Yupik peoples

This article is about Yupik peoples in general. For the people of southwestern Alaska, see Central Alaskan Yup'ik people. For other uses of the name, see Yupik.

Yupik

Sugpiaq dancer with Agnguaq
Total population
35,700
Regions with significant populations
United States (Alaska)	34,000
Russia (Chukotka)	1,700
Languages
Yupik languages, English (in Alaska), Russian (in Siberia)
Religion
Christianity (mostly Russian Orthodox and Moravian), Shamanism
Related ethnic groups
Aleut, Inuit, Iñupiat, Sirenik

Central Alaskan Hooper Bay youth, 1930

A Nunivak Cup'ig man with raven maskette. The raven (Cup'ig tulukarug) is Ellam Cua or Creator god in the Cup’ig mythology

A Siberian Yupik woman holding walrus tusks, Russia

The Yupik are a group of indigenous or aboriginal peoples of western, southwestern, and southcentral Alaska and the Russian Far East. They are Eskimo and are related to the Inuit and Iñupiat peoples. Yupik peoples include the following:

• Alutiiq people, or Sugpiaq, of the Alaska Peninsula and coastal and island areas of southcentral Alaska
• Central Alaskan Yup'ik people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta, the Kuskokwim River, and along the northern coast of Bristol Bay as far east as Nushagak Bay and the northern Alaska Peninsula at Naknek River and Egegik Bay in Alaska
• Siberian Yupik people, including Naukan, Chaplino, and Sirenik of the Russian Far East and St. Lawrence Island in western Alaska.

Population

The Central Alaskan Yupik are by far the most numerous of the various Alaska Native groups and speak the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language, a member of the Eskimo–Aleut family of languages.

As of the 2001 U.S. Census, the Yupik population in the United States numbered over 24,000, of whom over 22,000 lived in Alaska, the vast majority in the seventy or so communities in the traditional Yup'ik territory of western and southwestern Alaska. US census data for Yupik include 2,355 Sugpiaq; there are also 1,700 Yupik living in Russia.

Etymology of name

Yup'ik (plural Yupiit) comes from the Yup'ik word yuk meaning "person" plus the post-base -pik meaning "real" or "genuine." Thus, it means literally "real people." The ethnographic literature sometimes refers to the Yup'ik people or their language as Yuk or Yuit. In the Hooper Bay-Chevak and Nunivak dialects of Yup'ik, both the language and the people are known as Cup'ik.

The use of an apostrophe in the name “Yup’ik”, compared to Siberian “Yupik,” exemplifies the Central Yup’ik’s orthography, where “the apostrophe represents gemination [or lengthening] of the ‘p’ sound”.

The "person/people" (human being) in the Eskimo (Yupik and Inuit) languages:

Eskimo languages	singular	dual	plural
Yupik languages
Sirenik	йух	(none)	йугый
Siberian Yupik	yuk	?	yuit
Naukan	yuk	?	yuget
Central Alaskan Yup’ik	yuk	yuuk	yuut (< yuuget)
Chevak Cup’ik	cuk	cuugek	cuuget
Nunivak Cup’ig	cug	cuug	cuuget
Alutiiq or Sugpiaq	suk	suuk	suuget
Inuit languages
Iñupiaq or Alaskan Inuit	iñuk	iñuuk	iñuit / iñuich
Inuvialuk or Western Canadian Inuit	inuk	innuk	inuit
Inuktitut or Eastern Canadian Inuit	inuk	inuuk	inuit
Greenlandic or Kalaallisut	inuk	(none)	inuit

Origins

The common ancestors of the Eskimo and Aleut (as well as various Paleo-Siberian groups) are believed by archaeologists to have their origin in eastern Siberia, arriving in the Bering Sea area about 10,000 years ago. Research on blood types, confirmed by later linguistic and DNA findings, suggests that the ancestors of American Indians reached North America before the ancestors of the Eskimo and Aleut. There appear to have been several waves of migration from Siberia to the Americas by way of the Bering land bridge. which became exposed between 20,000 and 8,000 years ago during periods of glaciation. By about 3,000 years ago, the progenitors of the Yupiit had settled along the coastal areas of what would become western Alaska, with migrations up the coastal rivers—notably the Yukon and Kuskokwim—around 1400 AD, eventually reaching as far upriver as Paimiut on the Yukon and Crow Village on the Kuskokwim.

Culture

Yup'ik mask, Sitka, Alaska, collection of the Alaska State Museum

Yup'ik basket.

Traditionally, families spent the spring and summer at fish camp, then joined with others at village sites for the winter. Many families still harvest the traditional subsistence resources, especially Pacific salmon and seal.

The men's communal house, the qasgiq, was the community center for ceremonies and festivals which included singing, dancing, and storytelling. The qasgiq was used mainly in the winter months, because people would travel in family groups following food sources throughout the spring, summer, and fall months. Aside from ceremonies and festivals, it was also where the men taught the young boys survival and hunting skills, as well as other life lessons. The young boys were also taught how to make tools and qayaqs (kayaks) during the winter months in the qasgiq. The ceremonies involve a shaman.

