Jacobson, Steven A.

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Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l'Université de Montréal, l'Université Laval et l'Université du Québec àMontréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Érudit offre des services d'édition numérique de documentsscientifiques depuis 1998.Pour communiquer avec les responsables d'Érudit : info@erudit.org Compte rendu Ouvrage recensé : KRUPNIK, Igor and Lars KRUTAK, 2002 Akuzilleput Igaqullghet Our Words Put to Paper. Sourcebook in St. Lawrence Island Yupik Heritage and History, compiled and edited by Igor Krupnik,Willis Walunga (Kepelgu) and Vera Metcalf (Qaakaghlleq), Washington, Smithsonian Institution,National Museum of Natural History, Arctic Studies Center, 460 pages. par Steven A. JacobsonÉtudes/Inuit/Studies, vol. 28, n° 2, 2004, p. 231-233.   Pour citer ce compte rendu, utiliser l'adresse suivante : URI: http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/013210arDOI: 10.7202/013210arNote : les règles d'écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir.Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politiqued'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter à l'URI https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/Document téléchargé le 9 février 2017 10:30BOOK REVIEWS/231KRUPNIK, Igor and Lars KRUTAK2002 Akuzilleput Igaqullghet Our Words Put to Paper. Sourcebook in St.Lawrence Island Yupik Heritage and History, compiled and edited by IgorKrupnik, Willis Walunga (Kepelgu) and Vera Metcalf (Qaakaghlleq),Washington, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History,Arctic Studies Center, 460 pages.The 1000 or more Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island are unique amongEskimo—east of Alaska read "Inuit"—in a number of ways. While politically part ofAlaska, and thus of the United States, St. Lawrence Island is essentially an offshoreisland of Asian Russia separated from the Asian mainland by one quarter the span ofocean that separates it from the Alaskan mainland. For this reason the St. LawrenceIslander Yupik are not nearly as close biologically or culturally to the Central Yup'ik(or to the Inupiaq) of Alaska as they are to the 1000 or more Yupik people of theChukotkan Peninsula, who share a common language and culture with the St.Lawrence Islanders, except in-so-far as there have been cultural effects on both sidesfrom the differing political, social and economic systems of the US and Russia in thelast 100 years or so (a fact which in itself would provide material for muchstudy—though not the subject of the book being reviewed). St. Lawrence Island andChukotkan Peninsula Yupik (collectively termed "Siberian Yupik" in Alaska) havestrong historic ties with the adjoining Chukchi of the Asian side, a fact reflected in theSiberian Yupik language, and are in fact the only Eskimo (Inuit) group that hasborrowed culturally or linguistically to any extent from another indigenous group.Given all these fascinating features of the Island's people, it is not surprising thatanthropologists and non-professional observers have over the last century—andlonger—created a wealth of documentation, written and photographic, of the St.Lawrence Island Yupik.  The book Akuzilleput Igaqullghet Our Words Put to Paper,(subtitled Sourcebook in St. Lawrence Island Yupik Heritage and History), wascompiled by Igor Krupnik (formerly of Moscow where he specialized in ChukotkanPeninsula Yupik ethnology) and Lars Krutak, anthropologists at the Smithsonian, andedited by Krupnik, Willis Walunga (Kepelgu) and Vera Metcalf (Qaakaghlleq), thelater two themselves St. Lawrence Island Yupik. It undertakes, very successfully, thetask of "combining historical documents with present-day elders' stories […] bridgingold documents with memories and knowledge shared among the community members"(p.340).The first four parts of the book present census lists going back to 1900, notebookentries, diary sections, reports, etc. of teachers, doctors, earlier anthropologists, andother non-Yupik observers, plus some accounts by Yupik people written down indecades past by themselves and others, all dealing with such topics as pre-Christianfestivals and practices, birth and death rituals, social structure (including the "clan"system, found in no group of Eskimos other than the Siberian Yupik), famines andepidemics, whale hunting, reindeer herding, and school attendance.  Quite a few highquality photographs, especially portraits of individual Yupik, and a number ofdrawings are included.  As pointed out in the introduction (p. 18), the problem was notone of finding enough material to fill the volume, but rather selecting what to include232/RECENSIONSfrom the truly vast amount of available material.  A very strong point of thepresentation, and one which makes it most meaningful to the present and future of theSt. Lawrence Island (and Chukotkan Peninsula) Yupik, is that, whenever possible,every individual mentioned through English names, nicknames, or Yupik namesspelled haphazardly, or pictured in photographs, is identified by his or her Yupik namewritten in the modern accurate orthography of the language.  This identification wasdone by Walunga and other elders together with Metcalf and other younger Yupikwriters as Christopher Koonooka.  