas.

“It just comes out of the blue,” Kristy said, giggling.

But life wasn’t always full of laughter for Noah.

“I was heavily into alcohol, and I couldn’t keep a job,” Noah said.

After realizing what his addiction was doing to his family, Noah swore off alcohol for good. When asked if he is still sober, Noah is always happy to respond.

“I am so happy to say, ‘Yes,’” he said.

It also makes Noah happy that their videos bring joy to people, especially those who have their own struggles.

“There’s this lady who lost her daughter. She was grieving for so long, she couldn’t be happy because she lost her daughter, and she came across our videos,” he said. “She started looking through the videos and she found herself laughing and laughing, like she forgot that she was grieving.”

Noah said he’s glad their videos give her hope and healing.

“And that really has opened my eyes and my heart,” he said, getting a little choked-up as he spoke. “Social media is really strong. And I believe laughter is medicine.”

Anthony Lekanof from St. George Island is a “Noah Loves Kristy” fan. He said the couple has paved the way for other Indigenous storytellers.

“If you look among the Indigenous creators and comedians, we don’t have a whole lot,” said Lekanof, who believes Noah and Kristy are an inspiration to up-and-coming artists, whether they pursue comedy or acting. “It really enriches the Indigenous spirit that we have within Alaska, based on how relatable Noah and Kristy are.”

Lekanof said some of the videos bring back memories of his own upbringing on the Pribilof Islands.

Noah and Kristy also make it a point to sprinkle in messages of inspiration and hope — showing that at the end of the day, family and faith are everything.

As Noah talked about the spiritual side of producing “Noah Loves Kristy,” he spoke first in Yugtun, the Yup’ik language, then translated what he said.

“I thank God for everything,” said Noah in English. “Everything happens for a reason for his purpose, thank you Lord.”

With all of the fame and notoriety that comes with their popular skits, Noah and Kristy Lincoln are proud to say they remain humble and happy in Toksook Bay, surrounded by their family and the wilderness.

The Northwest Arctic Borough Search and Rescue Team planned to set out at first light Monday morning to look for Thomas Brown, one of two missing teenagers who left Kotzebue a week ago on a snowmachine trip to Noorvik.

Brown was traveling with his companion, Josiah Ballot of Selawik. Both are 18.

A private plane spotted Ballot’s snowmachine on Friday afternoon about 28 miles south of Kotzebue, near some GCI towers.

Walter Sampson, a longtime member of the search and rescue team, said Ballot was found a short time later taking cover by a pressure ridge that had formed on the sea ice.

“The airplane landed close by and happened to be in the general area and looked under the chunks of ice and there, there he was,” Sampson said.

Sampson said the ridge of ice, which protected Ballot from winds and 50-below wind chills, probably saved his life. He was medevaced to Anchorage for treatment of hypothermia and severe frostbite.

Sampson said the cold weather has also been hard on ground teams.

“People coming in with frostbites on their faces, with cold hands and other problems. When they come back, that doesn’t stop them.” Sampson said. “That’s how the community shows love to the people they’re looking for.”

The Northwest Arctic Borough Search and Rescue team has about 40 volunteers. Community members have brought in a steady supply of cooked dishes for the team, prepared pocket-sized packets of snacks for the trail and made breakfast every day. Some have shared warm clothing with crew members, while others have helped to maintain snowmachines.

“It’s a search that everybody comes together to work together,” Sampson said. “We also have search teams out in Noorvik, Buckland, Selawik that are also working out of those villages.”

Samson said crews will continue looking as long as possible — and will need help in the coming days with donations for fuel and other supplies.

Alaskans are mourning the loss of a North Slope leader who grew up running sled dog teams to collect firewood along the Arctic coast and came of age in the time of snowmachines, borough governments and Native corporations.

Oliver Aveogan Leavitt died Sunday at the age of 79.

Oliver Leavitt was a whaling captain and a cultural beacon for his people, fluent in Inupiaq and known for his ability to make skin whaling boats, or umiaks, without a blueprint.

Richard Glenn, an executive vice president at the Arctic Slope Regional Corp., called Leavitt his mentor. The two men served together on the board and in management roles.

“Without a piece of paper in your hand, to go from dimensional woods, hard woods, to end up with a whaling boat is a skill,” he said.

Glenn said he admired Leavitt for his ability to fight for his region — and to move comfortably from the boardroom to both the whaling camp and the halls of Washington, D.C.

“He was adept at it. He made it effortless,” Glenn said. “He has a diplomat’s skill, but he also has a hard-won, nuts-and-bolts kind of education.”

Leavitt used that education to help turn ASRC into Alaska’s largest private company.

Former Democratic state Sen. Willie Hensley, a leader in Alaska Natives’ land claims fight, met Leavitt when he got out of the Army.

