Native American Culture Areas::

The Arctic

• Aleut
• Yupik
• Inuit

Culture Area Recap

In the previous articles, we learned a little bit about the culture area concept that is generally used by North American anthropologists to classify and analyse Native North American cultures. We talked about some of the problems inherent in such classifications - the tendency to generalise, for example, and the tendency of artificially freezing cultures so that no attention is given to acknowledging geographic and cultural variation as well as cultural adaptations within a single culture's history. The generalisations inherent within the culture area concept mask the complexities and diversities that exist not only between cultures of a specific area but within such cultures also. As such, when you read about Indian nations of the Arctic, of California, or the South- and Northeast, for example, pay as much attention to the dissimilarities as well as to the similarities.

Anthropologists tend to divide Native North America into the following culture areas: the Arctic, Subarctic, Northwest Coast, Northeast, Southeast, the Plains, Southwest, Plateau and Basin and California. Space forbids me to write about each culture region in detail. I will concentrate instead on four: I have already generalised about the Southwest and the Northeast regions. Now I shall write about the Arctic and Plains culture areas. I cannot stress enough how important it is for readers of this article to read ethnographies of individual Indian cultures. Not only does each cultural region vary from each other, but also every single Indian nation has a history and culture uniquely its own.

The Arctic

The vast swathe of apparently uninhabited and inhospitable land of ice and snow in the Arctic culture area is actually the homeland of three separate linguistic groups: the Aleut, the Yup'ik and the Inuit-Inupiaq. The region spans from southern Alaska to eastern Greenland and contains many diverse culture groups.

The population of the Aleuts for the early 1700s has been estimated at 15-25,000. It spread out across the 1200 mile Aleutian archipelago - a string of volcanic islands across the northern Pacific, off Alaska. The region is divided linguistically between the Eastern and Western Aleut. Within these two regions, there resided several village-based societies, each one with their own territorial boundaries and leaders. Trade goods such as pine and birch barks were exchanged between the villages, and common feasts and masked dances were held during the winter.

Aleut houses were dug deep into the ground and roofed with driftwood and whale bones and covered with sod. These dwellings ranged from single-family homes to communal longhouses. The east was believed to be the home of the creator and so houses were oriented along an east-west axis. The location of particular families within a communal house mirrored this cosmological directional importance. Most often the headman and his family occupied the easternmost compartment and slaves or servants occupied the westernmost part.

The Aleutian diet was rich. It included the flesh and eggs of such sea birds as puffin, ducks and geese, and flora and marine fauna such as salmon berries, mountain sorrel, cowslip and seaweed. Also eaten were sea mammals such as sea lions, seals, sea otters and whale, and fish such as salmon, which was harvested throughout the summer and early autumn. Certain dune grasses were also used to make fine, elaborate baskets that distinguish Aleut material culture and artistic tradition.

All hunters used a variety of physical and spiritual means to prepare themselves for a hunt. Amulets were included in a man's hunting equipment in order that they attract the animals and appease their spirits. Whale hunting was the preserve of only a few men - those that had undergone special training.

Men hunted in a special type of kayak known as the baidarka. It had a bifurcated prow and a straight stern. It allowed the baidarka to almost glide across the choppy waters of the Gulf of Alaska. Boys were trained in kayaking skills from an early age, and often had their ligaments and tendons stretched to allow them to sit for hours in the vessel.

The Aleuts' skill in the use of the baidarka and in hunting sea otters, for example, attracted the attention of the Russians. In 1741, two Russians became the first Europeans to visit the Aleutian Islands. They returned to their homeland with their cargo of sea otter pelts - pelts that were highly prized by the Chinese Emperor of the time. Sea otter had been hunted to extinction in the western Pacific and so Russian traders seized an opportunity and set sail for Alaska. In time, they began to exploit Aleutian hunters, forcing villages to hunt by capturing hostages and returning them at the end of the hunt season. The Eastern Aleuts tried to rebel in the early 1760s, but they were crushed. The introduction of diseases reduced Aleut numbers even more. By 1799, only one-eighth of the pre-contact population remained intact.

