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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy d Wilson

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Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Frye. All this week we talked about

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Speaker 1: Walter Harper and the Summoning of Denali, and also a

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Speaker 1: lot about Hudson Stuck, who was a big source of

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Speaker 1: the information about that expedition, and about Harper's life, and

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Speaker 1: so much cold weather, So much cold weather. I want

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Speaker 1: to talk about Molly of DOANEI. Okay, So I knew

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Speaker 1: about Malli of DONLLEI before. I don't have kids, I'm

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Speaker 1: not around a lot of kids, so like, I've never

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Speaker 1: really watched a lot of Malli of Denali. But after

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Speaker 1: getting served this clip about Halloween on Halloween and being

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Speaker 1: inspired for this episode, I discovered totally by accident and

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Speaker 1: just trying I was like trying to confirm the details

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Speaker 1: of this clip, so I was going to describe it correctly.

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Speaker 1: There is also a whole episode that's an hour long

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Speaker 1: special episode of Molly of Danali, which is called Molly

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Speaker 1: and the Great One, and the story of that one

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Speaker 1: is that Molly finds out that her grandfather wanted to

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Speaker 1: summit Denali when he was a young man and things

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Speaker 1: happened and he had not been able to do it.

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Speaker 1: So Molly and her friends start trying to find a

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Speaker 1: way for her grandfather to summit do Nali. And so

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Speaker 1: this story of Molly and her family is interspersed with

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Speaker 1: the story of Walter Harper and the expedition in the

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Speaker 1: world of Molly of d Nali. Molly's father is named

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Speaker 1: Walter and is named for Walter Harper and is Koyacon.

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Speaker 1: Molly's best friend Touey is also Coyacon, and then Molly

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Speaker 1: has like multiple Native Alaska lineages from the two sides

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Speaker 1: of her family. I was like, well, I obviously need

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Speaker 1: to go watch this episode of Molly of d Nali now,

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Speaker 1: And since I contribute to PBS, I have the PBS

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Speaker 1: app and the PBS Kids App, and the episode was

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Speaker 1: not on either of those two things, and so I

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Speaker 1: used the search function on the smart TV to try

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Speaker 1: to find it, and what I wound up finding was

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Speaker 1: it was on YouTube with ASL interpretation, and I realized

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Speaker 1: that YouTube on the smart TV was signed in under

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Speaker 1: Patrick's account, and I was like, well, Patrick, I'm just

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Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna mess up your YouTube algorithm by watching

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Speaker 1: Mally of Denali locked in as you he was not,

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Speaker 1: or I just texted him to be like, hey, by

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Speaker 1: the way, if you're suddenly getting Alaska programming or children's

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Speaker 1: programming in your YouTube, it's my fault. Malli of Denali

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Speaker 1: has very sadly been canceled. I think it has one

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Speaker 1: more season that is coming out, and it also has

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Speaker 1: been canceled for multiple reasons. The people that are involved

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Speaker 1: with the show have made it clear that like, it's

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Speaker 1: not any one thing, but one of the things is

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Speaker 1: the gutting of PBS funding by the federal government, so

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Speaker 1: like that's part of it. I have heard so many

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Speaker 1: great things about that show, despite of the fact that

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Speaker 1: I haven't personally watched any of it, And so this

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Speaker 1: clip and then watching Molly in the Great One on

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Speaker 1: Patrick's YouTube account. There are a ton of books about

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Speaker 1: this expedition to Denali, and then there are also books

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Speaker 1: about some of the people involved, none of which I

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Speaker 1: read while researching this, but I did just want to

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Speaker 1: say they exist if people are interested in learning more.

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Speaker 1: There's a biography of Harry Carston's which is called The

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Speaker 1: Seventy Mile Kid, The Lost Legacy of Harry Carston's and

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Speaker 1: the First Ascent of Mount McKinley that is by Tom Walker.

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Speaker 1: It came out in I think twenty thirteen. And then

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Speaker 1: there's a pretty new book about Walter Harper called Walter

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Speaker 1: Harper Alaska Native Son that is by Mary F. Erlander.

