Yup'ik Dance and Culture; From Hand to Hand

. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Uncle John, John Prusayak, was born on Nunavac Island near Cape Mendenhall near the village of Chagasbeagun in 1909. He and his family moved from spring camp to summer camp to fall camp and then to their winter site, following the seals' birds another game. Uncle John grew up in the care of his uncle as he lost his father when he was still very young. He said when my uncle Nayyigam took me in, I never went barefoot again. ... Uncle John learned life skills in the traditional Yupik way, watching his elders in the Ozgic, practicing hunting with small bows and arrows and snares. After spending many hours observing the older men carving wooden bowls for eating and gathering, masks for ceremonies, and figurines and cribbyage boards for visitors,

Uncle John also tried carving. No one showed him how to make objects. He learned by watching. I really did not know how to make these by myself. I learned by constantly trying. I have learned also by copying the work that I have seen. I am now able to make these. As the elders he learned from did, Uncle John made his own tools, the ads for working on a larger piece of driftwood, until it is ready for finer work, and the curved knife for smoothing and making fine details for finishing work. He still uses the traditional curved carving knife. The idea of an artist and what that person made is different now, from what Uncle John knew in his younger days. ..

People who made arts and crafts were not many when I was young. At the present time, there are many artists learning to carve ivory and the numbers have grown. Learning by themselves, teaching themselves, they are able to make better and better things. I remember I was talking about it freely. I did not make carvings like these. They only made utilitarian things for their own use, like the older men, making kayaks, kayaks for loyalty. Uncle John always lived at the subsistence lifestyle, living from the animals, the sea, and

the land. He used some of his carvings for everyday living, both to eat from masts and drums to dance with, ladles to dip and stir. Cottage boards and figurines, he would sell to visitors on the island, or mail to Sitka, or Juno, to sell in shops there. His money provided him with little extras and some necessities, such as peal and food stuffs. They did not make these things when I was young. They did not know them, but they did not make these things when I was young, they did not know them. Another bite. A dog fell, biliac, and I was young and first started carving. There were no places to sell things until someone came along and bought them.

At that time, we even traded the things we carved for chewing them. I used to be thankful for that, as if it was a big sale. At that time, there were not there many gussocks. When we first saw white men, they seemed unpredictable. We used to be afraid of gussocks. The ones that arrived in ships. It is easier to sell things now because there are many gussocks to buy these crafts that we used to sell.

It was fun. I saw the things I carved to the Catholic Museum, and also the Martha's door here in Bethel.

I also saw my carvings in English when I am there. I put the car and the link, and it was I have changed. Uncle John uses mostly materials that are native to Nunavac Island in making his artwork. He uses driftwood that has been gathered from the ocean beaches, ivory from the walrus,

and paints from the clays found in the earth and quilts from bird feathers. He used to gather all his materials by himself from Nunavac and Nelson Islands, but now he gets his relatives together these materials for him. Uncle John moved from Nunavac Island to Bethel in 1980. He lives here with his wife and four-step children. He has become well-known locally and within the anthropological field for his beautiful and traditional Nunavac style of carving. Dorothy Jean Ray cited Uncle John in her book, Allute and Eskimo Art, as the only person still carving the Nunavac, elongated animal style ivory tusk. Uncle John's work can be viewed in the permanent collection and the museum shot

at the University Regional Museum in Bethel. Uncle John participated as one of the master carvers in a local mass carving workshop. An apprentice studied under him and a finished mask is now used by the Bethel native dancers in their dance performances. After I think about what I am going to make and how it could turn out, I go ahead and make it even though it doesn't turn out as good as I wanted to. When I was younger, I do not have as much material to work with now as I used to. Not working and not making this artwork is not good.

When you do not carve, you are short of money, but if you do work, you are able to get what you want. When I carve, then I can earn enough money to get some tea. I do not have any money to do that. I do not have any money to do that. I do not have any money to do that.

I do not have any money to do that. I do not have any money to do that. Nicholas Charles Sr. I Akhinoff was born on Nelson Island in August of approximately the year 1912 when his family was gathering fresh birds for winter.

