A Place For Winter: Paul Tiulana's Story by Vivian Senungetuk and Paul Tiulana SOLD OUT/Please locate another source to purchase.

This is a book about an Eskimo man, but it is not an anthropology book. It is a story for every American who would like to learn about a way of life that existed in the Western Hemisphere long before “the American way” came along. It is the autobiography of a heroic character who can teach us something about ourselves by reflecting upon the human experience in a different light.

Paul Tiulana lives in Anchorage, Alaska with his wife, Clara, children and grandchildren. He relates his early life on King Island, a mountain rising out of the Bering Sea thirty-five miles off the coast of northwestern Alaska. He describes the village of King Island, a settlement of about 225 people who lived a good life in harmony with the arctic and its resources. He tells how he was trained as a child to behave, to take care of himself on the mountain and on the ice, to hunt, to respect the traditions of his people and to live as Eskimo people had lived since the beginning of time. He recalls the coming of the first white man to the island, a priest, and the effects of World War II on his people.

Paul was drafted into World War II and stationed in Nome. While in the service longshoring military supplies, he was injured in an accident. His leg was broken and eventually had to be amputated. He tells us how he learned to hunt with a wooden leg back at King Island.

There is no one living on King Island now. The United States government encouraged the Eskimo people to leave the village in the late nineteen fifties for the dubious benefits of more populated areas. Paul has spent the last twenty years living in the city. He has made the transition from antiquity to the age of urban bureaucracy in one lifetime.

Paul expresses himself on a variety of subjects: the arctic, child-rearing, relationships, religion, war, handicaps, education and modern times. His is an important contribution to our understanding of human potential and choices. He hopes that his fellow Americans are encouraged by it.

The CIRI Foundation, 1987.
Hardcover, 125 pages.