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Speaker 1: I don't know of a biography that is specifically about

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Speaker 1: Hudson Stuck. Some of the books about the expedition are

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Speaker 1: focused largely on him, but I think all of his

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Speaker 1: books that are about Alaska, they are all in the

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Speaker 1: public domain, and I think all of them are available

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Speaker 1: at archive dot org, so they are easy to get

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Speaker 1: to if you want to read more of his reading.

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Speaker 1: So I will say a the language that he uses

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Speaker 1: about like the Native peoples of Alaska, some of it

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Speaker 1: is language that was commonly used at the time and

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Speaker 1: is really not Native Nation's own preferred terminology today, right.

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Speaker 1: And some of it is stuff that was like that

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Speaker 1: was insensitive at the time and it's still insensitive. But

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Speaker 1: as we said in the episode, in a lot of ways,

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Speaker 1: I feel like he was more progressive and more focused

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Speaker 1: on autonomy and preservation of indigenous customs and life ways

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Speaker 1: than a lot of other people. Random side note, the

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Speaker 1: Muldro Glacier that they climbed to get up to Danali

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Speaker 1: continued to be a primary route to get to the

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Speaker 1: summit until it surged. And I think it surged in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and there was like a sort of

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Speaker 1: a temporary stoppage and people using it as much to

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Speaker 1: try to get to the summit. It also surged very recently,

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Speaker 1: like within the last couple of years, and I think

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Speaker 1: people are not using that glacier as a route to

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Speaker 1: the Summit of Danali at the moment. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I imagine it, like many things, is being affected by

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Speaker 1: the warmer temperatures for sure. You know, when we were

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Speaker 1: in Iceland last year, a lot of our guides when

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Speaker 1: we would do various excursions, pointed out like, hey, if

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Speaker 1: you had been here a few years ago, these glaciers

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Speaker 1: were a lot bigger. And our trip on a glacier

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Speaker 1: was canceled because it was melting because it was so soft.

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Speaker 1: We couldn't do what we wanted to do there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, it is what it is. I went to

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Speaker 1: a natural history museum we were in Iceland on the

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Speaker 1: day that we arrived because it was the earliest thing

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Speaker 1: that was open, and Patrick and I had landed at

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Speaker 1: like four in the morning or something. Perlin I think

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Speaker 1: was the name of the Natural History Museum, and they

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Speaker 1: had a whole display that was about the loss of

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Speaker 1: glaciers in Iceland. Yeah, And in addition to the glaciers melting,

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Speaker 1: how the weight of the glaciers not being there causes

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Speaker 1: the land to lift, causing multiple intersecting problems a giant bummer.

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Speaker 1: Climate change is real. It is largely caused by human activity,

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Speaker 1: including the burning of fossil fuels. And yes, sometimes glaciers

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Speaker 1: do surge for other reasons. But there are a lot

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Speaker 1: of glaciers that have surged in recent years, all at

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Speaker 1: the same time, Yeah, and are receding in various ways

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Speaker 1: as they melt all kinds of stuff. As from what

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Speaker 1: I understand, a lot of people in Alaska, and a

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Speaker 1: lot of Alaska Native people see Walter Harper as a

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Speaker 1: hero as his life, as we said, was very tragically

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Speaker 1: cut short. The author Mary f. Erlander, who wrote a

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Speaker 1: biography of him, I watched a talk that she gave,

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Speaker 1: and she talked about a lot of the changes that

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Speaker 1: came to Alaska after the nineteen teens, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of which were really monumental for the Alaska Native population.