The present-day Yupik know their ancestry quitewell through the 100 years covered by the book, and Yupik names are "recycled," so,as Vera Metcalf states, "this book represents not only the return of these stories,pictures, and details to us; it also returned our responsibility as guardians of our pastand its lessons back to us" (p. 11).The fifth part of the book, "Old Papers, Today's Elders: Matching Memories andWritten Records," consists largely of history told by present day Yupik elders,recorded, transcribed, and translated in the past few years. In this section there areoccasional references and correlations with descriptions of the same events orsituations in the paper record from previous years, for example, the note concerning anearlier description of a devestating flood in Gambell now described anew (p. 408).There could have been more such cross-references, though perhaps their paucity is dueto the authors' intention that "the printed text once again becomes one of many 'equal'participants in the open discussion" (p. 340) (italics mine). Certainly, St. LawrenceIsland Yupik people would have no trouble correlating the people and eventsmentioned or described in two or more places in the book.The only technical defect the reviewer noticed with this book is that p. 258mentions illustrations made from Elliott's original sketches of 1875, saying that "eightare reproduced here." The eight are indeed included in the book, but not until p. 330.This is a very minor defect; the book seems quite free of typographic and similarerrors. The volume is beautifully and meticulously crafted, the photos, technicallyexcellent to start with, are beautifully printed, and complete directions are givenconcerning where to find more material if one wants to delve deeper into any of thesources from which the various selections have been made.  This book will beinvaluable for St. Lawrence Island Yupik people, for anthropologists and otherscholars, and for that growing group of scholars who themselves are Yupik, asrepresented by the Walunga, Metcalf, Koonooka, and the other St. Lawrence Islanderswho worked on this book.Any reader of this book will wonder whether a similar book exists or could bemade for the Yupik people of Chukotka, a book which would be as interesting anduseful as this one is and which could be used in conjunction with it as a pair ofsourcebooks for the Siberian Yupik of Lawrence Island and Chukotka taken as awhole. In fact such a book exists. It is Pust' Govoryat Nashi Stariki, ChukotkamYupigita Ungipamsugit, Rasskazy Aziatskikh Eskimosov-yupik, Zapisi 1975-1987gg.(Let Our Elders Speak, Stories of the Yupik [Asiatic Eskimo] of Chukotka, Writings1975-1987), compiled and written by Igor Krupnik, edited by Aynganga Lydmila(Yupik culture authority in Chukotka), published in 2000 by "KnowledgeBOOK REVIEWS/233Repatriation," Siberian-St. Lawrence Island Yupik Heritage Project, financed by theNational Science Foundation. This book is in Russian, with Yupik words written in theCyrillic orthography for the language that has been used in Chukotka for manydecades now.Akuzilleput Igaqullghet is written in a way so that it is quite readable for all, and isstrongly recommended by this reviewer to anyone who has an interest in the St.Lawrence Islanders or more generally the Siberian Yupik in and of themselves, as thewesternmost group of Eskimo (Inuit), as essentially the only indigenous people foundin both America and Russia, or as the one group of Eskimo (Inuit) who have beendeeply influenced by another indigenous people (the Chukchi). The book also willserve as a model of the relatively new style of ethnology whereby the group whosehistory and culture is being described actively participates in formulating thedescription of themselves.Steven A. JacobsonAlaska Native Language CenterUniversity of Alaska FairbanksP.O. Box 757680Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-7680USAffsaj@uaf.eduLEE, Molly and Gregory A. REINHARDT2003 Eskimo architecture: dwelling and structure in the early historic period,Fairbanks, University of Alaksa Press and University of Alaska Museum,216 pages.Ce très beau livre magnifiquement et abondamment illustré par des dessins et desphotos se veut une introduction à l'architecture inuit du début de la période historique.Les auteurs y soutiennent le point vue de Mauss (1906) selon lequel l'alternationsaisonnière des habitations d'hiver et d'été caractérise mieux l'architecture des Inuit quele stéréotype de l'iglou de neige habituellement associé à ces derniers. Les quatrechapitres principaux couvrent les régions suivantes: 1) le Groenland, 2) l'Arctiquecentral (incluant le Labrador), 3) le nord-ouest de l'Arctique et le détroit de Béring, et4) le sud-ouest de l'Alaska, la mer de Béring, la Sibérie et le golfe de l'Alaska. On peutd'ailleurs se demander pourquoi les auteurs ont choisi de présenter ces régions d'est enouest alors que les premières migrations de diverses populations inuit venaient del'ouest. En commençant par l'architecture de l'Arctique occidental, le lecteur auraitmieux compris l'absence ou l'ajout d'éléments architecturaux dans l'Arctique central etau Groenland.Malgré de nombreuses coquilles, une façon arbitraire de mettre en italiquescertains mots en langue inuit et l'agaçante habitude d'ajouter un «s» à des ethnonymes

Krupnik, Igor and Lars Krutak, 2002 Akuzilleput Igaqullghet Our Words Put to Paper. Sourcebook in St. Lawrence Island Yupik Heritage and History, compiled and edited by Igor Krupnik, Willis Walunga (Kepelgu) and Vera Metcalf (Qaakaghlleq), Washington, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Arctic Studies Center, 460 pages.

Steven A. Jacobson

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Études/Inuit/Studies

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