10
Ideology

Conversion to Christianity

One century ago, the Eskimo residents of Gambell, Wainwright, and Unalakleet held beliefs very different from those they hold today about sickness, death, and proper relations with living things. Survival and the subsistence economy stood in the center of these beliefs, and the ritual practices that accompanied them sought to avert or to rectify problems in relation to survival and subsistence. As in social organization, religious beliefs and practices were unavoidably instrumental, inescapably pinned to the environment and the uses to which it was put.

The essential beliefs were animistic—a world suffused with discrete spirits. Some spirits, such as the souls of animals, were kinspersons to be propitiated. It was believed that their behavior and their emotions were similar to those of humans. But more important, perhaps, the souls of animals were extremely sensitive to protocol, to treatment with real respect and dignity. They could peer into persons' hearts—into their deepest thoughts—and perceive the manner in which they were regarded.

Spirits were not restricted to living beings. They also were attributed to the abiological entities of land, water, and sky, and those spirits, too, whether in rocks or ice, required respectful treatment. And still other spirits—some called to personal use by specially qualified persons (shamans)—could be helpful or harmful, depending on their use. A final class of spirits was always malevolent.

The Eskimos of a hundred years ago observed several ritual practices, so that problems could be averted or so that they could be corrected. Seals, walrus, and whales were treated with

great respect and were addressed with kinship terms. Tools used to hunt animals of the sea were not used to hunt animals of the land, and vice versa. Offerings were made to the animals that natives hunted, and offerings were made to their spirits after they were bagged. Men observed some taboos, women others. Even the butchering and distribution of sea mammals and land mammals followed ritual procedures. In the North Slope and Norton Sound villages, karigi, the men's semisubterranean houses, were used by hunters to prepare for the hunt, ritually and profanely, and they were sometimes used to purge entire communities, so as to reestablish proper respectful relations with the spirits of the animals on which they relied.

In all of the villages, medical-religious practitioners, who were considered to possess supernatural powers acquired through lonely quests, called on those powers, essentially spirit beings, to solve problems. The shamans' techniques included trances, talking in sentient languages, ventriloquism, and legerdemain. Because the powers that they possessed could be used to help as well as to harm, the shamans could be highly respected and, in some instances, feared.

It was believed that a shaman's spirit could find and return spirits that had left the bodies of villagers, either through theft by an evil spirit (perhaps one sent by a shaman), fright, or wandering during dreams. And it was also believed that a shaman's amulets, coupled with certain proscriptions on behavior, could heal the sick. The shaman, thus, was a most important person in village life.

In a very brief period around the turn of the century, the villages of Unalakleet and Gambell were converted more or less wholesale to Christianity. Wainwright's genesis as a permanent community, as we know, was brought about by Sheldon Jackson, a formidable person, it appears, who established the government school, the Presbyterian mission, and the reindeer herd. The three institutions of economy, education, and religion were as one, inasmuch as the teacher was also the mis-sionary-pastor and the controller of the herd.

The combination of church, education, and economy was effected by the federal government. Indeed, the missionaries in Gambell, Unalakleet, and Wainwright also represented the

federal government in those places. This was no fortuity. Rather, this larger arrangement for much of native Alaska was worked out by the Reverend Jackson, who was a Presbyterian missionary at Fort Wrangell in 1877. The federal government first commissioned Jackson to oversee education in Alaska. He soon purchased reindeer herds from Norway and Siberia, and by 1894, he was hiring Lapps to control the herds and teach the pastoral-husbandry skills to natives.

This particular combination of powers had occurred in Unalakleet about a decade earlier. In 1887, Axel Karlsen of the Swedish Covenant church established a mission and school without great initial success. But in 1894, he received a reindeer herd from the federal government through Jackson for the villagers. Karlsen was given control of the herd, and his mission soon became more successful.

Gambell received its first missionary in 1804—Verne C. Gam-bell, a Presbyterian. As at Wainwright and Unalakleet, Gambell was also the local teacher and the representative of the federal government. There is no evidence of early success at proselytizing to Christianity, but in 1900, a medical missionary, E. O. Campbell, took over the Presbyterian mission (Gambell had been killed at sea two years earlier). He also received a federally owned reindeer herd, complete with Lapp herders, to assist the natives of Gambell in their annual subsistence needs. A near-total conversion to Christianity soon followed.

Conversion did not necessarily occur overnight in every village that received a missionary, a school, and a reindeer herd. Nor was it akin to an unstoppable wave. Yet many conversions occurred rapidly in most villages. In most cases, missionaries were not resident in those villages but merely visited them regularly from some more permanent station.

One frequently related story, which has many variants, concerns a life-threatening, yet spiritual struggle between a missionary and the village's shaman. In most versions, the shaman threatens to kill the missionary for intervening in the affairs of the village and for preaching a message that beseeches natives to reject their pagan ways. The victor in the battle is inevitably the missionary. Thereafter, the shaman either converts or his power declines and he loses his clientele.

Correll (1974: 68) reports how Karlsen, the Covenant missionary to Unalakleet, preached in the neighboring village of Shaktoolik. Unknown to Karlsen, an angry shaman, gripping his amulets, attempted to get Karlsen to stop in midsermon. Oblivious to the shaman, Karlsen preached on, and the natives feared that the shaman would kill him. Eventually, the shaman sat down and cried. Karlsen later told the shaman to throw away his "devils." The shaman then threw his amulets into the fire. His power was broken in this view.

Campbell reportedly engaged in more than one battle with shamans over converts, and by 1910, the battle, for the most part, was won in favor of Christianity. By the 1940s, the Seventh Day Adventists had gained converts in Gambell, so that a second Christian denomination then complemented the Presbyterian church.

Christian missionaries equated shamanism and the tools of the trade with the devil. Devil worship was defeated, in the missionary view, when shamanism was defeated. Yet shamanism was in full force through the 1890s and continued to be practiced with fewer adherents into the 1930s. Hughes (1984) mentions that one elderly Gambell resident continued to practice traditional beliefs until the mid-1950s.

