Continuity and Change in Native North America

Thanks to Paul Kedrosky for blogging on Gene Weingarten’s recent Washinton Post Magazine piece on contemporary life among the Yup’ik Eskimo of Savoonga, Alaska (and to my brother-in-law Rob for the head’s up).

The header essentially sensationalizes the jist of the article:

They’ve survived one of the world’s most inhospitable climates and the barren isolation of their Arctic island. But can they survive booze, bingo and satellite TV?

If you can get past the clichés related to life in native communities and the humour about Eskimos and refrigerators, the article notes many of the complexities of life in northern native villages, especially where outsiders and researchers are concerned:

The village store is a modern grocery, shelves stocked with goods at eye-popping prices. A Tombstone frozen pizza, $7 at a Washington Safeway, was $13.95. Bean dip in a cat-food-size can, $5. Many of the perishables were well past their expiration dates.

There we found Parson Noongwook, 41, wearing a “Native Pride” baseball cap. He told us he liked it in Savoonga just fine. He loves to hunt, is proud of being an Eskimo, has everything he wants. Michael asked him to pose for a picture. He said sure, if we would give him $50. We thought he was kidding. He was not. No picture.

This sort of scene would play out more than once. Later in the day, an older woman would berate us, whipping a scolding finger: “You earn a lot of money on this, you should give us some! I need false teeth, but I can’t afford to go to Nome for them!” This turned out to be Gloria Kulowiyi, Dean’s mother. She, too, is an expert carver as well as a seamstress; I would find her work for sale on an Alaskan native art Web site. A small Gloria Kulowiyi ivory hair barrette, sold online, costs $162.

There was something puzzling going on, involving money. The people of Savoonga were being mostly friendly–polite and accommodating, if reserved–except on this topic, where several seemed almost belligerent.

After five days in Albuquerque discussing my own fieldwork in northern British Columbia with my anthropology professors and visiting with local people on the Navajo Reservation, I am reassured that anthropology still has a place, and one that can help make sense of articles like this. The cultural anthropology of Native North America offers the possibility of demonstrating continuities with the past just as it acknowledges both change and integrity of communities in the present. It can do so without making clichés come to life or suggesting that the acceptance of new technologies is odd, out-of-place or, worse, a rejection of traditional culture.

I am also reassured that my own work identifying native speech genres which reframe discussions of the past in order to debate the present might have some value. For this reason, Weingarten’s article seems less than heartbreaking and more a picture of Yup’ik reality. Perhaps the next thing to be done is to listen to the people at Savoonga to see how they are talking about change. I might also direct readers to books by Ann Fienup-Riordan, who does attend to local Yup’ik perspectives on culture change (eg. Fienup-Riordan, Ann. 2000. Hunting Tradition in a Changing World: Yup’ik Lives in Alaska Today. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.).

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