From the Anchorage Daily News:
HOMER, Alaska — Like many Alaska Natives of her generation, Lena Andree, Todd Palin’s 87-year-old Yup’ik grandmother, grew up living between two worlds.
Her father was a Dutchman, Glass Eye Billy Bartman, a sled dog freighter in the Bristol Bay region and caretaker of the Alaska Packers saltry on the Igushik River.
Her mother was full-blooded Yup’ik, growing up in a sod-roofed barabara in the now-abandoned village of Tuklung, somewhere on the tundra between Dillingham and Togiak.
Growing up in two worlds along the Igushik River in Bristol Bay, Lena Bartman spoke broken English with her father and more fluent Yup’ik with her mother,. Later she would make a career as a translator, bridging the cultures of Dillingham, speaking English with the doctors and storekeepers and pilots, and “speaking Native” with the residents.
Turtle Talk 