Luton (1986) argues that in some respects there is little difference between the shaman's prayer that a steam whaling vessel near Barrow be crushed by ice in 1882 and a Christian native praying that an atomic vessel near Barrow be thwarted by Mother Nature in 1981. In the 1880s, the shaman prayed that the vessel would be crushed so that its parts and contents could be salvaged by the Eskimos. It was, and they were. In 1981, the atomic vessel sought to determine the feasibility of year-round shipping lanes (for oil) in the Arctic Ocean. The atomic vessel was struck by moving ice and nearly capsized, became locked to the ice, and helplessly drifted out to sea with the ice pack as it receded in the spring. The atomic ship eventually broke loose. In this example, the native explanation of nature is fulfilled. Nature is directed by forces much greater than man's technology, and technology, per se, is not understanding, nor is it wisdom. Nature is to be respected, to be lived with. It cannot be conquered.

There are obvious differences between shamanism and Christian beliefs. Shamans controlled power, bullyragged spirits, caused events to happen. The shamans' craft was not supplicative. Luton's assessment of the shaman's action as a humble request (prayer) may be wide of the mark. It is more likely that he was calling on his spirit powers to act. The native Christian who prays for God to exercise His dominion over power is certainly different from the shaman who called on powers presumed to be in his personal control to cause untoward natural acts to happen. But regardless of the interpretation of the shaman's act, there are obvious similarities in the two attempts to enlist supernatural assistance to solve profane problems.

Perhaps the most interesting similarity is not so obvious. That is the way in which natives in the past respected the environment and attempted to live within the limits set by it and the way in which natives today respect the environment and seek to live within its limits. There is little doubt that Eskimos in all three villages possess values about the flora, fauna, and abiological features of their homelands which are much different from the values held by members of the dominant society, in general, about similar phenomena. "Values" are, essentially, significant symbols attached to things, that is, ideas. Both ANCSA, which extinguished native claims to control over the wildlife from which they gained their livelihoods, and oil-related developments, which were made possible by the passage of ANCSA, have caused responses by natives that demonstrate the tenacity of their ideologies. These responses also show how those ideologies differ from the beliefs about the environment and the role of humans within it that dominate in the larger society of the United States. These aspects of native ideology will be analyzed below.

There are some ambiguous areas in which Christian and traditional native beliefs have not been satisfactorily separated. In our fieldwork, for example, we sought to learn whether natives attributed spirits to animals and plants of the land and sea and to the physical forms and forces in their habitats. We found no evidence that versions of the Sedna or Sila myths (spirits of animals that required explicit propitiation) were told

or believed, or that ill consequences followed the violations of traditional interdictions about the treatment of animals on slaying them. Famines, bad health, community sorrow, and such, were not attributed to angered spirits. Quite to the contrary, I repeatedly heard unsuccessful Unalakleet native hunters and fishers say that they were "in a slump" or that they had experienced a string of "bad luck." It is doubtful that any but the most absolutely iconoclastic Eskimo would have said such a thing a century ago, and only a few would have said such a thing even a few decades into the mission period.

It appeared, then, that Christian doctrines had fundamentally altered traditional Eskimo beliefs and practices in relation to the environment, but especially in how the environment and man's role within it was explained. Animism had been replaced by Christian beliefs.

Appearances, however, may not be reality in the Eskimo case. We noticed that people in all of the villages had not lost their profound respect for animal life, especially marine animal life. In each village, whales (bowhead, killer, and beluga) and seals are addressed and referred to as "my brother the ———," and respect is shown in pursuing, dispatching, butchering, and distributing them. The spirit sympathy of men for these animals is obvious and verbalized. The whale festival in Gambell, the Nalukatak in Wainwright, and the distribution of beluga in Unalakleet suggest that something more than respect is attributed to the animals that provide the underpinnings of their traditions and their lives. These practices suggest that natives may not believe that man and God, alone, are moral beings blessed with eternal lives.

Christianity in the Villages

Each of the three villages has a dominant Christian denomination as well as one or more Christian sects with fewer adherents. Initially, however, the residents in each of the villages in our inquiry were confronted by only one sect. This may have mitigated any problems that might have been encountered had several sects been competing for the favors of the natives. There

was no evidence of hostility, rancor, or competition between the sects or criticisms of the beliefs and practices of different sects within any of the villages.

If the generations of villagers around the turn of the century found the dislocation of their shamans somewhat disturbing, some aspects of the transition to Christianity for them must have been comfortable. In particular, the Old Testament, with its emphasis on patriarchal communities and families and its respect for elders and tradition, is especially consonant with traditional social and economic organization at Gambell. Except for the emphasis on patriarchal lineal organization, the three villages are similar in their compatibility with key Old Testament values.

And all of the villages must have been receptive to many New Testament teachings as well, particularly the recurrent messages of communitarianism, brotherly love, forgiveness, generosity, and a willingness to surmount life's obstacles. Whereas these prominent teachings from the New Testament were not commonly practiced beyond the extended family and the village prior to the turn of the century, they clearly have been accepted and put to practice in the much larger villages that have developed in the past eighty years. The researchers agree in their impressions that the villagers observe these New Testament ethics as parts of everyday thoughts and acts.

Just how these practices became established in the several communities is not dear, given a somewhat fractious past. That is, each of the villages was made up of families from several small villages, which, for various reasons, had coalesced into the larger villages near the turn of the century. Perhaps they resulted from the Christian movement, in which preachers broadcast their new ideas through sermons to growing communities of people whose previous contacts varied from many and frequent to none at all. A new ideology, coupled with new practices, was acquired, whatever the reasons may have been.

It is very likely that the New Testament promises of redemption in the here and now—which entailed a complete change to the person if the Christian precepts were accepted—followed by eternal life in a heavenly hereafter were very attractive to the Eskimos in the three villages. As Robbins has reported,

"These beliefs have proved a great value to a people [in this instance, the people of Gambell] whose lives are filled with peril" (Little and Robbins 1984: 74).