The Russians soon built schools and churches in the area. They took control of healthcare and they took control of all hunting and trade. Moreover, when, in the 1860s, the Russians accepted an American offer to purchase Alaska for $7.2 million in gold, the Aleuts' lives changed drastically again. Russian schools, churches and hospitals closed, the sea otter market had collapsed and it wasn't until 1885 that an American mission school was built on the islands. Subsequently, various markets were exploited in the region, from salmon and seal to cod salting and gold. By the Second World War, the Aleutian Island economy collapsed.

Today, the Aleuts number some 2000 people. Most are members of the Russian Orthodox Church. They now live in woodframe houses and engage in hunting, fishing and raising sheep. Much of their diet is processed.

Yup'ik speakers have lived on both sides of the Bering Strait. Trade between Siberia and Alaska included the skins of reindeer, tobacco and iron. There are five different Yup'ik languages and such linguistic diversity extends to economy, social organisation, beliefs and contact history. Today, however, I shall focus on the Central Alaskan Yup'ik, who inhabit mainland, southwestern Alaska, as an example of Yup'ik culture.

The Yup'ik had a much less hierarchical social organisation than the Aleuts, nor were slaves kept, but it was also family-oriented. Each village had its own territory and supported its own needs. Villages almost exclusively consisted of single family dwellings, which belonged to the women, as well as one or two communal men's houses, or the qasgiq. Sometime around the age of six, a boy would leave his mother's home and move in with the men. There he would live and learn the ceremonies and Yup'ik cosmology, as his sister learned from the women in her home.

Much is known of Yup'ik ceremonial life and today Yup'ik ceremonies are undergoing a revival. Yup'ik cosmology divided the world into several layers, each of which was held in a delicate balance of relationship. Correct behaviour had to be learned so that a Yup'ik individual did not offend the spirits and thus upset this balance. There were also two different worlds: the visible and the spirit-filled invisible. The two worlds occupied the same physical space, though the occupants of the former could seldom see the spirits of the latter. The division between the two worlds was permeable, becoming most transparent at birth, at puberty and at death. As such, proper ritual was crucial during these times. All inanimate and animate objects had spirits that could transmute into human forms. All animals had this ability to shape-shift, and often a hunter would glimpse the human face of the animal he was hunting.

Shamans and elders were responsible for the yearly ceremonial cycle. The four major festivals were the Asking Festival (Petugtaq), the Feast of the Dead (Merr'aq), the Bladder Festival (Nakaciuq) and the Inviting-in Festival (Kelek/Itruka'ar). During the Asking Festival, villages gathered and kin relationships were reinforced through the exchange of requested gifts. The deceased were ensured food, drink and clothing in the afterworld at the Feast of the Dead. During the Bladder Festival, the bladders of seals caught that year were inflated, painted and hung in the men's lodge. They were offered food, dance and song in order to ensure that the souls of the seals that were contained in the bladders would hear the Yup'ik and grant them many more seal in future hunts. At the Inviting-in Festival, the spirits were called in to share the food of the people as a form of thanksgiving.

Spiritual belief permeated Yup'ik hunting life also. Hunting equipment was fashioned to appeal to and please the spirit of the prey, thus attracting the animal toward the hunter. Bears, wolves and otters were carved onto a hunter's weapons so that the hunter may embody such animals' qualities; likewise, such images were sewn onto clothing in order that certain animal qualities are appropriated.

Russians were the first Europeans to make direct contact with the central Alaskan Yup'ik around the late 1700s. They established and developed beaver interests there after sea otter populations declined. The Russians established trading posts on the mainland, and by 1845, Russian Orthodox missionaries had established themselves at almost all of these posts. Many Yup'ik, however, resisted conversion to Christianity and maintained their independence from the Russian trading companies. This resistance to foreign assimilation continued even after the United States had acquired Alaska. Although, as the years progressed, there was an increasingly dependence on trading posts for some, for other Yup'ik communities, economic reliance on traditional hunting and gathering cycles was hardly disturbed at all. The first salmon canneries were opened in the region during the 1880s and still employed most of its workers from among the native Alaskan communities until the Second World War.

Speakers of the Inuit-Inupiaq live in four countries: Greenland, Canada, the United States and Russia. The language group is composed of numerous dialects. Inuit stereotypes range from a rosy-cheeked child peeping out from a fur parka, a man poised over a seal breathing hole, an igloo, sledge huskies and a sweeping terrain of wind and ice. The 'Eskimo' stereotypes belie a far more complex picture.