He grew up living the nomadic epic lifestyle of that time, traveling with the game looking for good fishing. Nicholas taught life skills in the casket by his elders. Here he learned to make his hunting implements and carting tools to hunt them to fish and the traditions of his people. He learned by watching. Nick moved to Kacikla where he married his wife, Elina. They eventually moved to Bethel in 1943 where they lived in a tent until Nick built their home. Bethel provided an income for Nick where he did a variety of different jobs, repairing boats, working at the sawmill and commercial fishing. Nick began building houses and for many years this was his major means of employment. Some of his homes are still lived in along the first avenue area of Bethel. At that time Nick primarily carved an ivory. Today he carved mainly in wood, preferring to use his skills at crafting wooden masks. His mass carving has taken him as far as Washington DC to the Smithsonian Institution

and has won him awards in carving competitions. Nick is a member of the Bethel native dancers. He sings and drums with them performing and teaching the area youths. He also serves as a deacon in Bethel's Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. Today Nick carves both contemporary wooden masks and traditional functional objects wooden bowls, drums for dancing, paddles for it by x and wooden handle dancing fans. He mainly carves to supplement his family's income to pay the bills which come from the relatively new cash-dominated economy that has become part of the way of life in the Yukon-Keskukim Delta. Nick's carving grows out of his thinking. Anything made without an idea won't be anything when done.

Thinking of different ways to carve something is fun. You're always thinking of how to complete whatever it is you're working on. What ways are easiest or fastest to complete the night of? Always thinking of how best to complete it, always thinking. If an idea turns out to look like it's not what you want, you stop and try it another way. That is how it is to work on these. You make as much as you want using your ideas. Nick attributes the carving skills that he has achieved today to his traditional subsistence lifestyle. The men in his village were always busy.

If they were not hunting and fishing for the animals and fish which were the life of the people, they were making or mending the tools by x or sleds that enabled them to catch their food supply. In the winter and spring, the men would carve in the community house. In the summer, when the weather is nice, they'd carve anywhere, even outside the community house. During the fall months, people would travel to their fish camps. They would carve anywhere, outside or in their tents. They would work on big things outside and small ones inside the tent. Men were always busy. They'd always be busily carving something. We never saw anyone that wasn't carving. Nick learned his carving in the normal way for a young boy in the early 1900s.

Men gathered together when carving, sharing with each other. Young boys learned the skills of shaping the wood into functional objects by watching their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers and cousins. They used the two traditional carving tools, the ads and the curved carving knife. Whenever my late father wasn't using his curved knife, I'd pick it up and carve. Sometimes I'd get scolded because it got dull. So he made me a curved knife just for my use. I began carving just by watching the carvers and trying to match what they made. I'd make my own arrows by imitating how the carvers made theirs. Even though they weren't perfect, it didn't matter as long as they were done. As long as you tried, that was the important thing.

Things would begin to take shape as they neared completion. The ads and the curved knife were the tools used for making wooden objects, whether large spikes and sleds or small individual serving bowls. The first rough cuts were made with the ads, and then the finer polished shaping was made with the curved knife. All of the men's equipment was made by hand. Even the ads and curved knives were made by the carvers themselves. It is difficult to believe that just these two tools, the ads and the curved knife were used to make such different things. Very big things as well as small ones. The curved knife is the most important tool to nick.

Today he uses some modern tools in making objects, but still uses his curved knife to complete the finish work. He can make a slotted wooden trap for catching blackfish in small streams, with only the use of this one tool. They also made fish traps using their carving tools. I made one fish trap using the carra as a slicer. I carved it and smoothed it, just using that one tool. I never left it behind when I went somewhere like the tundra. Out there men would stop and work on something they were carving. Even though they had other tools, the carra was the one most used. They'd use it to finish almost anything. Following the shape of the object. Nick is one of just a few delta wood carvers who continued to make wooden bowls.

Wooden bowls were common implements in traditional yippick life. Each person had his or her own bowl for eating. Larger serving bowls were common as were very large wooden containers used in storing water. We each had our own wooden bowls that we didn't share with others. They were made for us. The wooden bowls weren't used by just anybody except the person that it was made for. The adults and children had wooden bowls that were just their size. All different sizes. When they fed visitors, though, they'd use any wooden bowl. Nick explains his process for constructing wooden bowls.

Wooden bowls. This wooden bowl is for women. These bowls for women are shaped like this. This part is smooth. Here is where it is connected. You finish carving this part first, then smooth it with a curved knife. Then it is soaked in boiling hot water. Once it gets hot, you bond it into shape. When that is done, you connect these two pieces. They are glued and then allow to dry. Then the part for the bottom is carved using the outer part to measure with. This takes a long time to do. You keep measuring and smoothing. While you do that, you put it together to see if it fits, making it fit tightly. Smoothing, pressing, thinning as you go, it finally snaps into place.

But before it snaps into place, just before it begins to fit, using part of the curved knife, do this, pressing it. Then it snaps into place, not to come off again. A little water makes it stick together tightly, and not come apart. The dough on the name is on the name. It is just a wealth of new stuff. A lot higher stuff. Because you've got a screen so you don't have to work hard with the new stuff. Nick continues to carve wooden objects today. His masks are sold in the shop with the Euchtelic Museum in Bethel, and to individuals who ask him to make them. Currently, he is teaching wood carving to students.