Christianity is practiced by Eskimos of all ages, but in all three villages, the most conservative elders—those who best remember and relate Eskimo traditions about hunting, singing, dancing, language, and the family and whose experience and wisdom is sought—are, without any exceptions known to the researchers, devout Christians. Every villager to whom we spoke, or about whom we acquired information, considers himself or herself to be a Christian. Church attendance was highest in Gambell (regular attendance was 50%); nevertheless, churches are the foci of all of the communities, religious pictures are found in all of the homes that we entered, and most families have members who regularly engage in some activities sponsored by the churches. The more active members are given special responsibilities as teachers. In Gambell, it is not uncommon for men and women to deliver sermons. And for the residents of Gambell and Unalakleet, the airwaves, too, are pregnant with Christian messages: Nome's two radio stations are owned by Christian denominations. During the long winter months, the Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts involve entire communities, but they are carried out under the aegis of the dominant local churches.

In Unalakleet, the Covenant church (the Swedish Evangelical Mission Church of America) has been central to village affairs since Karlsen established his mission school there in 1887. The church owns land in the village and upriver at the original reindeer station. It owns many buildings situated in the social center of the village, including the church, schools, a recreation hall, dormitories, storage houses, a garage, and houses. In a real sense, the activities associated with the Covenant church are central in the community nexus. The resident pastors, administrators, and faculty have almost invariably been Anglos.

A Catholic church was established in Unalakleet in the 1920s. From time to time, a nonnative priest has been resident in Unalakleet, as was the case in 1982. But for the largest part of the past sixty years, a priest stationed in St. Michael has journeyed to Unalakleet to conduct services and to attend to the

Catholic congregation there. The Catholic congregation in the village appears to be maintained through marriages of Unalakleet residents to persons from Catholic-dominated villages along the Yukon River and at St. Michael.

Unalakleet natives, whether Protestant or Catholic, in their conversations and behavior appear to be devout in their espousal and practice of Christian ethics. Over half of all members of the Covenant church regularly attend services, whereas practically all members of the community engage in some Covenant church activities at some times during the year, whether or not they are members.

Correll (1974: 69) asserted that many Unalakleet natives as recently as 1968, during his stay there, were bitter about the way in which Covenant church missionaries left the village at the turn of the century, reindeer herd in tow, and sought to strike it rich selling meat to miners during the Nome gold rush. Furthermore, many of them, not content with becoming rich solely by selling reindeer meat, dropped the calling of the church in favor of the pursuit of mining claims and gold ore. Correll (ibid.) claims that many Unalakleet villagers did not practice Christianity as recently as the late 1960s because of the repugnant gold rush episode. Our research team could not confirm this. Indeed, Unalakleet villagers appear to be very similar to the villagers of Wainwright and Gambell in their practice of Christianity.

Most Gambell residents are Presbyterians, although Seventh Day Adventists constitute about 20 percent of all Christians in the village. The Gambell villagers are especially willing to talk about their treasured way of life and to defend it as well. When they speak of this life, which encompasses hunting, sharing, and the beauty of the environment, they are also speaking about the Christian organization of their daily lives. Gambell villagers accept their church responsibilities with pride. Women teach gospel lessons and offer sermons, and the older men and women often provide Christian counsel to their younger clansmen and village mates.

In Wainwright, two churches were operating in 1982. As in Gambell, the Presbyterian church is the older, more firmly established religion. All adults born in Wainwright and living

there now have been baptized into the church. The Assembly of God is the newer denomination. A native served as the Presbyterian minister, whereas a nonnative was the pastor at the Assembly of God Church.

Nonnatives in all of the villages frequently adhere to faiths other than those with established flocks in the Villages. Some Catholic and Mormon families in Wainwright, a Baptist family in Gambell, and sundry other Protestants in Unalakleet either practice their religions without the assistance of ministers or are inactive. Yet if these people participate in any village affairs at all, some of them are surely the extracurricular activities sponsored by the churches.

In all of the villages, the established Christian churches conduct baptisms for the newborn infants, marriage ceremonies for most couples who are married within the villages, funerals for the deceased, and extracurricular activities and counseling sessions for various groups, such as the young married couples. In each of the three villages as well, the Christian churches are totally opposed to the use of alcohol. Moreover, each of the villages has prohibitions against its sale. Hence, the alcohol consumed in the villages is brought in by air carrier, either by those who intend to consume it or by those who intend to resell it illegally. None of the villages has established bootleggers, although the availability of alcohol increased in Wainwright with the presence of white construction workers, who themselves are transitory.

The price of alcohol varies in each village. In extreme instances, alcohol is flown to some villages in special flights by noncharter firms. In such cases, the purchaser pays for the round-trip flying time from the place of origin, and the price can be huge relative to the price of a bottle of whiskey (e.g., $S00 flying time from Nome to Unalakleet). Price, alone, operates against frequent heavy drinking within the villages, except during holiday periods, when several people might cooperate to make a large purchase and fly it in by chartered commercial carrier.

The village elders usually see drinking as dangerous to the drinker, to his or her family, and to the entire community. Moreover, middle-aged parents in all of the communities usu-

ally concur with this view. Yet, regardless of Christian admonitions against the use of alcohol, and even though elders and middle-aged parents recognize the dangers of its uses, drinking bouts and drunkenness occur among younger males, less so among females. During 1982, at least, it is our impression that they occurred more frequently within the village of Wainwright than within the other two villages. The availability of cash made the difference, we presume. These bouts are not restricted to younger persons. Against their better judgment, older persons, including some husbands and wives, too, will overindulge. Such is often the case during festive occasions, such as the Fourth of July, and from time to time during the long winters.

Although we did not probe into the question of drinking and how it affects family life, it was evident from our observations that many villagers restricted their drinking to those times when they might be in Nome, Fairbanks, or Anchorage— either to visit sick relatives or for some native-related activity. It was also evident that natives believed that individuals are responsible for their personal choices, so that it is improper to intervene, particularly to admonish the drinker. The opposition of Christians to imbibing, then, did not translate into taking actions against drinkers. Alcohol could be possessed. Only purchase of alcohol in the villages was disallowed.

Luton (1985: 82-83) reports for Wainwright that public sentiment against alcohol abuse in the village grew throughout the first half of 1982. Some, but by no means all, of the support for an initiative against the possession of alcohol came from the Christian churches. The villagers connected the increasing use of alcohol in Wainwright to the increasing personal incomes for natives from oil-related revenues and to the itinerant construction workers who were acting as bootleggers. At that time, a quart of whiskey or a case of beer cost $100.

