Qaluyaarminui Nunamtenek Qanemciput/Our Nelson Island Stories: Meanings of Place on the Bering Sea Coast (review)

Qaluyaarminui Nunamtenek Qanemciput/Our Nelson Island Stories is a remarkable collection of oral histories that document the Yup’ik oral traditions along the lowland delta and coastal environments of southwest Alaska. These oral histories are not merely a collection of words that document arcane facts; rather, they reveal an identity tied to landscape and environment and the value that comes from the formed connection to the land, ocean, and rivers that flow through and into them. They reflect a way of knowing, a continuing relevance. These collections of rich oral traditions reveal a Yup’ik worldview from their place within this world and the ever-changing environment.

Formatted in two languages, this book is bilingual in its content: one language translated for general audiences and one written in Yup’ik for community use and culture/language preservation. Significantly, this project included five separate, but closely related, villages and had scientists from different disciplines conducting one study: environmental change integrated with cultural history. In collaboration with consulting anthropologist Anne Fienup-Riordan, this is the tenth volume of work produced and guided by the Calista Elders Council of southwest Alaska, funded by the National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs, and carried out under the Bering Ecosystem Study. This multiyear, multiproject study began in 2006 and involved more than one hundred researchers in an effort to understand the dynamics of change in the eastern Bering Sea. Alice Rearden, David Chanar, and Marie Meade all assisted with the transcription and translation. This book includes both historic and recent photographs and maps.

Qaluyaarmiuni Nunamtenek Qanemciput/Our Nelson Island Stories captures the important historical, cultural, and personal wisdom and experiences of the Yup’ik living on Qaluyaat (Nelson Island). Each story and memory is tied to a place with great meaning. Described are hundreds of places that frame the interactions of the Yup’ik living there. What emerges as of utmost importance is not just surviving in an area but recognizing how to live in, respect, and adapt to the ever-changing landscape. Maintaining a subsistence lifestyle through the 1940s, while residing in small settlements and moving with the season’s cycles of plant and animal abundance, the people of Nelson Island have since adapted to major changes in lifestyle. The Yup’ik now live in five concentrated year-round villages, and this collection of stories provides maps to places holding great cultural importance to them and the knowledge of how the Yup’ik can interact with those places.

When gathering to speak about the past, the Elders carefully select the subject matter they wish to share. The Elders always conduct such gatherings in the Yup’ik language, since they recognize the Yup’ik language’s integral connection to a shared Yup’ik knowledge: “What is not said is often as significant as what is said. Long and careful listening to these conversations provides unique perspectives on [all that is Yup’ik]. Beyond facts, Elders teach listeners how to learn. They share not only what they know but also how they know it and why they believe it is important to remember” (xxiii). The Elders believe that it is important that they communicate what they share with kindness and compassion, even when speaking to the Yup’ik youth, for they believe that what they say is not made up and that it shouldn’t be cast aside. The Elders do not disassociate themselves from what they disclose; for the changes in their environment, they accept personal responsibility.

In the 1930s, the only change that came in Yup’ik subsistence lifestyle was increased contact with other coastal and upriver neighbors, rather than with non-Natives or their influences. Because of geographic isolation, late contact, and lack of commercially exploitable resources, the Yup’ik subsistence lifestyle and worldview had been retained through...