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10 What’s in a Name? Becoming a Real Person in a Yup’ik Community
- University of Nebraska Press
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Naming is like the tide; it’s always a little bit different, but if you watch it, you see how it works. Billy Lincoln, Toksook Bay, 1977 Adoption was historically, and continues today to be, widespread in southwestern Alaska.1 During the year I spent in Toksook Bay on Nelson Island in 1976 and 1977, 10 percent of the population had been adopted out of their families of generation, 62 percent of these by matrilateral relatives. In 1990, 40 percent of the households in Toksook Bay either had given a child up for adoption, adopted a child, or both. Although there are no earlier figures for Nelson Island, reports from nearby Nunivak Island indicate that during the first half of the 20th century (a period of epidemic disease and population relocation) the frequency of adoption was even greater. During his visit to Nunivak in 1936–1937, German observer Hans Himmelheber wrote that 8 out of 18 children in a Nunivak village were not living with their biological parents (Fienup-Riordan 1999:9). Three years later, Margaret Lantis (1946:159–160) spent a year on the island, noting that of 31 families at Ellikarrmiut and Mekoryuk, 21 contained foster children or stepchildren. Moreover, several families included two or more adopted youngsters of different origins. Lantis attributed the high adoption rate both to high mortality and frequent marital separation, as marriages were traditionally weak and serial marriages common. Although these were certainly contributing factors, declines in mor219 10 What’s in a Name? Becoming a Real Person in a Yup’ik Community Ann Fienup-Riordan tality and marital separation levels have not resulted in a comparable drop in the rate of adoption, which continues to play an important role in Yup’ik community life.2 Most adoptions today come about not because a child needs a family but because someone wants a child. Adoption usually takes place between related families, most often by grandparents or samegeneration consanguines (that is, a woman taking the child of either her daughter, son, or sister). As Lantis (1946:233) points out, although marriages were traditionally weak, bonds between grandparents, parents , siblings, and children continue to be strong. This is true in temporary as well as permanent adoption. The verb alartuq (literally, “mixed up”) is sometimes applied to a child who gets attached to its grandmother or mother’s sister when its mother has been gone and her parent or sibling is acting as caregiver in her absence. Children come from relatives living as far away as Anchorage. In the early 1980s I received a call from a close Toksook Bay friend who had just arrived in Anchorage and wanted me to pick her up at the airport, which I did. We drove to an old apartment complex, rang the doorbell , entered, visited for ten minutes, and left with a three-month-old girl. My friend returned to Toksook the next morning. Ten years later, the same birth mother—a 30-year-old Yup’ik woman with a nonNative boyfriend—gave the family another child, bringing to six the number of that family’s adopted children. This particular Toksook family could not have children of their own, and to my knowledge infertility has not prevented any contemporary Nelson Island couple from raising children. Infertility, however, is perhaps the least common reason for adopting a child. Children most often are adopted both to spread out child-care responsibilities and to provide older relatives with companionship and the help of younger hands around the house. Half-a-dozen terms commonly are applied to an adopted child, a testimony to its widespread practice:anglicaraq, or “someone raised,” from angli- (“to grow or become big”); aqumkengaq, or “something that makes one sit down,” from the root aqume- (“to sit down”), perhaps relating to the adopted child letting its parents sit down by working for them (Morrow and Pete 1996); kitugtaq, or “something straightened,” from kitugte- (“to repair,” “to fix,” or “to straighten 220 | fienup-riordan [35.175.121.135] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:41 GMT) out a person’s behavior”); teguaq, or “something taken,” from tegu- (“to take”); andyuliaq, literally “a made person,” fromyuk (“person”). The Yup’ik words for adoption are ilaksagute- (literally, “to become related”; from ilake-, “to be related to,” yagute-, “to reach the state of”) and yuksagute- (“to become a person”; from yuk, “person,” “human being”). If fed and clothed by the adoptive parents, the adopted child becomes like the parents’ own. Yet unlike legal...