Although no specific group formed to outlaw the possession of alcohol in Wainwright, a ban on its possession was passed at the village's annual public meeting in April. In July 1982, the city held a referendum on the measure, and the ban was adopted. The threat posed by alcohol abuse to the community was perceived as real. The vote was an extreme measure, given

native reluctance to intervene in the personal affairs of other persons in their own families and villages.

Ideology About Space and Place

Space is where the natives in each of the three villages live. The !and, water, and air that constitute the space of each village encompass a range in which native residents acquire their livelihoods, which they understand through frequent excursions and stories and which they are willing to defend. Places are locations within the larger range, in which homes, camps, and even burning picnic logs and other objects created by villagers— or given definitions and meanings by them—are situated. Storage caches, upriver camps, unoccupied karigi that once belonged to the "old people," and spots on the rivers, sound, or lagoons where unusual and important events occurred are places within the native space of the three villages.

The native concepts of space and place impressed the field researchers in every village with their differences from the concepts of space and place that exist in the dominant U.S. society, its economy, and its laws. And the native ideology about space and place is different from Christian ideas and practices as well. We were impressed that native ideologies were far more similar to traditional native beliefs and to the beliefs of American Indians in regard to their !and than to those of the nation's dominant ideology. We did not consider these differences to be trivial. Indeed, the actions by Eskimos in defense of their space against federal and state regulations and the activities of corporations are practical results of these differences, as we shall see below.

As John Bennett (1979) has pointed out, the ways in which societies define their spaces and places, the ways in which they are used, the manners in which rights to them are transferred, and the ways in which sentiments are attached to them vary widely. It is not clear how many generations it has taken for the Eskimos in the three villages to develop cultural definitions of their space, that is, their environment. Wainwright, after all, was created only eighty years ago. But the original residents

moved in from smaller settlements in that general area and undoubtedly brought cultural baggage with them, including knowledge of the terrain, how it had been used, and how to adjust to new uses of it. The symbols that residents attach to their environment have long, long histories, no matter how they are expressed.

It is the significant symbols attached to the environment and the actions that are provoked by those meanings that provide some focus for us here in delineating native ideologies. Unalakleet's space, for example, is defined by places, such as the Unalakleet River, the Whale-back Mountains, the Egavik River, and Golsovia; by abiological phenomena, such as the characteristics of shore ice; by activities of natural competition, such as the behavior of brown bears; by memories of cultural competitions, such as a history of intermittent warfare and subsequent trading with Athapaskans; and by memories of the use of areas to which sentiments are attached, such as the pleasure and anticipation of spring camp and the delight at the speed maintained by caribou when being pursued by hunters astride snowmachines.

Unalakleet's space includes places where ancient and recent ancestors have been buried, where an unwanted radar station reminds people of how much better the environment would be if it were removed, and where their own range ends in joint use regions with Shaktoolik residents to the north and residents of St. Michael to the southwest. To go beyond those joint-use regions, good form requires an invitation to have been extended, at some time, to Unalakleet residents from the customary users of the area. Affinal and kinship connections provide the basis for most of the invitations.

With but minor variations, the places of Gambell and Wainwright residents are defined almost identically to those of Unalakleet. Their spaces, too, are defined similarly. Gambell residents use the entire island if they wish, and they jointly own, share, and protect it with their relatives in their sister village of Savoonga. Yet Gambell space, for the villagers' purposes, is defined by the Northwest Gape, Boxer Bay, on the west; by Taphook Point on the east; and by Oomeyaluk Bay on the southeast. The Bering Sea waters around the island from

Taphook Point to Oomeyaluk Bay and to eighty or ninety miles out are used by Gambell residents.

Wainwright residents define their space from the foothills of Brooks Range to the south to thirty miles north into the Chukchi Sea and from the Utuqqaq River to the southwest to Point Franklin and Peard Bay in the northeast. In between, the Kuuk River system, including the Kuuk Lagoon, provides the major focus of Wainwright space.

For the native inhabitants of the three villages, neither space nor place is defined solely by ownership rights to corporeal and incorporeal property. Over the long course of history, the Inupiaq- and Yupik-speaking residents of the three regions have defined their space and place—assigned significant symbols to them—while obtaining their livelihoods within them. Significant symbols also have been assigned to space and place as unusual, perhaps harrowing, events have occurred and stories have commemorated those happenings; as kinspeople and friends have been entertained; and as decisions have been made that would enable future generations to live on the same land. Eskimos in all of the traditional villages recognized the earth, sky, water, plants, and animals as natural as well as supernatural—making themselves available at some times but not at others. So, space and place for natives are also products of longevity, of many generations of persons occupying a region and acting as stewards, seeking to maintain proper relations with it. The residents of the three villages, most likely in the past, undoubtedly now, respect their dependency on, and their relations with, the phenomena of their environments—their space, its places, its things.

What are Significant Meanings?

An understanding of how natives assign symbols to their space and its places cannot be gained by administering questionnaires or by following interview schedules. Texts must be collected, discussions must be overheard, comments in context and in place must be heard, so that one may, first, get some idea about what is important (i.e., to what values significant symbols have been assigned), and second, evaluate whether these symbols are

shared rather than subjective and particular to the person whose comments or opinions the researcher has heard.

A dozen trips up the Unalakleet River to clear and untangle fishing nets with different villagers, several egg-collecting trips and trips to fishing camps with Gambell crews and families, and several bird-hunting trips with Wainwright hunters as well as several days of assisting with the butchering of bowhead whales should serve to impress the observers of the three villages with the similarities within villages. In Unalakleet, for example, the many families with whom we worked and visited discussed salmon harvesting subsistence tasks in much the same way, and they talked about the Unalakleet River in much the same way. This similarity is true, as well, when Gambell youths talk about whale hunting or walrus hunting. They talk in much the same way as their parents and grandparents speak about these activities. And Wainwright bird hunters—regardless of families— or participants in various aspects of the bowhead whale hunting-butchering-distribution-consumption chain speak about these activities, and about their importance, in much the same way.

