Postcards from the North:
The Life of the Yu’pik described by a Yu’pik Carver

 

In October 2008, HB Reads committee member LeRoy Lucian began corresponding with the Yu’pik carver know as Richard Wisecarver.  Richard describes the Yu’pik way of life, providing readers with a glimpse into this unique culture.  HB Reads is grateful to Richard.  His words bring the far northwest closer to our readers in Southern California.

 

From Richard Wisecarver:

Feel free to share my words.

The culture itself is alive and well in Western Alaska.  Our relatives live in the Nelson Island area a 100 miles west of Bethel, Alaska.  They speak Yupik and hunt, fish and gather to feed their families.  Over 50% of their caloric intake comes from the harvest of the land. 

The Yupik people of western Alaska eat a wide variety of wild foods.  The primary foods vary from area to area.  In the Nelson Island area where our family is from the basic foods of survival are herring, pike fish, black fish, ring, spotted and bearded seals, geese, cranes, swans, ptarmigan and moose.  Large numbers of halibut, cod, tom cod, needle fish, clams, mussels, ducks, Walrus, five kinds of white fish, burbot (fresh water cod) pink and king salmon, beaver, muskrats, otters, rabbits and hares, berries, greens are also harvested. 

Caribou were an important part of the diet prior to 1878 and are again being harvested by those willing to travel far enough.  They are prepared in a wide variety of ways.  Most animals and fish can be eaten raw, raw/frozen, boiled, oven roasted, dried, half dried, dried and preserved in seal oil, fermented and fermented and stored in seal oil. All parts of both fish and animals are eaten including skins, fat, meat, internal organs and even stomach contents are eaten. 

Reindeer are often purchased or traded from the people of Nunivak Island, and surplus Seal and Walrus oil are traded to villagers along the Kuskokwim and Yukon in exchange for dried King and Chum salmon. 

My father-in-law's favorite dish was fermented seal skin…

My father-in-law's favorite dish was fermented seal skin.  You take one ring seal skin that has been scrapped smooth and all fat and flesh removed and has been dried.  Then you place it into a large bowl of clean water and let it rest in a warm room.  (Same procedure as you do for making boot soles) After 3 to 5 days, the hair should loosen and be removed easily by scrapping.  Then the dehaired skin should be rinsed in clean water.  After this the skin should be cut in 8' by  8' squares.   You then bring a kettle of water to a rolling boil.  Then the squares of skin are dipped into the boiling water and then out.  The pieced will roll up and then are placed on a platter to be served and eaten with seal oil.  The fermentation breaks down the cell structure of the skin so that it is digestible.  Unfermented seal skin is not digestible.  This was a food that helped people to survive periods of food shortage. 

Yupiks referred to starvations times as 'when the people had to eat their boots’ (Kamuqs) which are partially or wholly made of seal skin. Another popular food is Akutaq which is made of Salmon berries, black berries, blue berries mixed with Crisco or seal oil.  The berries and the fat are mixed with canned condensed milk, and raw white fish.  The berries are smashed and then the whole mess is whipped into a froth.  The various berries are sweet and sour while the raw white fish contains an enzyme that increases the sugar level of the berries.  White people or Kasseqs call Akutaq-'Eskimo Ice Cream.' 

Another popular food is Burbot livers.  Burbot are a fresh water cod that weigh up to 30 pounds.  They are caught through the ice with hooks and nets in the winter as they migrate.  It has a very large liver that is removed and placed with others in a bowl in the out porch.  After they freeze, they are brought in and each person take one and you cut it up with an Uluiaq or Ulu-lunar shaped knife used by women.  The taste is very sweet like candy and full of vitamin A.  So much so that if you eat two livers they will make you nauseous, but all so tasty. 

We take food very serious…..
      
We take food very serious and to waste it or to be stingy with food will make bad things happen.  The fish and mammals that feed us have to be shown respect.  If we do not respect them, then they will avoid us and we will starve.  Animals allow the hunter to kill them because, death releases their spirit to return to their own world or dimension where they are people like us.  Eventually they will be reborn as animals.  If we brag about ourselves, if we are stingy and mean, or if we are lazy then animals will avoid us and we will suffer for these faults. There is much more to the culture of our people but I could go on and on. 

The preparation of Yupik food reflects their high level of hunting, fishing, and food preservation and storage technology.  Check out a recent book called The Way We Genuinely Live, Yuungnaqpiallerput, by Ann Fienup-Riordan.  She is the leading researcher and writer into the lives and culture of the Central Yupik.  She has lived among the Qalugamiut or people of the dip net.  These are my wife's people. 

