Credit Courtesy of Melvin Andrew Minista died in early December in Anchorage at 66 years old. His friends and family say he was a kind and positive force in the community. Mike Minista lived in Manokotak all his life. He was an avid hunter and fisherman, and he also fished commercially for decades. One of his long-time friends, Jerry Liboff, met Minista 50 years ago at the Ekuk Cannery. Minista was commercial fishing at the time; a storm had kept him at the cannery for several days. “I tried to stumble around with a few Yup’ik words,” he said. “Once I started mis-saying Yup’ik words, that sort of broke the ice and we became actually very good friends at the beginning.”