102-Year-Old Athabascan Matriarch Passes Away

Hannah Solomon was a living part of history.

The longtime parishioner and respected Native leader died peacefully at her Fairbanks home late Friday afternoon with family members by her side. "It's time," she said, in her Native Gwich'in language, before taking her last breath, daughter Daisy Stevens said.

Born on Oct. 10, 1908, in Old Rampart, a remote community on the Porcupine River near the Canada border, and raised in Fort Yukon, Hannah's life experience is unmatched by few living today.

She grew up living a traditional subsistence lifestyle, which meant moving around to seasonal trapping and fish camps.

...Recently, during one of her daily visits to see her mother, Varner said Hannah told her of a dream that foretold her death. "I was sitting on a stump on the bank of the Yukon River. It was so beautiful all around, and then I saw people walking by with their heads down and I wondered why they were so sad. And then I saw a coffin and I wondered why they were so sad, because I was so happy."