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  • Paitarkiutenka: My Legacy to You
  • Meagan Gough
Paitarkiutenka: My Legacy to You. By Miisaq/Frank Andrew, Sr. Transcriptions and Translations by Alice Rearden and Marie Meade. Edited by Anne Fienup-Riordan. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, with Calista Elders Council and the Anchorage Museum Association, 2008. 440 pp. Softbound, $25.00.

Paitarkiutenka: My Legacy to You is a life history narrative of regionally renowned Yup'ik elder Miisaq/Frank Andrew, Sr., which describes his life in the Bering Sea coastal community of Kwigillingok, Alaska. This work is centered upon Miisaq's experiences and those of his ancestors manifested through story, it provides unparalleled insight into Yup'ik cosmology and cosmogony, particularly how cultural understandings of the natural world have shaped local history, customs, language, and the nature and function of oral tradition of the Yup'ik people of Southern Alaska. Paitarkiutenka is a companion text to Yuungnagpiallerput, a more general work that weaves together hundreds of translated quotations from [End Page 102] elders throughout the Yukon-Kuskokwim region. "Paitarkiutenka opens the door to appreciate what a single individual needed to know to live life along the Bering Sea Coast" (xvi). Paitarkiutenka is a bilingual text that presents Miisaq's oratory skills in Yup'ik and English and draws upon an astounding hundred hours of recorded interviews between Miisaq, translators Alice Rearden and Marie Meade, and editor/anthropologist Anne Fienup-Riordan. A significant portion of Miisaq's life narrative presents and contextualizes the value of his extensive knowledge of Yup'ik technology, tool work, and seasonal hunting and fishing practices. Miisaq is known in the Yup'ik cultural world as a Cavesratuuli, which translates to "[o]ne who knows how to work on everything" (xlii). Moreover, "he knows how to construct things without uncertainty. They say he is able to look at something with his eyes and replicate it" (xlii). Commenting on Miisaq's significance, editor Anne Fienup-Riordan presents considerations about the shift from orality to literacy in recording Yup'ik oral tradition in textual form: "When an oral tradition as rich as this takes written form, we lose the elegant figures of speech, the laughter, the love and compassion in the speaker's voice. What we gain is that the knowledge and wisdom these words embody can now be passed on far beyond Frank's children and children's children" (xvii).

This work also illustrates how Miisaq, along with other Yup'ik community members of his generation, witnessed cultural change, loss, and continuity at an unprecedented scale, yet, as Fienup-Riordan describes in the introduction: "Frank's gift was his ability to recall and describe, and his book abounds in extraordinary recollections of ordinary times" (xlix). The multiple types of stories Miisaq tells poignantly illustrate the complex and dynamic nature of Yup'ik oral tradition: "Frank told many stories over the years, both guliraat (legends or tales told by distant ancestors) and ganemcit (historical narratives related by known persons). The Inupiat of northern Alaska also distinguish between unipkaat (legends) and gualiagtuat (narratives), as do the Siberian Yup'ik Eskimos of St. Lawrence Island and the Chukchi Peninsula" (xlvii). Miisaq's oratory skills are considered to be exemplary of the Yup'ik oral tradition, for "such stories were aimed at a mixed audience ... rather than a stationary group of listeners anticipating a narrative of Aristotelian design. Instead of building to a climax and a conclusion like western dramas, the structure of these long narratives resembled pearls on a string" (xlviii). The book is structured to illustrate the varied forms of Yup'ik oral history, and the last section of the book is based on some of the legends Miisaq enjoyed telling most, which give readers insight into both Miisaq's oratory skills and his personality.

Paitarkiutenka adds new dimensions to the existing historiography of Yup'ik ethnography, particularly the previous series of companion works focusing on various Yup'ik elders by this same team, in which they use oral history to powerfully convey cultural continuity, loss, and change of time in the Yup'ik world. In doing so, this work also makes an invaluable contribution to a growing [End Page 103] body of collaborative indigenous life...

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