Tools

Archaeology of metal use (steel) occurs very early--over 1000 years ago.  Many stone and jade tools represent copies or substitutes for metal tools.  Metal tools were considered very valuable because the source of the steel was northern China or Manchuria and the amount that reached Western Alaska was very small.  It was generally used for drill tips, crooked knife, adze and ulu blades.

The Russians report that their earliest trade contacts in Western Alaska demonstrated that the Yupiks were very familiar with steel and other metals.  When offered cut rate steel jump traps to increase their fur production, they joyfully received them but instead of using them to trap (they had plenty of technology for that) they cut up the traps and turned them into many useful tools.  Knife blades and adze blades are still home made from scrap steel.  My wife's cousin's father made mine.  He felt pity for me when he visited my home and saw the carving tools I was trying to adapt to Yupik carving. 

Migration

      When I lived in Bethel on the Kuskokwim in the 1970's it was a small Yupik river town on this major river.  It was run by mixed blood families from who had migrated from Akiak and Paimuit.  The Moravian church had founded the community in 1885 when the Rev. Kilbuck and his wife Edith settled there and stared a church, school and orphanage.  Yupiks converts from many villages form another segment of the Bethel people.  The poorer, politically less strong Yupiks are generally from the Russian Orthodox villages from around Bethel and from the lower Yukon. 

Today only half the people of Bethel (6,000) are Yupik or upriver Indian.   The rest are from all over the world including Korean and Albanian (Kosovo) immigrants.  Bethel is the west coasts largest port.  It is 90 miles from the sea.  It has large runs of King, chum, and Silver salmon.  In the winter equally large numbers of white fish, pike fish, Shee fish, and Burbot are available to be captured by using fish traps, dip nets (qaylu), gill nets, hooks, lures and fish spears from under the ice. 

The Yu’pik calendar follows the wildlife

      The Yupik calendar was denoted by the food and major activities of that Characterized each part of the year.  Generally the winter village was left in the early spring-end of March and first part of April and people traveled to spring camps.  This was done by dog sled while the lakes and rivers were still well frozen.  River people moved to the areas where muskrats, beavers, and ptarmigan were gathered in abundance. Pike fish jigging was followed by the arrival of ducks, crane and swans.  The a return to the river fish camps for Shee fish, smelt, and then kings salmon followed by the hunting of flightless ducks, Chum salmon and then silver salmon and whitefish in the fall.   Ptarmigan gather in flocks of hundreds for breeding in the early spring. 

Some travel to the coast for seal hunting with coastal relatives.  On the coast seal hunting starts, followed by walrus, then geese and swans, and then either pike fish or herring. Today, moose are very widespread and are hunted by skiff and canoe in the fall.  Black bear and the occasional Grizzly bear are taken at this time.  White fish, pike fish are taken every where during the fall of the year.  On the coast drift wood is an important harvest in the spring after breakup and large amounts of grass is gathered in the fall before and after freeze up  for coiled and twined baskets and bags for storage, mats, boot and mitten liners, bedding and twine. 

The small intestine of seals and walrus is very tasty, but too valuable to be eaten very often in my generation.  My seal gut rain coat still hangs in my room and three years ago our Aunt Mary made a seal gut window for me to hang on the wall.  Seal gut strips are carefully cleaned and dried and then sewn with sinew into strips with blades of grass to reinforce the strips of sewn gut.   

Favorite foods

       Our really favorite foods are any form of dry fish.  Everyone is an expert on dry fish.  Most Yupiks can identify the source of the dried kings or chum salmon.  Yukon salmon are very fat and rich.  Kuskokwim salmon are acceptable while Nushigak or Nakenek kings are lean and muddy tasting.  I think Bristol Bay Red salmon are dry, but Bristol Bay people favor them over all fish. 

Frankly, I like the humpback and broad white fish dried, even better smoked and if it has been fermented it is incredible.  I love fresh cod, but do not care for fresh halibut.  However, dried halibut strips are better than candy.  Every one of my grandchildren love dried herring and we all love poked fermented (really stinky) herring.  As we eat the dried fish we dip every piece in seal oil unless it has already been stored in a seal poke. 

Only the freshest fish is cooked-boiled usually.  Herring are never cooked.  Fish livers, eggs, and stomachs also more an important part of the diet.  Fish skins are popular to eat.  The skins from dry salmon and pike are carefully scaled and toasted over an open flame.  Tasty!  In the past this was a rare treat as fish skins were used to make waterproof boots, raincoats, mittens, and bags when seal or walrus gut were not available. 