Observers in all of the villages can hear conversations about native respect for the ice, their knowledge of the ice, and the good times they experience in hunting seals, jigging for fish, or watching for the first birds each spring. The villagers speak of the significance of the environment as an integral part of life, indeed, as indistinguishable from life itself, much as sharing is an act of life that is embedded in all subsistence activities—from planning to consumption.

An example from Unalakleet should be instructive. I was impressed during my first net-clearing trip up the Unalakleet River with how the two Eskimo men I accompanied gained pleasure from their subsistence activities. Both men called attention to eagles that flew from their perches as the boat approached them, and both men, separately, and on two occasions each, mentioned the beauty of the river and its riches. These men knew the river's intricacies and the terrain for at least 2,500 square miles. One commented that the defunct but incompletely decommissioned White Alice radar site on a hill above the river was the only eyesore on the river. There was

no rhetoric, just a statement of fact about an unwelcome presence. On other occasions, other natives spoke of the river, the environs, and the White Alice site in the same way.

In my discussions while on the river, but also in several conversations with village leaders, commercial fishermen, and other villagers, it was made dear that the river was not regarded as marketable. And if it was not marketable, it was most emphatically not regarded as an elite province for environmentalists and conservationists. In 1982, residents were much concerned about the recent "wild rivers" designation that the federal government had bestowed on the river's upper course, because they feared that it would be clogged with kayaks and campers from cities near and far (the designation was established as part of ANILCA PL 94-487). This fear was added to the apprehensions that had been building over the preceding five years about potential oil and gas activities in Norton Sound.

Significant Meanings and the Oil Factor at Unalakleet

The meaning of the river to the residents of Unalakleet cannot be validated simply from heating a few similar comments and observing similar behavior among different people. Other kinds of comments made in different contexts can help to validate or invalidate the impressions obtained from conversations during net-clearing trips. For example, one shy, inarticulate man about thirty years of age, who had never considered speaking at a public meeting or acting as a spokesman for the village, sought out a competent and admired uncle to express his concerns about developments that might affect the river—from oil and gas exploration to commercial fishing by outsiders and from commercialized sportfishing to kayaking, again by outsiders. The man was emboldened to talk by a few drinks of alcohol, but he was lucid.

To this man, the river meant the comfort of place and space. It provided nourishment—real and spiritual—and represented freedom to conduct an Eskimo way of life. He recognized that the river was threatened, as were the freedoms that the river represented, and he said that he would rather take lives, or have his own life taken, than see the river overrun or destroyed.

The elder counseled the younger man that violence would not be the solution but would only generate more problems. But he, too, recognized the vulnerable and powerless position of local natives, and though he did not counsel violence, he felt that force, alone, might be the only way in which the river could be kept intact as Unalakleet space.

The chance hearing of this discussion caused the research team to inquire of or to inquire about all the other men in the village who fell into the twenty-five to forty years of age category to learn how they felt about the river. The vocal, articulate leaders were not queried, only those who were neither vocal nor leaders were polled. Without exception, forty men expressed or were heard to express sentiments similar to those articulated by the concerned younger man to his wise uncle. This is not a commodity view of nature, where a village and its resources are salable at the fight price. It is a native view of space and place; it is a home, a place in which livelihoods are obtained and that they are willing to defend.

At a public hearing in Unalakleet in October 1981 prior to an oil and gas lease sale for Norton Sound run by the Minerals Management Service's OCS office, at subsequent hearings conducted by the state for onshore oil leases, and at public relations meetings conducted by representatives of oil companies, the Unalakleet residents expressed their strong opposition to oil and gas leasing. Person after person explained the importance to them of the resources that might be affected by oil-related operations. Moreover, they raised cogent questions about consequences to oil rigs from the movements of ice.

But they felt that they were completely disregarded, perhaps rebuffed with contempt (see Appendix B). The utter frustration that they demonstrated when speaking about these meetings left indelible impressions on us. Their worries about their environment and the clarity with which they stated their concerns cannot be understood as sham or as political positioning by people seeking to enhance their financial positions. And although village leaders requested training for jobs and the allocation of jobs to village residents in oil-related tasks, they did so after arguing eloquently against developments that may threaten their livelihoods and damage their space. Contra-

dictory statements have, therefore, been placed on the public record, but with some interpretation of the texts, the contradictions can be resolved.

One step in the reasoning was omitted from the texts. This missing step was supplied by the elder who counseled his nephew that violence would only make the situation worse, while suspecting that nothing short of violence will stop developments from occurring. It is the sense of the inevitable that causes the articulate leaders to protect what they can. As one man who opposes large-scale industrial developments said, "What chance does a $2 million fishing operation have against a $2 billion oil operation, especially when the guys who make the decisions have all the bucks—oil bucks?" He said this during a discussion of an impending state oil lease sale, since canceled, which had so frightened Unalakleet residents that it dominated much of the public discussions which were focused on different topics, such as commercial fishing.

Significant Meanings and the Oil Factor at Gambell

The residents of Gambell and Savoonga anticipated the loss of their island and their way of life when, prior to the passage of ANCSA, they were informed that the island would lose its reservation status—hence, the trust status of the land. As we know, the islanders chose to take ownership of the island. They have regularly and consistently rejected proposals from oil companies to use the island for various purposes, have created an Eskimo Walrus Commission to help Eskimos influence federal policies on walrus takes, and have gained control over the Eskimo Whaling Commission to influence federal policies on whales as they affect Eskimos.

They have done all of these things to preserve their subsistence way of life, so it is not surprising, after the fact, that we were regarded as people whose research project could hurt them and their island. The first response of the islanders to us was to offer no help in our task. Our first field researcher left Gambell in dismay after completing one month there, even though he had already crewed on one walrus hunt.

Ronald Little and Jean Maxwell flew to Gambell in an attempt

to sort out the issues and answer the questions that bothered the villagers. I flew over from Unalakleet a couple of days later for a command performance before the city, the IRA, and the village corporation leaders. That first meeting was memorable. The villagers questioned our purpose, the uses to which our reports about them would be put, and the consequences to them from oil developments. They wanted to know what would happen to the walrus and whale herds, to the seals, and to the seabirds. It was not as if they were ignorant or naive. Among them was the president of the Eskimo Walrus Commission, soon to become president of the Eskimo Whaling Commission as well, and several persons who were expert and active in native Alaskan affairs. They had considerable knowledge and a great desire to accumulate more.