A sub-group of the North Alaska Coast Inuit, the Nuvugmiut, for example, were whale, not seal hunters and they preferred to live in semi-subterranean log houses in large, permanent village, resorting to igloos or snowhouses if caught inland in a snowstorm. They rarely used kayaks, too. Their society was highly structured, with the owner of the whale-hunting boat being accorded the highest esteem.

In contrast to the Nuvugmiut in north Alaska, the Padlirmiut, a sub-group of the Caribou Inuit who lived on the west coast of Hudson Bay, were seal hunters as well as hunters of such inland creatures as caribou and musk oxen. Their society was not hierarchical but egalitarian.

It is the Central Inuit of the Canadian Arctic that has provided (and bore the brunt of) the Eskimo stereotype. The Aivilingmiut group is a part of the Iglulik Inuit, which in turn is one of several divisions of the Central Inuit group. They reside on the northwest coast of Hudson Bay. The Aivilingmiut are renowned for their dog teams and walrus hunting. Dog teams facilitated hunting over long distances, but they also enabled visiting relations and trading posts. Walrus hunting took place during the summer and were harpooned from kayaks or from the floe edge. The Inuit diet is almost exclusively meat. So long as both meat and fat are consumed and so long as a significant proportion of the meat is consumed raw, then meat contains all the required nutrients needed to survive and thrive.

After the grand communal walrus hunts of summer, people would separate into their family units and return to their usual hunting territories. As elsewhere over the Arctic and Subarctic regions of America, hunting territories were not owned as private property but they were recognised to be areas visited habitually by certain families. Some of the men, particularly the older ones, remained on the coast hunting walrus and also seals and whales until the sea ice formed. It was usually the younger men that moved inland with their families and hunted caribou. Caribou provided food sustenance as well as fur for clothing and bedding and bone and antler for tools.

Around January or February, Aivilingmiut families would gather in large villages composed of family igloos or snowhouses. The snow provided superior insulation from the biting wind. Winter snowhouses could last several months. Though they relied on cached food supplies, calm days allowed hunters to hunt seals at seal breathing holes.

Usually, a large, single snowhouse was built so that all the community could enjoy social and ceremonial pursuits such as drum dances and shamanic seances. Seances were often held when the weather was poor or game had disappeared. In the latter case, the shaman would turn into bear and visit the female spirit from whose hands had sprung all sea mammals. He would ask her forgiveness for is peoples' past transgressions. One scholar translated a shamanic song as thus:

"That woman down there beneath the sea,
She wants to hide the seals from us.
These hunters in the dance-house,
They cannot right matters.
They cannot mend matters.
Into the spirit world
Will go I,
Where no humans dwell.
Set matters right will I.
Set matters right will I."

The Aivilingmiut seemed unaffected by the earliest intrusions upon their territory, when the British came in search of the Northwest Passage during the 1570s to the 1630s. In 1670, Britain's Hudson's Bay Company set up a monopoly on trading rights in Rupert's Land, but rarely ventured north due to lack of beaver there. Although by the early 1800s, some Inuit nations were trading seals with the Company, there is no evidence that the Aivilingmiut were among them.

The Aivilingmiut remained undisturbed until 1860, when American whalers expanded their whaling into Hudson Bay. The Aivilingmiut migrated southward to search for work among the Americans. Guns and whale boats replaced the bow and arrow and kayak. The Aivilingmiut supplied the whalers with fresh meat and this practice soon depleted local wildlife stocks. Alcohol was also introduced among the Aivilingmiut as well as new diseases such as syphilis and tuberculosis.

When the last of the whalers left in 1915, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police established a post among the Aivilingmiut. The Hudson's Bay Company also moved in, as they had now become interested in seals and white fox. With these groups came Catholic and Anglican missionaries. Although the missionaries succeeded in converting most Aivilingmiut, as elsewhere in Native America, they could not fully eradicate fundamental indigenous beliefs about the cosmological world. Eventually, the Aivilingmiut became exposed to Canadian education and regular health and social services, although this did not really happen until after the Second World War.