Faith, Food, and Family in a Yupik Whaling Community

4. Names and Families

chapter 4 Names and Families F or centuries, St. Lawrence Island has been home to northern marine mammal hunters who settled along its shores in small extended family groups. Each group had its own homeland with its own special name, and here, as elsewhere across the Arctic, people identified themselves both by their homelands and by homeland names. Islanders today still talk about the movement of their ancestors to and from their homelands and about the defining events that once took place in them. While this topic might seem commonplace, it is also powerful. Islanders today derive some of their strength and their enduring sense of identity and personhood1 from these settlements, even though only the oldest of the elders remember when people lived in these homelands more often than in the two large communities of Gambell and Savoonga. Homeland names have gradually assumed the status of clan names as well. When someone refers to himself as a Pugughileghmiit, for example, he means not only that his ancestors came from the south-side settlements at Pugughileq. He also considers himself one of several member families associated with the name itself. Pugughileq, or some area of the south side of the island where Pugughileq is located, is also likely to be the place where he returns each year with his family to camp: to hunt, fish, collect greens and bird eggs, and to dig for fossil ivory and artifacts. Anthropologists have argued that St. Lawrence Island ramka are not “true” clans. The late Charles Hughes believed that because ramka 93 1. For a discussion of personhood in Central Yup’ik society, see Fienup-Riordan 1986. My own understanding of the importance of place has been influenced by essays found in Feld and Basso (1996). Names and Families 94 names seemed to assume significance only after the 1878 tragedy, they could not be considered clans, nor did they equate with them. Others have made similar arguments, particularly for the islanders’ Russian relatives living in Sireniki and Chaplino on Chukotka. One concern is the lack of exogamous marriage rules. However, my conversations with many elders seem to point to just such rules. Exogamous marriage rules prevailed among the different ramka, and only in the last several decades, with the cultural homogeneity introduced by public schooling and formal tribal government, have these rules been gradually disregarded. From the 1878 famine until World War II, at least, St. Lawrence Island life was dominated by ramka membership. Closely tied to it was the importance of lineage name and individual names. Today, in Gambell, one could probably show that everyone, with the exception of total outsiders like me, is related. In that sense, Gambell is one huge family. Any discussion of life in Gambell has to take this fact into consideration. What happens to families is Gambell’s story. That story embraces families, family names, individuals, and the names individuals bear. Names evoke the traditions and values that the community holds dear, and thus it seems appropriate to start with the names as they are conceptualized, remarked upon, and celebrated in the community. It is also appropriate to consider the frame that encompasses these names and the bearers of them. On St. Lawrence Island, the traditional rules that bind humans, animals , and plants together in harmony or on a “right path”2 invoke the respectful treatment of all things and all beings.3 For humans, respectful treatment begins at or even before birth. In a sense, respectful treatment begins with the introduction of each infant soul into his or her family. The soul, which sometimes appears in visions as a miniature replica of the person, is honored through its name and through the incremental achievements of childhood until, finally, the child is grown and assumes 2. I rely here on explanations of harmony in Native American tradition outlined by writer Paula Gunn Allen in her introduction to Spider Woman’s Granddaughters, 1989:1–21. 3. Ann Fienup-Riordan (1994) describes the “boundaries and passages” that link humans and other spiritual entities together in Nelson Island Yup’ik perspective. She suggests that much of the community’s spiritual energy and thought is devoted to activities that “clear the passages” that connect animals and humans. its rightful place as a parent or other respected adult, as defined by proper understanding of adulthood and the myriad responsibilities associated with adulthood. Island celebrations of proper humanity can be traced...