“I have faith and the belief and all that, but I just haven’t given my heart fully to God,” she said. “There’s a lot of things that I haven’t had forgiveness for. I haven’t followed the Book, so to speak. … I guess it’s a daily walk.”

Melanie is 36 but she looks a decade younger. She's single and doesn't have children. She grew up, more or less, in Minto, a village of about 180 people. Her family was Episcopalian. She sees herself in retrospect as one of the “Episcopalian kids” in the village. She served on boards and committees associated with religious youth groups, and traveled to the lower 48 with other young people from Minto.

“I was bigger than Minto,” she said, trying to explain what it was like to be a teenager in a small place populated mainly by people who are, in some way, related to you, all of you living two or three hours from the nearest town. “I was more experienced and traveled. I was more into the culture, other than my traditional culture. I was into the western lifestyle.”

As a teen, she had a taste for American fashion, TV, and popular culture beyond the village. She wanted to go to high school in Fairbanks. “My mom wouldn’t let me,” she said.

Now, she is OK with the decisions that have led to her spending most of her life in Minto. She is no longer so into popular culture and is more interested in preserving what she calls traditional ways.

Her grandparents taught her the way women are supposed to hold themselves and act, the kinds of food one is supposed to eat and not eat, parts of animals, how to make a potlatch, the right way to sew. Like many villagers in Alaska, she uses these skills to make native crafts to supplement her income.

Incomes are far below the national average and jobs are scarce in the village, according to state and federal records.

For example, 2000 U.S. Census records showed the village’s unemployment rate at 41 percent, with the median household income at $21,250 per year. The median household income nationwide was $44,389, according to a 2004 U.S. Census report. Some 26 percent of the villagers were living below the poverty level, compared to the report’s national poverty figure of 12.7 percent.

Melanie credits God with what she has – food on the table, a roof over her head, a good family. Still, with gasoline prices in Alaska higher than $4 a gallon and climbing, she said it’s been a tough winter. She was fortunate to have the meat and fish from her family. And, while living in a climate that consistently reaches -40 degrees in the winter, she said she has stopped using the oil heat on all but the coldest days and switched to wood instead.

The economy is so tight she said she is considering going back to college, getting some more education via video courses. She doesn't understand young people she sees who don't work, who live with their parents and don't seem to care about bettering themselves. She has high standards for more than just her spiritual well-being. She wants to be more financially secure for whatever lies ahead.

Lately Melanie has been thinking about faith. Specifically, she’s been thinking about the role of forgiveness in faith, about how being forgiven and forgiving are necessary to becoming a good Christian.

More than two years ago, her cousin was murdered in Fairbanks. His loss devastated their family. The police quickly arrested a young man who pleaded guilty and apologized. He was sentenced to prison.

Only God could have helped her forgive her cousin’s murderer, Melanie said. She could have just as easily poisoned herself with hatred. Instead, she said, she felt forgiveness and a real sense of God's presence in her life.

She does not consider herself a "full-blown Christian" yet. Getting there is part of her daily walk, she said. Meanwhile, in her own way, she has found faith.