Inuit Regions of Alaska
Alaska's Native people are not all one group of people. In fact, eleven different languages and twenty-two different dialects are spoken.
The different colors in the map above highlight the five large "culture groupings" that the various language groups are associated with. While differences exist within these groupings, the groupings serve to identify areas where cultural similarities exist and/or where geographic proximities are important.
For more information about these culture groupings, visit the Alaska Native Heritage Center.
Yup'ik People
Inuit People (Eskimo) of Southwestern Alaska
Yup’ik people are members of the larger family of Inuit cultures that extend throughout the state of Alaska, Canada’s Arctic coast, far-eastern Russia, and parts of Labrador and Greenland.
Inuit people are also known as Eskimo, in Alaska. However, due to cultural distinctions among different Inuit people and negative connotations that the term Eskimo often carries, most Inuit people prefer to be known by their own specific indigenous names. The map to the right shows the names of the major social groupings acceptable to the indigenous people of the Alaskan region.
The word “Yup’ik” itself means “real people.” It is derived from the word for person (yuk) and the word for real or genuine (pik).
The Yup'ik Environment
The Yup’ik homelands are in the subarctic region of southwestern Alaska. The Yup'ik people are thought to have arrived there from eastern Siberia about 4,000 years ago, largely displacing those who had come before.
Currently many archeologists believe that at least three large migrations of people came to or passed through the region starting at least 15,000 years ago, and possibly as far back as 25,000 years. Given this as the perspective, Yup'ik people are actually relative newcomers to the region!
Originally Yup'ik people lived only along the coast, but around 600 years ago we began to follow the rivers inland in search of more reliable food sources for our expanding population. Consequently, unlike the stereotypical image of how an Eskimo lived, for the most part, Yup’ik people lived on flat, marshy plains that were crisscrossed by a variety of waterways that we used as roads.
As a whole, and until recent times, the region was rich in food sources, including large game animals, salmon, whales, seal, and walrus — all the basics needed for a good life that included time to develop highly-evolved forms of art and music.
Yup'ik Art
Singing, drumming, storytelling, body tattooing, face painting, jewelry making, decorating clothing, carving, as well as and masked performances, were all highly developed art forms of the Yup'ik people. But what people today seem most fascinated with are the intricately designed and highly varied Yup'ik masks.
While masks could be used for any reason, often they were used for ceremonial purposes. Typically, ceremonies involved both human and supernatural participants, and were a vital tool for helping to make the unseen world visible.
Yup'ik Religious Beliefs
Yup'ik people traditionally believe that though a body may die, nothing dies forever. The traditional worldview includes a spiritual realm, a natural realm and a human realm. All elements in the human and natural realms have a soul, and all souls are ultimately reborn into the universe in a continuous cycle of life.
The belief in continuous rebirth is the basis for elaborate rules related to naming practices, a broad range of ceremonies, practices related to day-to-day living, as well as practices aimed at maintaining the proper relationship with the human and animal spirit-worlds.
Yup'ik Shaminism
A Shaman is called an "angalkuq." They were the male or female spiritual leaders of the Yupi'k people, who mediated between the human and spirit realms. Shamans played an important role in Yup’ik life, and while Christian religions have interceded in Yup'ik traditions, some say that shamans still play an important role.
It is said that shamans travel into the spirit world where they learn from the spirits, and when they come back, they share what they learned for the benefit of people still living in the human realm. There are good shamans who intercede with the spirits for the purpose of healing, searching out game animal, and in general, creating good conditions for the people. And, unfortunately, there are also bad shamans who do the opposite, and generally make life difficult for the people around them.
Change Comes to the Yup'ik
It was not until the 1800s that Russian explorers encountered the Yup'ik. This late contact is attributed in part to the difficulties of getting to the region, and in part to the outsiders' view that the region lacked commercially-valuable resources. Consequently, Yup'ik people were able to maintain their traditional life-ways and values for a longer period of time than most other indigenous people of the Americas.
Still, change did come—both good and bad. Along with modern houses with electricity, public schools and modern medicines, came the near extinction of the culture. First came the various waves of disease that virtually wiped-out entire villages. Then came the forced attempt at acculturation and assimilation where school children were forbidden to speak their own language, where Christian idealogies undermined traditional beliefs, where dances and ceremonies were no longer allowed, and where alarming rates of alcoholism and drug abuse arose as the primary response to coping with change.
Yet there is hope. More recently, starting around the 1970's, Yup'ik people began to fight back and reclaim their cultural heritage, traditions, and honor. The dances are returning, the songs are starting to be sung, new masks are being made, and children are beginning to learn their own languages once again.
Today, it is the responsibility of every Yup'ik person to teach their children their life-ways and traditions, in hopes that the damage that has been done to so many can be repaired — if not in this life, then in the cycles of life to follow.