A Yupik mask or kegginaquq

The women's house, the ena, was traditionally right next door. In some areas they were connected by a tunnel. Women taught the young girls how to tan hides and sew, process and cook game and fish, and weave. Boys would live with their mothers until they were about five years old, then they would live in the qasgiq. Each winter, for a period of between three to six weeks, the young boys and young girls would switch, with the men teaching the girls survival and hunting skills and toolmaking, and the women teaching the boys how to sew and cook.

In Yup'ik group dances, individuals often remain stationary while moving their upper body and arms rhythmically, their gestures accentuated by hand held dance fans, very similar in design to Cherokee dance fans. The limited motion by no means limits the expressiveness of the dances, which can be gracefully flowing, bursting with energy, or wryly humorous.

The Yup'ik are unique among native peoples of the Americas in that they name children after the last person in the community to have died.

The kuspuk (qaspeq) is a traditional Yup'ik garment, worn in both casual and formal settings in Alaska.

Languages

Main article: Yupik languages

The five Yupik languages (related to Inuktitut) are still very widely spoken; more than 75% of the Yupik/Yup'ik population are fluent in the language.

The Alaskan and Siberian Yupik, like the Alaskan Inupiat,adopted the system of writing developed by Moravian Church missionaries during the 1760s in Greenland. The Alaskan Yupik and Inupiat are the only Northern indigenous peoples to have developed their own system of hieroglyphics, but this system that died with its creators. Late nineteenth-century Moravian missionaries to the Yupik in southwestern Alaska used Yupik in church services, and translated the scriptures into the people's language.

Russian explorers in the 1800s erroneously called the Yupik people bordering the territory of the somewhat unrelated Aleut as also Aleut, or Alutiiq, in Yupik. By tradition, this term has remained in use, as well as Sugpiaq, both of which refer to the Yupik of South Central Alaska and Kodiak.

The whole Eskimo–Aleut language family, and also all Alaskan languages are shown below. Here is a wikified version of the mentioned tree (restricted to the Eskimo–Aleut family):

Nunivak Cup'ig mother and child, photograph by Edward Curtis, 1930

• Eskimo–Aleut languages
  • Aleut language
  • Eskimo languages
    • Inuit languages
    • Yupik languages
      • Alaskan:
        • Central Yupik language (Central Alaskan Yup'ik), ISO 639:esu
        • Pacific Gulf Yupik language (Alutiiq), ISO 639:ems
      • Siberian:
        • Central Siberian Yupik language (Yuit), ISO 639:ess
        • Naukan Yupik language, ISO 639:ynk
        • Sirenik Yupik language, ISO 639:ysr.

See also

• List of Alaska Native Tribal Entities

Further reading

• Barker, James H. (1993). Always Getting Ready — Upterrlainarluta: Yup'ik Eskimo Subsistence in Southwest Alaska. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
• Branson, John and Tim Troll, eds. (2006). Our Story: Readings from Southwest Alaska — An Anthology. Anchorage, AK: Alaska Natural History Association.
• Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska. (1968). Alaska Natives & The Land. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (1983). The Nelson Island Eskimo: Social Structure and Ritual Distribution. Anchorage, AK: Alaska Pacific University Press.
• Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (1990). Eskimo Essays: Yup'ik Lives and How We See Them. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
• Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (1991). The Real People and the Children of Thunder: The Yup'ik Eskimo Encounter With Moravian Missionaries John and Edith Kilbuck. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
• Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (1994). Boundaries and Passages: Rule and Ritual in Yup'ik Eskimo Oral Tradition. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
• Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (1996). The Living Tradition of Yup'ik Masks: Agayuliyararput (Our Way of Making Prayer). Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
• Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (2000). Hunting Tradition in a Changing World: Yup'ik Lives in Alaska Today. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
• Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (2001). What's in a Name? Becoming a Real Person in a Yup'ik Community. University of Nebraska Press.
• Jacobson, Steven A., compiler. (1984). Yup'ik Eskimo Dictionary. Fairbanks, AK: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• Jacobson, Steven A. "Central Yup’ik and the Schools: A Handbook for Teachers." Juneau: Alaska Native Language Center, 1984.
• Kizzia, Tom. (1991). The Wake of the Unseen Object: Among the Native Cultures of Bush Alaska. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
• MacLean, Edna Ahgeak. “Culture and Change for Iñupiat and Yupiks of Alaska.” 2004. Alaska. 12 Nov 2008 <http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citmla.htm>.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• Morgan, Lael, ed. (1979). Alaska's Native People. Alaska Geographic 6(3). Alaska Geographic Society.
• Naske, Claus-M. and Herman E. Slotnick. (1987). Alaska: A History of the 49th State, 2nd edition. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
• Oswalt, Wendell H. (1967). Alaskan Eskimos. Scranton, PA: Chandler Publishing Company.
• Oswalt, Wendell H. (1990). Bashful No Longer: An Alaskan Eskimo Ethnohistory, 1778–1988. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
• Pete, Mary. (1993). "Coming to Terms." In Barker, 1993, pp. 8–10.
• Reed, Irene, et al. Yup’ik Eskimo Grammar. Alaska: U of Alaska, 1977.
• de Reuse, Willem J. (1994). Siberian Yupik Eskimo: The language and its contacts with Chukchi. Studies in indigenous languages of the Americas. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. ISBN 0-87480-397-7.

External links

• Alaska Native Language Center
• Genealogical tree
• the distribution map of Yupik languages.
• Project Naming, the identification of Inuit portrayed in photographic collections at Library and Archives Canada