“I’ve known him for 50 years,” Hensley said.

After Leavitt’s military service, Hensley said, he dedicated himself to a life of public service — working to form a new borough, teaming up with other leaders to turn ASRC into a company that earns billions in revenues every year.

“He was persistent,” Hensley said. “And in order to do the things he had to do, he had to work hard and practically camped in Washington, D.C.”

Hensley said one of Leavitt’s biggest accomplishments was his battle to help the North Slope Borough gain access to a gas field controlled by the U.S. Navy. That access enabled the borough to bring heat and power to homes in the region.

Although Hensley was from Kotzebue, a community on the northwest coast of Alaska, he said the two men bonded over their upbringing — growing up in a time when there were no modern amenities, just lots of hard work.

“The reason we are good friends:  I understand exactly what he was saying,” Hensley said.

Hensley said Leavitt was passionate about improving life in the Arctic. Although they didn’t always agree about how to do this, their friendship endured. Hensley was at Leavitt’s side to offer comfort when he died in his home village of Utqiaġvik, surrounded by loved ones.

On Oct. 22, the water pressure in St. George — a community of about 35 in the Pribilofs — suddenly dropped, and the water became unfit to drink.

“It’s been pretty murky,” Anastasia Kashevarof said. “It’s brown even boiling it. I don’t trust it to wash my dishes.”

She said supplies of bottled water went fast. Some homes were unaffected, but most had to haul 5-gallon buckets of water from the public safety building to their homes to flush toilets and mop floors.

As a working mom and a mother of two, Kashevarof said it became difficult to keep up with it all.

“Trying to find your friend’s house that has a good supply of running water so I can borrow their shower to bathe my family,” she said.

Tribes, Native corporations and other groups donated bottled water, which helped. But as the days wore on, city crew still couldn’t pinpoint the leak.

Mark Merculief, the mayor of St. George, said the problem was a mystery until Nov. 16, when water engineers arrived to track it down.

“We’ve narrowed it down to a break, like a one-inch line to the old houses,” Merculief said.

When the crew dug into the ground, they were shocked at what they found — a clean break in the pipe that was right on top of a huge rock.

Merculief began to wonder if the line was damaged in an earthquake that gave St. George a stiff jolt just a few days before the water system failed.

“The way the break was, you couldn’t have a cleaner cut go through,” he said. “We thought, ‘Wow, it wouldn’t take much to break this with the amount of stress this was under.’”

It took a day to repair the line. But the problems aren’t over yet.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation has issued a boil water notice. Cindy Christian, a drinking water program manager for DEC, said it takes time to lift an order.

“They’ll be running chlorine through the system to disinfect the water lines,” she said. “As soon as we get three satisfactory samples, we will be able to lift the boil water notice as long as they maintain pressure.”

It may be a while for things to go completely back to normal, but Kashevarof said she feels grateful to the city crew and engineers for their hard work.

“I know it’s frustrating for everyone in the community, especially the city workers trying to resolve this issue,” she said.

As for the mayor, he sees this incident as a learning experience.

“You got to know the ins and out of your systems here, and that’s a great way to learn it, and also to be able to in the future in meetings with — whether it’s federal or state agencies — to be able to explain situations like that,” said Merculief.

The exact cause of the water line failure may never be known.

As holidays go, Thanksgiving is fairly new, far removed from a time when expressing gratitude was a bigger part of daily life.

Speakers of Alaska’s Indigenous languages say they feel more ties to those times, due in large part to their close connection with the land.

For Ossie Kairaiuak, the word quyana, which means thank you in his Yup’ik language, Yugtun, has deeper layers of meaning – one with roots to a culture of sharing food, gathered from the land and the sea.

Kairaiuaik is part of Pamyua, one of Alaska’s most popular Indigenous music groups, known for its blend of traditional Yup’ik songs and drumming with African American harmonies.

Kairaiuaik’s music is inspired by his childhood in Chefornak, a community that sits on top of an expanse of tundra in Southwest Alaska. He says one of his first lessons on gratitude followed a successful seal hunt.

“As I got older, I was able to help my father more,” he said. “And I watched him butcher seals that my brothers had caught. And then he would hand me the choice parts, which are the shoulders of the seal, and he would say, ‘Kita,’ which means ‘here’ in Yup’ik. Kita would be followed by instructions to deliver the meat to an elderly couple.”

Kairaiuaik set out to their home with his hands full of seal meat and a heart that overflowed with joy.

“And I gently used my feet to knock on their door,” said Kairaiuaik, who was greeted by an outpouring of gratitude in Yugtun. “Quyanqvaa! Thank you so much.”

