Bob Duis began whipping up his famous fiery chili-for-a-cause three decades ago back in Chicago. Natalie Benassi believes she just might make the northernmost homemade tamales on the planet. And while Judi Rice takes her photographer’s eye out into the Alaskan wilderness to capture all wild creatures, birds are her big-time favorite.

The three local artisans were on hand Saturday at the annual Alaska Native Sisterhood holiday bazaar at the ANB Hall, which featured nearly two dozen tables offering such Haines-produced gems as macramé necklaces, earrings, paintings, miniature cupcakes and hand-fashioned soaps.

There was even a table where high school cheerleaders wrapped your Christmas gifts.

All sales from the day went to the ANS, which last year gave out $3,000 in school scholarships from money collected at a handful of events such as this.

Even though an overnight snow made for a slippery parking lot, the ANB Hall was warm inside and featured dozens of locals looking to knock an item off their holiday buying list while helping out the Haines community.

But the event is more than about making money. It’s about people here proudly selling wares made by hand and dear to their hearts.

And every artist has a story.

At one end of the room, strapping Bob Duis beamed as volunteers ladled out the chili that the 70-year-old says he’s made nearly all his life. But 25 years ago, when he worked as a railroad man in Chicago, Duis decided to put his chili to some fundraising use.

Twenty gallons at a time, he whipped up batch after batch of steamy chili for a group called the Little Sisters of the Poor in downtown Chicago. He scoured local stores for overripe tomatoes, onions and a few secret ingredients.

Back then, he laughed, he called his concoction “Road Kill Chili.”

“I like to cook,” he said. “And I’ve been making my chili for a long time.”

Now retired, Duis has been making his chili for Haines residents since he moved here a decade ago. This year, a bowl with a piece of cornbread sold for $7.

Duis made five gallons for the ANS bazaar and this might have been his greatest feat yet.

His right arm was wrapped in a cast, the result of a recent moose-hunting accident. He was thrown from a jet boat when he hit a rock bar in the Chilkat River.

But he was there, smiling, greeting friends with his left hand instead of his dinged-up right.

For Natalie Benassi, the act of making tamales is a time-honored family tradition that harkens images of her mother, siblings, aunts and uncles lined up to do their part like workers in a kitchen assembly line.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in Colorado, Benassi recalls being part of the tamale-making since she was 6. Her mother was a native of Chihuahua, Mexico, and taught her that making good tamales requires several steps: the meat, corn husks and masa harina corn meal all have to be prepared separately.

“There’s nothing like good homemade food like Mom used to make,” she said. “We are so far from family. I’m just trying to keep the tradition alive.”

Benassi said her tamales, which sold for $30 a dozen, just might be the northernmost Mexican food made by hand in the entire world. They do sell them in Fairbanks, but those are shipped in from someplace in New Mexico.

Benassi buys all her ingredients locally, except for the secret chilies she ships in from Colorado. “It’s all about what you put inside,” she said. “Some things are just hard to find here.”

Being so far from home, there wasn’t much family around for Benassi’s annual kitchen tamale-making factory. The other night, she made 14 dozen without a mother, sibling, aunt or uncle in sight.

Just her husband, Mario.

Michigan-born nature photographer Judi Rice has a practiced eye when it comes to capturing the subtleties of the wild. Moving to Alaska in 1989, she worked for the forest service in Juneau for years.

Her booth at the ANB Hall featured shots of bears and beavers and even mice, caught in moments that it takes years of patience and skill to find.

Rice was lucky: her first park service job was in Yellowstone National Park, where she recalled watching the majesty of herds of bison moving across the Hayden Valley in winter.

Such images stayed with her. She wanted to be a witness to the wild. So she began to take her own photographs to record what she saw for posterity.

About a decade ago, while living in Juneau, Rice sold her first photograph – a shot of a tiny Jumping Mouse eating from a green plant in the dead of winter. She took the shot in Atlin, British Columbia.

After that, Rice’s business expanded. In Haines, she likes to take regular walks to create her work. One favorite haunt is the shore of the Chilkat River near the base of Cemetery Hill.

“You can see so much there,” she said. “I like to go at different times of the day.”

As a nature photographer in Alaska, you never know what you’re going to find. One of Rice’s favorite chance encounters came when she set herself up to photograph a Wilson’s Warbler nest along the shores of the Chilkat River.

Her eye quickly caught something else: a Rufous Hummingbird buzzing near a patch of salmonberry flowers. She followed the tiny bird back to its own nest for shots that delight her to this day.

“Sometimes,” she said, “you go to see something and then you find something else.”

When you think about it, isn’t that what landed many people in Haines in the first place?

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