Alaska Native Heritage from the Bering Strait Region

Highlighting Iñupiaq and St. Lawrence Island Yupik Collections

Imuruk Basin, Alaska

Map of Kawerak Region

The Kawerak region of Alaska is located around Nome and includes the Bering Strait area and much of the northern Bering Sea. The Kawerak area is home to three distinct cultural groups of Alaska Native people, Iñupiaq, Yup’ik, and St. Lawrence Island Yupik, all together residing in 16 different communities that all have their own Tribal governments. There are 20 federally recognized Tribes in this region.


Land Acknowledgment

This exhibit is created with Alaska Native ancestral material heritage and Arctic Indigenous and Traditional Knowledge from several Yup’ik, Iñupiaq, and St. Lawrence Island Yupik communities.  Arctic Indigenous homelands  span several contemporary states including the United States, Canada, Russia, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The Circumpolar Arctic region consists of lands from the North Pole to lands along the 55th parallel north. Approximately four million Indigenous inhabitants, who speak over forty Indigenous languages, are divided among forty cultural groups.

We would like to acknowledge that this project was created at the University of Missouri, which sits on the traditional homelands of the Osage Nation, the Otoe, Kiikaapoi, Illini, Ioway or Baxoje, Meskwaki, Missouria, Sauk, and Quapaw people, and many other nations and peoples who travelled through the region.


Map of Origin Communities

The University of Missouri received this Arctic collection in 2021 from the family of  Dennis Corrington , who was a collector of Arctic pieces. There have also been some pieces received through museum trade, an established protocol among museums, aimed at diversifying collections and exhibits

 Co-Production of Knowledge in Research  – Valuing Traditional Knowledge.

Our mission in creating this exhibit was to work with Indigenous communities in a way that resembled the co-production of knowledge framework. As we do not have Alaska Native background, it was important that the creation of knowledge, information, and data was done through a shared research process.

Artifact collections began as a way to preserve cultures that were believed to be "going extinct". Museums are acknowledging these colonial foundations and implementing decolonizing methodologies (Kovach 2009, Lonetree 2012) such as adopting a co-production of knowledge framework.  The co- production of knowledge framework  highlights the necessity to build and attain equity by addressing the rights of Indigenous communities within research settings – and by extension museum practices (Ellam Yua et al. 2022).

Illustration by Danielle Gafford

The history of collecting frequently involved using the colonial infrastructure to justify the appropriation of Indigenous ancestral material heritage and human remains, often without permission. This led to human remains and Indigenous materials being taken from Native communities and dispersed throughout museums. The  Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act  (NAGPRA) of 1990 has provided for the repatriation of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony for federally recognized Tribes within the United States. Continuing work through NAGPRA and new technology, such as 3D modeling, has allowed for advancements in repatriation through an online digital format and has also allowed for knowledge to be transferred digitally so that Indigenous communities can learn about pieces that may be eligible for repatriation.


Arctic Indigenous Worldviews

The lives of Indigenous people of the Arctic center around the belief that every aspect of the Universe is connected in a spiritual context. This belief system emphasizes the value in relationships between spirituality, nature, and place. It also fosters a strong connection to the land and the process of hunting, fishing, and collecting subsistence resources. This framework is not human-centric. Indigenous knowledge systems revolve around land-based teachings where knowledge comes from many sources and is contained in cultural practices and teachings. Respect must be shown to the animals, plants, and natural resources that provide for the communities. The notion that we live in an animate world in motion with all things possessing spirit and agency can be seen through the respect shown to nature in the traditions of many Indigenous nations. 

Nakaciuq is a Yup'ik tradition honoring the souls of seals who gave their lives to hunters. In communities, death is not seen as an ending, but as a step to rebirth in a cyclical world. When a seal is brought home by the hunter, its bladder is honored since it contains the seal’s life force, or spirit (Fienup-Riordan 1995). The bladders are then returned to the ocean, bringing assurance that the seals will be reborn and return for the following season. No part of any caught animal remains unused after each section is carefully prepared. Similarly, Nalukataq, the Iñupiaq mid-summer whaling festival, honors the whales caught during the previous spring (Sakakibara 2009).


Collection Pieces

The  University of Missouri-Columbia Museum of Anthropology  holds approximately 1,500 pieces of Alaska Native artifacts. These artifacts are cared for and protected in accordance with NAGPRA.

The collection pieces in this exhibition were selected by Lisa Ellanna and Julie Raymond-Yakoubian at Kawerak Inc., the regional Alaska Native non-profit consortium of 20 Tribes in the Bering Strait region of Alaska. These items relate to the hunting of animals, as seen with the Harpoon and the Fishing Spear, the processing of natural resources, as in the cases of the Ulu and the Boot Creaser, and the protection of the community and shared knowledge, as represented by the Armor. These items together, and also individually, reflect the cultures and means of survival for the communities of the Kawerak region.

Please click on the buttons below to learn more about each heritage piece.


Collaboration

We thank our collaborators for their advice, guidance, and contribution to the project: 

Dr. Julie Raymond-Yakoubian Social Science Program Director at Kawerak Inc. Lisa Navraq Ellanna Social Science Program Manager at Kawerak Inc. Dr. Candace Sall Director, MU Museum of Anthropology  Jessica Boldt Collections Curator, MU Museum of Anthropology  Amanda J. Staley Harrison Assistant Curator, MU Museum of Anthropology 

Digital Exhibit design is by students in the MU GEOG 3496 - Digital Indigenous Studies Spring 2023 course:

Kyra Binkhoelter Danielle Gafford Lily McEwen Greg Pekurney Austin Reed Faculty Advisor: Dr. Medeia Csoba DeHass

Greg Pekurney, Danielle Gafford, Kyra Binkhoelter, Austin Reed, and Lily McEwen in front of the physical exhibit at the University of Missouri Museum of Anthropology. A physical exhibit, also designed and mounted by the students, accompanied the digital exhibit. Photo by Amanda J. Staley Harrison.


Credits and References

Banner image: Imuruk Basin, Alaska. Kawerak Social Science Program, Meghan Sigvanna Tapqaq.

Ellam Yua, Julie Raymond-Yakoubian, Raychelle Aluaq Daniel, and Carolina Behe. A framework for Co-production of Knowledge in the Context of Arctic Research. Ecology and Society 27(1): 34.

Fienup-Riordan, Ann (1995) Boundaries and Passages: Rule and Ritual in Yup'ik Eskimo Oral Tradition. University of Oklahoma Press.

Kovach, Margaret (2009) Epistemology and research: Centering tribal knowledge In: Indigenous Methodologies: characteristics, conversations, and contexts. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.

Lonetree, Amy (2012) Five: Conclusion: Transforming Museums into “Places that Matter” for Indigenous Peoples. In: Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Sakakibara, Chie (2009) ‘No whale, no music’: Iñupiaq Drumming and Global Warming. Polar Record, 45(4), 289-303.

 Co-Production of Knowledge in Research  – Valuing Traditional Knowledge.

Illustration by Danielle Gafford

Greg Pekurney, Danielle Gafford, Kyra Binkhoelter, Austin Reed, and Lily McEwen in front of the physical exhibit at the University of Missouri Museum of Anthropology. A physical exhibit, also designed and mounted by the students, accompanied the digital exhibit. Photo by Amanda J. Staley Harrison.