Circumpolar Lives and Livelihood: A Comparative Ethnoarchaeology of Gender and Subsistence

9. Iñupiaq Maritime Hunters: Summer Subsistence Work in Diomede

BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 263 / / Circumpolar Lives / Jarvenpa and Brumbach 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [First Page] [263], (1) Lines: 0 to 51 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: Eject [263], (1) 9. Iñupiaq Maritime Hunters Summer SubsistenceWork in Diomede Carol Zane Jolles The Community and the Seasonal Round Ingaliq, the only community on Little Diomede Island, is sharply seasonal in its physical appearance and in the activities that occupy its residents. Winter is characterized by storms, high winds, heavy snow and ice cover, and, sometime between mid-December and mid- to late January, freeze-up between the two Diomedes on either side of the Russian–American border (Figure 9.1). In winter the ice extends the virtual land mass of Little Diomede to include the entire frozen expanse from the shoreline to the border and north and south as far as the ice apron extends before encountering openings or leads in the ice mass. The ice cover remains until sometime during the month of May, when the ice becomes too soft to be traversed safely and planes can no longer land on the ice. Travel slows down or stops, and the community turns toward the spring hunting season and the other major season, summer. Summer is lived out on the abbreviated land surface of the island, surrounded by the icy waters of the north Bering Sea. Average sea temperatures range from 1° to 2° C. Waters in the Bering Strait are laced with swift-flowing currents that demand knowledge and experience to negotiate. Transport in summer and fall, until the reoccurrence of freeze-up, is limited to local boat travel on calm days (with winds less than 15 knots) and helicopter travel. Methodology In winter the Ingaliq community depends on the ice presence to harvest Alaska blue king crabs and to obtain the marine mammal meats that sustain them throughout the winter and early spring months. Summer is heralded by the arrival of well over a million nesting seabirds and the sudden emergence of grasses and leaves that cover any spot that is not entirely made of rock. Con- BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 264 / / Circumpolar Lives / Jarvenpa and Brumbach 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [264], (2) Lines: 51 to 63 ——— 13.826pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [264], (2) 9.1 The Ingaliq community, Little Diomede Island, Alaska, March 2002. The foreground area with snowmobile and heaped snow is on the sea ice (photo by Dena Gershon,tea [Teachers Experiencing Antarctica and the Arctic]). versations with Diomede residents inevitably focus on the resources associated with the seasonal divisions that dictate the types of major hunting, fishing, and/or gathering–foraging occupations of the community. Residents envision the hunting and foraging activities of the community in seasonal units. Thus, the very fact that research in 1999 in the Diomede community took place in summer meant that the informal conversations and the formal interviews with Diomede residents often revolved especially around summer hunting to the extent that any hunting took place and particularly summer gathering or foraging work. The methodology employed to record information about these summer subsistence activities in Diomede took two major forms. The first was participant observation. Daily visual surveys indicated that most residents were engaged in a few critical gathering or foraging tasks. These included gathering murre eggs either on foot or by boat from the cliff ledges that embrace the island and neighboring Fairway Rock, trapping or netting auklets, hunting murres, and gathering wild greens from the island’s slopes and tilted rock and meadow uplands on top of the island. One man in summer 1999 set crab pots in the channel of the strait. Several men later followed this example,but in the summer of 1999 it appeared that setting crab pots was limited to a single individual. Crabbing is primarily a late winter–spring activity. 264 jolles BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 265 / / Circumpolar Lives / Jarvenpa and Brumbach 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14...