Nellie Moore was one of the first Indigenous reporters in Alaska. She could sew an atikluk, an Iñupiaq overshirt, as well as stitch news and information into stories that made a difference.
: Rhonda McBride was a former colleague of Nellie Moore’s and a longtime friend. Currently McBride works for KNBA.
You can thank her parents for that. Her mother, Ada Ward, instilled the Iñupiaq values of hard work and caring for community, someone who always kept a sack of pancake mix on hand to feed stranded travelers at a moment’s notice.And there was her father, Ed Ward, who came to Kotzebue as an FAA flight service specialist. In a 2016 interview on a statewide public radio show,, Nellie described her dad as a man who was “crazy” about radio and kept a big stash of electronic parts in their home.
Alex Hills was both an engineer and general manager at KOTZ. He’s pictured here at the controls in the KOTZ studio. KOTZ was the second rural Alaska public station to go on the air, following KYUK in Bethel. Moore said there was a lot of excitement when communities got connected to the telephone cooperative’s network and recalls the time when an engineer asked her to make the first phone call to Deering, a community 60 miles south of the Kotzebue Sound.
It is said the pen is mightier than the sword, but Nellie was armed with perhaps a more potent weapon – humor, which she used to soften up those she interviewed.“She just knew how to make people feel comfortable,” said Paul Ongtooguk, who later worked with Moore at the Northwest Arctic Television Center in Kotzebue. “It was like conversation over coffee.
“She was a village girl,” Cravalho said, “and she wasn’t going to be shy about talking about important issues.” Moore and Ontooguk also worked together to produce a groundbreaking series of videos about the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, legislation that changed not only Alaska’s Indigenous peoples, but the whole state, forever. The five-part series is still used today in schools and universities.
While all this was going on, Moore met her husband Greg, who arrived in Kotzebue to do polar bear research. The family later moved to Fairbanks, so he could study for his master’s degree. Moore found work at KUAC, the Fairbanks public radio station, where she was one of the instigators of water pistol fights in the hallways.
“The Alaska Press Club, National Federation of Broadcasters, and the Native American Journalists Association honored Nellie’s work,” Sallee said in a statement.
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