I thought at the time that these careful, inquisitive, planning people must have gone through similar discussions as they evaluated the probable consequences of ANCSA about twelve years earlier. As our meeting progressed, the natives asked me about how best they could preserve and protect their homeland from oil development, corporate takeover (a possibility because of ANCSA's provision for corporations to go public in 1991), and uninformed federal and state controls of their resources. They even asked whether they could abolish their city form of government and their village corporation and vest all government and economic powers in their IRA government (as had been the case prior to ANCSA). The intention was to revert the island to federal trust status and allow them to manage the resources so that they could preserve their hunting way of life for time immemorial.

After a discussion of what environmental impact statements (EISs) were supposed to be (i.e., "state-of-the-art" analyses of the probable consequences of a planned activity that might affect an environment) and their legal remedies should such EISs be inadequate, the village leaders met and decided to assist our research. From that point on, we received complete assistance. The villagers were eager to tell us how they used the environment. The way in which they valued their space and the places within it became dear through their actions and their words. Pressed for cash, they refused several offers from firms in-

volved in oil operations to use parts of the island for their various purposes. They objected in public hearings to oil leasing in the Bering Sea and Navarin Basin, and they have brought several suits in federal courts under various motions to stop oil leasing and drilling because of the threats that drilling poses to the environment from which their subsistence is drawn (see the epilogue).

The Gambell clans have several famous dancing teams that perform at local festivities and also travel at the invitation of the Smithsonian Institution and other august bodies. In addition to being immensely entertaining and charmingly professional, these dancers are also maintaining and transmitting traditional art, coupled with deeply held beliefs. The dances, replete with "rubber-faced" contortions, mimic the looks and behaviors of animals, of hunters, of women's work, and of other aspects of the relations of Eskimos to their environment. Respect, humor, grace, and good fun are synthesized in this celebration of Gambell life. Although stylized, the dances allow for individual virtuosity, and although traditional topics are the focus, new topics consonant with local experiences can be added to the repertoire. Those topics either focus on traditional life or make good fun of nontraditional experiences.

Gambell art is not separated from the experiences of everyday life, much as labor is not defined as a commodity. Labor, art, sharing, and respect for the nonhuman creatures and things of the environment are bound together in ways quite foreign to the experiences of persons in the dominant U.S. society.

Significant Meanings and the Oil Factor at Wainwright

Prior to the time that Luton arrived in Wainwright in February 1982, the villagers had been experiencing for about seven years the accumulating benefits, as well as the disbenefits, from revenues generated from oil extraction at Prudhoe Bay. Employment, construction projects, an influx of whites, and the loss of a goodly amount of local control to the North Slope Borough administration in Barrow had accompanied the growth of oil-related revenues.

Although real financial benefits had been registered, the rapid changes had brought high social costs. As Luton and Charles Cortese observed, a combination of confusion and anger was one result. As in Unalakleet and Gambell, the Wainwright researchers were met with suspicion and some resistance. Villagers were anxious about possible offshore oil developments, even though they were benefiting from onshore developments at Prudhoe Bay. The focus of our inquiry fed their suspicions and their insecurity. We sought to do another tanik (the Inupiaq term for outsider) study on the issues about which they were most insecure and anxious—subsistence harvests of naturally occurring resources and their relation to local culture.

Natives were bitter about regulation of the resources on which their subsistence was based, including spring duck hunting, caribou quotas, and bowhead whale quotas. Some arrests had been made of duck hunters near Barrow, and the other quotas were monitored within Wainwright. Research on these topics, in the native view, threatened their subsistence activities, hence their way of life. We posed yet another threat to Wainwright space.

As it happened, Wainwright natives actually procured less of their daily subsistence requirements from naturally occurring resources than did the residents of Unalakleet or Gambell. The large amounts of cash that had been available in the village for several years had allowed natives to make discretionary purchases of processed foods. But a concomitant change in their expectations for their environment and for their freedom to extract from it had not taken place.

The Wainwright Eskimos stressed the practice of giving to elders, relatives, friends, partners, and the community at large. The Nalukatak ceremony thanked the whale for allowing itself to be caught. The Christmas celebrations highlighted the cultural ideals of living successfully, and generously, with animals, plants, and other humans in Wainwright space. As Luton (1985: 244) writes, "Expectations are high; meaning runs deep."

Wainwright dancers and singers have engaged in a renaissance of their dances and songs, which depict a score of topics, from the behavior of animals to the behavior of persons. Walrus

are imitated with humor and with respect, as are hunters, skin dressers, and so forth. The meanings are not trivial, as the dances and songs explicitly contributed to social solidarity (everyone was encouraged to join in some of the dances after watching the expert performers) and reaffirmed the value of the animals with which the environment was shared.

On the Value of Regulating Nature

In each of the three villages, it took some time and several conversations to understand villager responses to our persistent questions, "How many?" "How often?" "How much?" For example, when a Unalakleet villager described some event, such as the preceding evening's hare hunt, several images were prompted by the description. Although the men were riding snowmachines, they formed a gentle fan shape that kept many animals inside the lines that they formed. The technique is at least as old as the paleolithic, and it still works well, whether on foot or astride snowmachines. But the differences are that snowmachines, petroleum-based fuel, and rifles are used. Eskimos can travel faster and farther to get the same amount of game that their fathers bagged over a longer period and in a slower fashion. When I persisted in asking how many were bagged, after a puzzled look, the answer came: "At least 100; we had enough for every family [native] in the village [170 families at the time]. Everybody received one for rabbit stew last night."

Then, without prompting, the villager pointed out that you kill only some of the hares that you startle into the drive. [Natives, by the way, always call hares "rabbits," much as they call char "trouts."] "You leave many. You sure don't take them all. You'll be back, and so will they." The lesson is straightforward, matter-of-fact. Nevertheless, the situation is repeated several times before the message finally takes hold. There is conscious conservation of hares. You learn that they do not hunt hares every winter day but vary the subsistence activities with ice fishing, ptarmigan hunting, caribou hunting, and so forth. The fur-bearing animals are not depleted from an area, and no one wants to be responsible for reducing populations of game

beyond the point at which the normal recovery rates that are known for an area can be sustained.