Yupik women are highly skilled with their uluiaqs (ulus).  Each fish is filleted and processed based on its type, harvest time, sex, and size.  The size of the immediate catch will have an effect on the processing.  Most mature women can filet and prepare 150 chum or 75 king salmon in a summer's work day.  It is exhausting work that goes on day after day during the summer. 

The harvest season and subsistence camps

The major harvest season ends during the middle of October when the rivers and lakes freeze up.  Families used to return to their winter village by dog sled and the men would travel to caches in various camps to collect their stored harvest for weeks after wards.  Winter is still the time for potlatches and winter trading, craft work, skin sewing, sled and boat building, drum dances and other celebrations.  Mink trapping, black fish trapping, needle fish and smelt fishing, burbut fishing, and winter moose hunting are also important.

Today all these things still go on, except trips to the various subsistence camps are carried out by fast boat with big engines and snow machines.  Most families like ours have 12 or more camps and use 6 to 8 each year.  A trip to herring camp may take a week while clamming may only take a weekend.  

When my sister in law Berniece goes berry picking for Salmon berries, she takes two clean 30 gal garbage cans and travels with the families big skiff to her berry picking camp--she probably has two or three she can use.  She and her girls (6) will not return until they have 60 gallons picked.  Last year, it was too dry for berries and Theresa another sister-in-law complained because she only got 19 gallons by herself. 

Knowledge is food

Knowledge is food. Animals or fish are rarely pursued except at times of abundance and concentration.  Period of migration, spawning, or breeding are well understood by successful Yupik adults.  Being a week late can mean a serious food shortage for a family. 

Work is an accepted part of life and adults have children to assist them as they grow older.  Men and women never retire but change their focus and goals. 

Young women rarely ever make basket, they are too busy with little children and processing food and making clothing. As middle age woman, they begin to make basket and perfect their skills to make cash money.  Men expand their carving from making spoons and harpoons, to carving ivory and wood in pieces of art. 

Younger men building a sled or skiff will approach older men for advice and assistance.  Young boys and men are expected to watch and listen to older men practice their skills and then when young men are alone, they are expected to try news skills out under low risk circumstances.  They are also reminded to visualize new skills and process out in their minds several times before they actually practice the skill.  This refers to harpooning a seal, repairing a boat engine or installing hardware in a computer. 

Modern technology

Yupiks have little fear of modern technology.  My wife was equally adept at cutting up a seal, writing a research paper or installing a new hard drive on her computer.  Even Paul John (Google him) praised her Yupik language skills.  She had a degree in psychology, she could make me a hat out of beaver skin and do incredible painting and bead work.  Along with the responsibilities of being a mother and wife. 

Snow goggles

Snow goggles were developed and used by the ancient Inuit peoples of the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean over a thousand years ago.  Traditionally they were made of wood, antler, ivory, whale bone, baleen, and even birch bark.   They are an early form of “Polaroid” goggles.  The slits can be wide or narrow depending on what time of year they are used.  Some have small visors and others have large visors especially in Western Alaska. 

Shamans wear special pairs to see into the spirit world, and they can be seen on some Yupik Spirit masks.  They were used to protect the eyes from the glare of the sun of snow or sea ice.  They were worn daily from late winter until early June in the Yupik lands of Western Alaska.  On a blue sky day less than an hour of exposure to the glare of the sun can burn the eyes.  The hunter then would be disabled for several days with extreme itchiness and watering of the eyes until the eye balls would peel.  Blindness would last for three or more days and if repeated enough times it would permanently damage the eyes. 

Every Yupik family even today depends upon a hunter and fisherman.  Even temporary blindness could mean starvation for a family. Today some of our relatives still request wooden goggles because unlike the modern polaroids, they do not sink into the open water as you pull a seal up on the ice. 

     These goggles are painted with acrylics, but formerly they would have been painted with similar colors made from a type of iron oxide or hematite (red), Kaolin clay (white), soot from seal oil lamps (black) mixed with fermented fish eggs and seal oil.  The paint would be set with heat from a lamp.  The lashings on these goggles are made from tanned deer skin.  At home we make the lashings of seal skin rawhide.  

There is more to learn

There is much more to the culture of our people, but I could go on and on. 

 

Would you like to learn more? 

Please let us know if you have a question about the Yu’pik for Richard Wisecarver.  We’ll send them on and ask him to share his insight.  Email us at info@HBReads.org.