Winter in Unalaska by Sam Zmolek
Your voice in the Aleutians.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
The KUCB Newsroom provides newscasts Monday through Thursday at noon and 5 PM on KUCB Radio. You can find many of our local news stories here.

Kashega Elder Eva Tcheripanoff Dies At Age 90

Courtesy of Julia Dushkin

The last person born in the traditional village of Kashega has died.

Eva Tcheripanoff grew up in the small Unangax̂ community on Unalaska Island and spent the 1930s hunting foxes, eating dry fish, and playing with homemade stone dolls.

That all changed during World War II, when Kashega was evacuated and never resettled. But as KUCB's Laura Kraegel reports, Tcheripanoff came through the upheaval and lived a long life of 90 years.

TRANSCRIPT -- -- --

TCHERIPANOFF (Unangam Tunuu and English): "I was born in Kashega and I used to play around."

KUCB: Eva Tcheripanoff was in her late 70s when she sat down for this interview with historian Ray Hudson.

Credit Courtesy of Julia Dushkin
Eva Tcheripanoff hunted foxes with her Uncle William in the 1930s.

HUDSON: "Eva, when were you born in Kashega?"

TCHERIPANOFF: "1928."

HUDSON: "And who were your parents?"

TCHERIPANOFF: "My mother was Sophie …"

KUCB: Sophie Borenin was an accomplished basket weaver from Chernofski. Her father, Alec Kudrin, was a Kashega hunter who died shortly before she was born.

TCHERIPANOFF: "We lived with my uncle. Nobody had running water except us."

KUCB: Tcheripanoff's Uncle William fixed up the family home with a tin sink and flush toilet, but they still lived pretty traditionally. The family spoke Unangam Tunuu. They stored their fish in bags made from sea lion stomachs. And Tcheripanoff's mom even sewed her a kamleika from seal gut. She wore the waterproof parka while paddling around in skin boats, which were just being usurped by metal skiffs.

TCHERIPANOFF: "I used to ride in the baidarkas."

HUDSON: "Did you?"

TCHERIPANOFF: "Yeah. I tipped over one time in the lake. I was just hollering and hollering! Finally, somebody took a baidarka and picked me up."

Credit Courtesy of Julia Dushkin
As a child, Eva Tcheripanoff rode horses at the Kashega ranch.

KUCB: Tcheripanoff was the only kid in Kashega, so she had the run of the place until 1942. That's when the Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor, some 30 miles across Unalaska Island. After the bombings, the American government evacuated Unangax̂ people from the Aleutian and Pribilof region, including about 20 at Kashega.

TCHERIPANOFF: "There was no time to take anything, because we can't wait for those planes to come back. They might bomb us, you know? That was terrible."

KUCB: That was also the last time Tcheripanoff saw her home. The Unangax̂ spent the rest of the war in internment camps in southeast Alaska — and after the fighting was over, Kashega was never resettled. Tcheripanoff eventually moved to Unalaska in search of a new home. It was hard to do, but it helped that she brought her new husband with her.

DEFFENDALL: "Hi! This is Kay Deffendall here for another segment of 'Eye on Unalaska.' And this week, we're here with John and Eva Tcheripanoff. Hi, guys!"

TCHERIPANOFFS:  "Hi."

KUCB: In this interview, on their 50th wedding anniversary, Tcheripanoff explained how she met John at the Ward Lake internment camp. He was originally from Akutan.

Credit Courtesy of Julia Dushkin
Eva and John Tcheripanoff were married on St. Paul Island while he worked in commercial sealing. They later moved to Unalaska.

DEFFENDALL: "You never knew each other and then you met down in southeast?"

TCHERIPANOFF: "Yes, we did."

DEFFENDALL: "And fell in love immediately?"

TCHERIPANOFF: "Yeah. So we got married, and then I had my kid the same month. My oldest daughter. Fast work!"

KUCB: The Tcheripanoffs had 10 children during their time together, and Eva joked that she loved her husband so much she married him three times. Once, before a judge. Again, before a priest. And finally, at a vow renewal.

DEFFENDALL: "You've done a lot of things in your life. You've seen a lot of changes out here. So are you looking forward to another 50 years?"

TCHERIPANOFF:  "Sixty years!"

KUCB: When her husband died in 2000, Tcheripanoff moved from their Unalaska home to the senior center. Her daughter Julia Dushkin says it was another difficult transition.

DUSHKIN: "She missed my dad so much."

KUCB: Dushkin says Tcheripanoff made a point of being out in the community, staying active and spending time with her wide circle of friends.

DUSHKIN: "She didn't care much to be home alone or anything like that. She wanted to be out with friends. You know, go here and go there. Get her nails done."

KUCB: While life in modern-day Unalaska was different than Tcheripanoff's childhood in Kashega, Dushkin says some of her favorite memories of her mother can help keep the old ways alive — at least a little bit.

DUSHKIN: "I asked her to teach me how to braid seal gut with the meat and the fat. She took yarn and put it in my fingers. 'Go like this. Go like that.' It just tangled up my fingers and I couldn't. I can't, you know? [But] I can always remember her telling me, 'Go this way. Go that way.'"

KUCB: Eva Tcheripanoff died in Anchorage on March 22. Only a few Kashega-born Unangax̂ are still alive today. Their home community has been uninhabited for almost 76 years.

Laura Kraegel reported for KUCB from 2016 until 2020. She was KUCB's news director starting in 2019. We are proud to have her back in the spring of 2023 filling in as an interim reporter for KUCB.
Related Content