Similar responses were received for river-seining ventures at Unalakleet, walrus and seal hunting at all of the villages, and caribou hunting at Wainwright. When Gambell and Unalakleet villagers were asked about their harvests of wild eggs, they responded that they picked the nests clean. Yet they also informed us which species would lay a second batch of eggs and which would lay a third. They did not disturb the nests after the last batch was laid.

It is my impression that the message was slow to take hold in part because of my own and my research associates' expectations that the natives would be careful scorekeepers. They are proud of their harvesting skills; we may have expected them to be boastful as well. Yet "100," for some reason unclear to me, is frequently used to mark large numbers of fish caught from jigging through the ice in a single session, large numbers of hares taken in a drive, or large numbers of ducks or geese shot by a family during a successful day. It eventually became obvious that "100" was used to meet our expectations; it was not necessarily their actual bag. The crucial information was that resources were conserved, understood, and used respectfully and that either a lot was taken—and often much of whatever it was would be shared—or that the hunters had experienced "bad luck," "were in a slump," or even "got shut out."

We learned, then, that the villagers care that animals are in the habitats in which they belong, that those animals can be harvested in the future, and that they, the hunters, played no role in severely depleting them. In the cases of sea mammals, in particular, no conversation about extracting them was devoid of a discussion of their intelligence, their behavior, and their keen senses of sound and often of smell. They were referred to, and addressed, with respect.

Underlying this behavior is a simple meaning: nature is not abused. It is used with pleasure, and fully, but it is not abused. Moreover, there is both an explicit and an implicit assumption that natives know their terrain and the animal populations on them. The persistent question, then, of how many or how much was usually answered, "100, but sometimes two people will get

150," or "three, but the winter lasted a long time and by the time we could get to the seals the herring were running [Unalakleet] or the bowheads were entering the leads [Gambell]." We learned that the answers that were appropriate were "we got enough" or "we didn't get enough, so we'll have to go again, or replace [that resource] with [another resource], or get some from our relatives. . . ." "Enough" means enough for that family's current needs, or that family's needs for some period, as well as for some of their kinspeople and friends. To deplete an area of fish or game is always too much.

Regulation, then, is linked to needs, use, and the animal populations in the area in question. It is as if natives, by experience and knowledge, were undocumented ecologists. They may as well be talking about biomass, optimum population sizes, and carrying capacities of areas. They themselves do not talk in such terms. Nevertheless, if queried about researchers or representatives of agencies who do talk in such terms, and who establish the regulations that govern the resources of their region, the resources on which natives have lived for a long time, their responses are often low-keyed but appropriately pointed.

In each village, we learned that natives felt that there was little fit between the regulated resources and the availability of those resources. This was especially true for the bowhead whale, so crucial to the subsistence needs and the cultural expectations of both Gambell and Wainwright villagers and to the cultural expectations of their affines, relatives, and friends. The state regulations imposed on harvests of moose, caribou, and fish (commercial) at Unalakleet and of caribou at Wainwright are especially sore points.

As a consequence, for many resources, they follow their own knowledge, their own understanding of the land, river, skies, and sea. State regulations, except for the commercial fishery at Unalakleet, actually have little relevance for the resources and regions where they are intended to apply: by practice, they are not restrictive for villagers, because the Alaska Department of Fish and Game wardens seldom choose to enforce them beyond the confines of the villages. About themselves, Eskimos aver, and believe, that they do not abuse nature. Because they know their own space—whereas state and federal employees do not

know it and would be lost and, perhaps, helpless within it—Eskimos believe that they treat it as it should be treated. They value their space highly.

If the discussions turn to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game or to federal regulatory agencies, the bodies that came to exercise complete control over the resources on which Eskimos depend after ANCSA extinguished their claims to those resources, the residents seem unmoved by those institutions and their regulations. But when specific regulations are referred to, it is also clear that natives feel that they do not fit the animal populations that they are intended to regulate.

They suggest that the regulations are misapplied and inappropriate in largest part because the regulators make faulty observations, mismanage their domains, and base their regulations either on faulty data or on misinterpreted data. For example, in 1082, during the late and very short commercial herring season in Unalakleet, three fishermen who were dismayed by ADF&G action to close the fishery fished out of season. They were caught, taken to the judge, and fined. Soon after the waters were closed, the state reopened them on an emergency basis. To the Eskimos, the reopening of the herring waters was tacit admission of the experts' fallibility.

Eskimos have decried other regulations, particularly those placed on caribou and bowhead whales. For several years, the ADF&G had placed a limit of five caribou annually for each hunter. Natives from St. Michael to Wainwright found this regulation extremely restrictive. When it was discovered in summer 1082 that the great northwestern caribou herd was much larger than the ADF&G had previously stated and that caribou were present in such large numbers in the Kobuk Valley that they were pressuring the commercial reindeer herds, the ADF&G lifted the five-caribou limit for subsistence, and local opinions were confirmed: the state never should have established the limit in the first place. The view is firmly held that only the natives understand natural resources and are capable of managing them.

Whereas natives are bothered by state and federal regulations, these do not seem to represent strict rules that must be obeyed. When an Eskimo ventures into his hunting space, par-

ticularly in the interior, he is not observed by regulators. It is not the space of regulators. They have no places there. It is not their domain. They do not know how to cope. Eskimos do know how to cope. They tell stories of the places they have been or are going. They know where to look for game and fur-bearing animals, what to expect when caribou begin to run, how to stalk polar bears, and how to go about trying to save themselves if, alone, they fall through a river's ice. They know the techniques that were used to adjust to such fortuities in the past, and they know stories about people who innovated those techniques.

So when the researcher presses on the question of regulators and their regulations, the responses usually are, "They don't follow us into the country." It is as if the regulators—except for their controls on bowhead whales (a 60-ton animal whose kill is celebrated is not easily hidden from view, nor would natives show disrespect by trying to do so)—live in a world of paper and ink and theories and rules. As for the rules, it is doubtful that they would be observed even if the regulators followed the hunters into the hinterland or onto the beaches. Eskimos are calm and reserved about most rules. Although bothered by them, they do not seem to pay much heed to them.

