Yup'ik Environmental Knowledge Project: Natural and Cultural History of the Bering Sea Coast

Calista Elders Council, Anchorage AK

Investigators

Abstract

Funds are provided for a project in which residents of four Bering Sea communities have joined with other coastal Yup'ik villages to pursue two closely-related goals: 1) to work with elder experts in collaboration with non-Native scientists and younger community members to produce a holistic documentation of their unique natural history and cultural geography, including traditional place names, weather and ice conditions, harvesting patterns, and animal and plant communities; and 2) to integrate and compare documentation of Yukon Delta natural and cultural history with existing documentation for Yup'ik coastal communities to the south, including Hooper Bay and Chevak, Nelson Island communities, and lower Kuskokwim coastal communities. The project will provide a model for how Native and non-Native experts can work together to document the past and, in doing so, better prepare for the future. It is designed to be community-based, built on collaboration at a number of levels, interdisciplinary and comparative, providing a variety of lenses through which to understand Yup'ik environmental knowledge, holistic in its approach to understanding the dynamics of natural and human history on the Bering Sea coast, and methodologically innovative. The project will be an important capacity-building process among community members, providing opportunities for local educators and students to work with social and natural scientists in an atmosphere of collegiality and mutual respect. Elder experts' and village representatives' involvement at every level of the research process ensures that community members' voices will be heard. Major project deliverables will include bilingual and ethnographic publications, GIS place name maps and a place-based website for the Bering Sea coast, scientific reports and public presentations, and meeting transcripts in long-lived archives.