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Speaker 1: Some of these are things that we've talked about on

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Speaker 1: the show before, like the Indian Reorganization Act that tried

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Speaker 1: to enable Indigenous nations to have more self governance and

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Speaker 1: more autonomy. And some of it was like the land

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Speaker 1: read distributions that happened in Alaska, and how influential and

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Speaker 1: important he could have been to all of that, given

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Speaker 1: his personality being a big part of it, because he

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Speaker 1: was extremely personable and charismatic and kind and devoted and

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Speaker 1: people really admired him. And then also the fact that

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Speaker 1: he had been raised in Quoi kon Athabaskan traditions and

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Speaker 1: also had so much experience with like Hudson Stuck in

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Speaker 1: his missionary work and the white religious community in Alaska,

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Speaker 1: and had the potential to like really be a connecting

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Speaker 1: point in a way that would hopefully help the Native

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Speaker 1: peoples of Alaska. Yeah, it's a pity. We mentioned at

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Speaker 1: the end of the show that there has been a

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Speaker 1: lot of speculation about what he would have been and

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Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, just a sad, a sad. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: As I was writing it, I got to that point

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Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, this like, I mean, it

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Speaker 1: came out of nowhere in real life. But we know

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Speaker 1: that people listen to our podcast because they enjoy it,

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Speaker 1: and so I don't like writing an episode in which

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Speaker 1: everything just seems to be trucking along and then somebody

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Speaker 1: dies tragically out of nowhere, which is why I put

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Speaker 1: that heads up at the beginning of part two. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is not something that you know when someone when

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Speaker 1: the subject of a podcast dies at the age of

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Speaker 1: eighty safe in their bed. That's not something we warn

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Speaker 1: about at the beginning, since that is sort of a

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Speaker 1: sad note. Do you want a ridiculous thing to end on?

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Speaker 1: I absolutely do. When I was looking over your outline,

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Speaker 1: I specifically because often what I will do if it

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Speaker 1: involves a person or something that I'm not familiar with,

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Speaker 1: I will do a quick Internet search just so I

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Speaker 1: have a visual in my head, okay, And I specifically

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Speaker 1: did not on this one because as I read through it,

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Speaker 1: in my head, the picture that formed of Hudson stuck

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Speaker 1: was an Episcopalian version of Yukon Cornelius, and I was like,

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Speaker 1: that's funny. I would like to hang onto this as

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Speaker 1: long as possible. I love that, And now that I

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Speaker 1: have googled him, I'm like, oh, you are sadly gaunt. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you don't look like you can Cornelius at all. Like

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Speaker 1: it's his fault somehow. Yeah, they needed a bumble on

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Speaker 1: this mission and then everything would have been fine. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It is. Of all the various expeditions to a place,

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Speaker 1: you know, polar environments, things like that, that we've talked

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Speaker 1: about on the show, it does seem to have gone

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Speaker 1: better than any of the rest of them, Yes, because

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Speaker 1: they were all experienced people who understood what was happening. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it seems like they were all like mutually dedicated

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Speaker 1: to the safety of the whole expedition. Yeah, which has

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Speaker 1: not been the case in every expedition we had ever

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Speaker 1: talked about. So yeah, that was Walter Harper. We will

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Speaker 1: have the SS Princess Sofia episode as a classic tomorrow

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Speaker 1: because it's been some years since that came out. I

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Speaker 1: didn't remember that. When I wrote that episode, I mentioned

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Speaker 1: that Walter Harper had died in it. So if folks

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Speaker 1: have heard that episode recently enough, they did not need

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Speaker 1: the heads up at the beginning of part two. So anyway,

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Speaker 1: hoping whatever's happening on your weekend, I hope it's going great.

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Speaker 1: If you are going into some cold weather hiking camping situations,

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Speaker 1: I hope you have gear that's maybe a little more

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Speaker 1: lightweight but also but also serviceable than some of what

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Speaker 1: they were hauling around on that trip. I hope you

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Speaker 1: can find appropriate shoes or footwear that, to me is

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Speaker 1: so miserable to contemplate. Yeah, yeah, well, and it made

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Speaker 1: sense to me that what they wound up working with

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Speaker 1: was like the shoes that local people have been wearing

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Speaker 1: for generations. Like that totally makes sense. But the idea

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Speaker 1: that they were having out pine boots that we're going

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Speaker 1: to be way too tight with that many socks would

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Speaker 1: it'd be awful. So I hope if you're hiking you

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Speaker 1: have great footwear that's working for you doing its job.

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Speaker 1: We will be back with that Saturday Classic tomorrow, and

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Speaker 1: we have something brand new on Monday. Stuff you Missed

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Speaker 1: in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more

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Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.