Even bowhead quota rules have been violated by Shaktoolik hunters, and in 1982, after a disastrous bowhead hunt, one Barrow whaling captain announced to President Ronald Reagan and the entire world community (represented by the United Nations and all participants in the International Whaling Commission) that he was going to continue to pursue bowheads until his crew was successful and the nutritional needs of his people were satisfied. He informed Reagan that he had three days to evacuate the citizens of the United States if he did not comply. The other Barrow whaling captains discussed the issue and concluded that they could best protect their way of life if they ordered that captain off the ice.

The Eskimos in the three villages are wont to say that they know their resources. They appreciate and would not damage them because they are sustained by those resources. They always point out to the interloper, the neophyte, that there are many kinds of resources and that there is no fear of depleting any single resource.

Community Festivals—Sea Mammals, Sharing, and Ideology

Central to the lives of village natives and their relatives in far-flung places are sea mammals. The bowhead whale is the animal to which greatest respect is shown and to which the most significant symbols are attached. This is true among the residents of Gambell and Wainwright, who hunt bowheads, and among the residents of Unalakleet, who do not. In all of the villages, whales are treated with special care in hunting, butchering, and distributing. In Gambell and Wainwright, ceremonies on a grand scale accompany the successful taking of a bowhead. Analysis of these modern villages and their relation to animals of the sea would be severely wanting if these ceremonies were not addressed here.

During each year in which there are successful bowhead whale hunts, the residents of Wainwright sponsor a ceremony known as Nalukatak , and the residents of Gambell sponsor the Whale Carnival. The two are very similar, although whereas the Gambell ceremony always occurs the day before or after the Fourth of July ("everybody's celebration"), the Wainwright ceremony occurs perhaps a week earlier and is clearly distinguished from the Independence Day celebration. The captains of the successful whaling crews have stored and frozen whale meat and maktak specifically for the occasion, and under the aegis of the captains, families contribute native foods, including maktak from their own larders, for the feasts that are the focus of the events. Ducks, geese, cranes, fish, walrus, seal, oiled greens, berries, and all manner of fresh and stored native foods are consumed. Relatives and friends from distant villages and dries arrive and are hosted in the homes of local residents.

The Whale Carnival and the Nalukatak revolve around dances, games, hospitality, and the sharing of food. The Nalukatak is older and grander than the Whale Carnival, although both involve a variety of activities. "Nalukatak" means "blanket toss," the means by which Inupiaq formerly tossed agile hunters into the air so that they could sight whales entering the leads in the ice. Similar to the Whale Carnival, it is performed over about a twenty-four-hour period; but, unlike the

Whale Carnival, there are as many Nalukatak festivals each year as there are whales killed. So if Wainwright captains beach two whales, there are two Nalukatak ceremonies, spaced about three days apart.

Visiting begins early at both types of ceremonies, as persons move from house to house. Gossip is exchanged; perhaps business is discussed. Each family provides food for its guests—with native foods providing the focus for the fraternizing. In Wainwright, discussions might turn toward persons in the village who do not pull their share of their families' loads in subsistence pursuits. Inasmuch as the holiday explicitly celebrates the deeply held cultural ideals of subsistence—extraction, distribution, and consumption—criticism of persons who do not fulfill cultural expectations appears to be a means to focus on the very ideals that natives espouse and hold dear.

The centerpiece of the affairs is the communal feast and the distribution of maktak, mikiqaq (fermented whale meat and blubber), and walrus. These items are piled high (mikiqaq, in tubs) and distributed in equal portions to every family in such a way that a family of six receives six portions, a family of eight receives eight, and so forth. At Gambell, the Association of Whaling Captains directs the distribution; at Wainwright, the successful whaling crew distributes the portions.

The Whale Carnival at Gambell is accompanied by a harpoon-throwing contest, a high-kick contest (in which contestants seek to see who can kick their legs highest to touch with one foot an object placed above their heads), a drawing for prizes, a search for prizes while blindfolded, and a beauty pageant, in which young women wear traditional attire.

The Nalukatak is accompanied by a blanket toss, in which a dozen or more persons hold a flat, circular "blanket" made from the skins of bearded seals. One at a time, many persons are thrown into the air by those persons who hold the blanket. The people holding the blanket change as fatigue overtakes the tossers. The jumpers vie to gain the highest altitude. The successful whaling captain is the first jumper, followed by the members of his crew, then the women related to the crew. Often, the jumpers throw candy into the air as gifts to the children standing near the blanket.

The Nalukatak and the Whale Carnival are thanksgiving rituals offered to the whales for making themselves available and vulnerable to native hunters. During the evening, at both ceremonies, native dancing and singing conclude the festivities. These activities are more crowded than the food give-aways, the feasts, or the games. Polished native dancers, expertly performing traditional native dances, are accompanied by drummers. During the dances, persons imitate walrus, whales, and other animals with dance gestures and exquisite contortions of their faces. Solo performances, small group performances, and large group dances take place. Most frequently, the small groups are composed of members of a single family, perhaps brothers, siblings and cousins, or even persons representing four generations from a single extended family household. Guests dance, as do persons from the host village. The final dance sets are usually performed by the most expert dancers in the host village, normally those who have worked together for several years and who have coordinated their dance styles through choreography and song. For Gambell residents, the dance teams are constituted from within clans. Although each village has its own dance style, variations by families or clans within villages are also noticeable.

Oil, IWC Regulations, and the Bowhead

Strong political and legal reactions to the regulation of the bow-head hunt and to oil exploration and drilling, which threaten the bowhead population, have been mounted by villagers in Gambell and Wainwright. They have taken the lead among the North Slope Borough, the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, and Kawerak in attempting to control their subsistence destinies. These governing bodies have agreed that by accepting the IWC quota system and by regulating whaling themselves through the Alaskan Eskimo Whaling Commission, they will be able to establish the principle of self-regulation for the future. The North Slope Borough has conducted studies of whale population dynamics, which may ultimately show that Eskimo whaling does not constitute a threat to the existence of the bowhead. The intention is to free Eskimos from IWC interference.