After leaving academia, I took some time to pursue other interests. I was particularly happy to have so much more time to be creative and pursue my passion for fibre arts and doing my own reading about the history of knitting, embroidery, crocheting, etc in women’s lives. I joined the local needlework guild, where I learned new techniques. I taught myself needle tatting—a skill that would be useful in a practical way a few years later when I was hired to teach this and other skills at a local yarn shop. I was having to adjust to a new sort of life, which was sometimes difficult, but I was glad to be out of academia. However, after a year or two, when it was suggested to me that I start an interdisciplinary PhD course of study with a focus on language preservation, I allowed myself to be talked into it, against my better judgement and in spite of my misgivings. I was also offered a job in the Alaska Native Language Center (ANLC), which I accepted.
This all turned out to be a mistake, of course, for a few reasons. Some of the same old stuff would turn out to be an issue again as far as the Native-White tension goes. One day, I had a frank discussion with a younger faculty member in ANLC, who had brought in close to a million dollars in grant money. Under normal circumstances, this would have provided him with a secure track to tenure, but in this case, because he was a White guy, he was not even on that track. He finally had to apply for a position in the education department as a threat to ANLC before they relented and put him on the tenure track. ANLC had a bunch of White guys as senior faculty, but they were trying to get more Native people in there. This was a commendable goal, but was often counterproductive. In the case of my teacher, for instance, she was not given proper teacher training and did not know how to proceed. Students dropped away after the first year. That wasn’t the only problem, however.
In this new program, which I was building from scratch, I would be working with her again, but long fieldwork trips to Village would not be required—we could work together in Fairbanks. But then she got arrested again. She and her husband had started drinking again during their first year in Fairbanks. He stopped, but she had difficulty controlling her drinking. As someone who used to have the same problem, I understood this and had some empathy. She’d gotten arrested for driving under the influence a few years before and had continued to get caught violating her probation. So it was again. At a committee meeting, where we were discussing how I should proceed under the circumstances, one of the members suggested I could work with her in the jail. I wondered what the hell I was doing.
In the end, it didn’t matter. I was gaining a deeper understanding of my mistake when one day at work, when she was out of jail and back in the office, she called me over. I went in and wondered what that smell was. She reached around into a bookcase, pulled out a plastic cup, and took a long drink, before telling me that she’d just learned her contract would not be renewed when it was up, so she wouldn’t be back. I knew I was done with academic life.
I left the job at ANLC when one day, my pay check was not in the pile. When the admin person inquired about this, she found out that someone had not submitted the proper paperwork or something. I was told not to worry—it would show up eventually. Indeed. I told them they could combine it with my last check, because I was done.