Kairaiuaik says, every quyana he heard was like a blessing that multiplied throughout his life, inspiring him and other hunters to return with food to share. It was a reciprocal, cyclical relationship that was almost sacred – that elders, when gifted with a piece of meat would often say, “Oh, boy. The one we never see has given us a gift,” — a reference to the Creator.

X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell says the word for thank you in Lingít was also an expression of love and humility.

“I think the word has ancient origins,” said Twitchell, who has dedicated his life to preserving and sharing knowledge about the languages and cultures of Southeast Alaska.

He says the word gunalchéesh is related to a verb about making something possible, as in “Haa tóoch lichéesh,” which means “We believe it’s possible.”

Twitchell says he and other language experts have a theory that gunalcheésh was shorthand for a longer phrase, “It would not be possible without you,” which also makes it a gesture of acknowledgement – a way of making someone feel loved and valued.

Twitchell says the word gunalchéesh also brings to mind elders he’s worked with and clan relationships.

“I think about the ways we can show gratitude and help one another, and the ways that we support each other, through our actions and through respect and love,” said Twitchell, who says the essence of gunalchéesh is kindness and love.

“Some of our elders like the late Kingeestí, David Katseek, used to talk about the power of this phrase, sometimes by dragging out the last syllable.”

The last syllable of the Gwich’in word, mahsi’choo, is also drawn out.

“It isn’t just a casual thank you. It’s mahsi’ choo,” says Kay Wallis, emphasizing the last syllable. “It means so much to me, your kindness.”

Wallis is a traditional healer who was born in Fort Yukon but raised in various foster homes around Alaska. She says mahsi’choo is a word that always connects her to her cultural identity.

Wallis believes mahsi’choo is a word that radiates spiritual energy. She says her people’s long history of persevering through long, harsh Interior winters requires a spirit of gratitude – which her people have drawn upon to survive sickness, trauma and famine.

“I’m 78, and so when I talk about my elders, most of them have passed. But they all remember hunger. They remember the starvation period,” she said. “And then when somebody would just share a bone with them, a moose bone, a caribou bone, a piece of fish.”

Wallis says most of us today have never known such hardship and the importance of sharing whatever you have to give, no matter how little it is.

“Mahsi’choo,” she repeated for emphasis. “It meant so much. You’re keeping me alive. You’re keeping my family alive. Thank you from my heart.”

Wallis says gratitude was once a way of life, where thanks were given at every opportunity.

“You thank the sun for going down and coming up,” she said. “Thank you for the light. We’re so grateful for the light. Thank you, Creator. Mahsi’ choo, Creator.”

Wallis says Thanksgiving is the forerunner of the solstice on December 21, when the sun’s rays return to warm the earth and infuse words like mahsi’choo, quyana and gunalchéesh with love, light and life.

The Alaska Native Sisterhood honored Ethel Aanwoogeex’ Lund as a champion for Native health care at a memorial service in Juneau on Friday. Lund died earlier this month at the age of 91.

Lund grew up in Wrangell, the daughter of a Lingít mother from a prominent family and a Swedish fisherman father.

In 1975, she used her clout as an ANS officer to help found the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, which grew into one of the largest Native-run health care organizations in the country.

“She had a great big heart for everybody,” said Marcelo Quinto, who first met Lund at a joint convention of the Alaska Native Sisterhood and Brotherhood.

“She was a smart gal. And she was determined for sure,” Quinto said. “She was probably one of the nicest people I ever met in my life. She was just a real lady.”

Quinto is 81, and most recently served with Lund on the Healing Hand Foundation board. He said they often shared stories about the difficulties of getting medical care when they were growing up.

Quinto believes the death of Lund’s mother from tuberculosis fueled her passion for health care.

In a 2020 interview with KSTK Radio, Lund talked about her own battle with TB while she was in nursing school in Portland.

“Nowadays, you just have to take some pills once a week,” she said. “I had to stay in the hospital for a year-and-a-half in bed. That really made me kind of angry.”

TB put an end to her schooling and other dreams. She also spoke about a boyfriend she had but could only see from her hospital window. It wasn’t long before the boyfriend fell in love and married someone else.

Lund eventually recovered, became a medical transcriber, got married and had three children.

In her later years, one of her passions was integrating traditional and modern medicine. Her grandfather would take her to the forest to teach her about the healing power of plants.

“The devil’s club,” she said. “That’s a magic plant to our people.”

Lund spent her last years at the Sitka Pioneer Home and talked about her hopes that a new generation of Alaska Native medical professionals would incorporate traditional healing into their work.

In 2020, she was named Grand President Emeritus of the Alaska Native Sisterhood. She also served as a founding member of the Sealaska board of directors and was executive vice president of the Tlingit and Haida Tribes of Alaska.