He passes on his idea of how a student can best learn. I used to see the elders carving all the time. They used to advise us and tell us to carve as much as we could on our own, even though it didn't come out looking perfect. A person doesn't learn by being idle. He won't learn just by sitting and watching. If a person just watches and hasn't tried the carving, when he goes to carve it, it won't be done the right way. But if he tries, even though it's done poorly, the carving will just get better and better. If the hands learned how to do it, it will get better. At first, the work isn't so good. But as a person keeps carving, it improves. The work gets better. That's how we were told. We were never helped while we made something.

They'd watch us, but wouldn't help us. Even when it wasn't done correctly or perfectly, they didn't say so. We'd just tried by ourselves thinking of how better we would try to get it. We'd just be able to do that. We'd just be able to do that. We'd just be able to do that. We'd just be able to do that. We'd just be able to do that.

We'd just be able to do that. When we used to go out and make, you know, to tell stories and mud with our story knives,

we used to make sure that we had a good story knife and then we would find a real nice place and bring some mud if there's no good mud there to make our story places. We'd bring our own mud and then we would pick up grass and like this one here. We'd put it under us so we don't get dirty. Sometimes we use curved birds. And before we go out, we make sure that we have something to, you know, choose like them or if we don't have them, we would steal some little bit of tobacco from our mother or our father's backs. And then we'd think that's the, so we can have saliva to spit and our story place. So when we erase that, you know, erase the story that the images we put under the story place like this, you know, sometimes it's kind of hard to erase, so when we spit, it helps to erase and it makes your going like this easier.

And then we'd choose sometimes we would choose young grass like this green ones like this, that gives saliva. And then we'd tell stories, we'd spend hours and hours telling stories. That used to be one of my favorite past times. And then when we, in the summer camp and our mothers don't have anything to do, sometimes they gather around after they eat when we're outside, you know, sometimes we eat outside. They'd gather and they would tell stories to about their relatives and unusual happenings that happened last time ago to their men, to their friends. We'd mostly used to tell a burp bath, grandmother and her granddad or a grandson, the grandson is always the one with no parents, you know.

The parents had died or something and the grandmother would be taking care of the grandchild until they grew and are able to take care of themselves, they go hunting or they get married. Those are the things we used to mostly tell. And then we used to tell some other stories like we'd go very picking or go ate hunting and then at the end of the day, you know, when the sun stays up for a long time in the summer camp. We would eat and then go out and tell stories about what happens that day and where we found a nest and stuff like that, and where we found all the berries and how our, you know, how our day went.

And it would always be interesting. It's never boring. We always had fun. Sometimes, not a little kids would come, hire younger sisters or younger brothers or cousins, and not a little kids would just gather around and listen to the stories we told. Can we never get bored? Sometimes, we used to do it under snow, you know. This is the greatest thing here.

I never, in fact, I never see any boys tell stories under my days to come around and listen to the stories told. We would save our story nice for the next summer. We just put them away in a good place, you know, where nobody else will handle them. We used to have, sometimes we'd bring in mud for the winter, you know, and a bird or a karp or paper, so could tell stories in the house. And you can, our mothers don't have anything to do. They take their stories and we used to really enjoy that. Even though we didn't have TV, we used to have just a lot of fun. Sometimes, I wish my children would, you know, enjoy those little things instead of watching TV out of time. So, telling stories under mud is the way we passed down our, you know, legends like how the facts got red and how the crink that is blue.

That's how we learned our, you know, legends stories by word of mouth. And I don't think we would have learned them any other way if there was no, you know, telling stories under mud. That's how we learned them. Sometimes when we go to bed at night, I used to have my dad tell a story or my mother tell a story. And then if I learned those stories, I would tell them on the mud, you know, to my friends. Even if we sometimes hear stories over and over again, they're always fun, you know. Maybe it's because we make these images and the mud, it's what makes it just to even more interesting and not boring. Because sometimes they tell scary stories and sometimes really funny ones, sometimes really sad ones.

And then when they told stories, they all used to grow. They all used to grow. Just make the stories really interesting and exciting. They're able, you know, they sound and little things they do. You go, come over here, bring a bundle of fish to your mother, come and get it. And you say, hey, uncle, I need to talk to you. I've been getting into all kinds of trouble today and understanding people other way around.

I dropped an old lady right to her but, and then another thing I had cut my my mom's favorite skin because she told me to cut it out. She knows kind of things I don't understand and his uncle explained to him the way he understands and explaining everything. Lucy Bieber was born October 10, 1914 while her family was traveling to a fall camp not far from Nunavicha.

She grew up in Nunavicha which was their home village when they were not in their fall or spring camps. While still a young girl, Lucy married George Bieber who was originally from Bethel. George Bieber's great grandmother on the father's side was one of the three old women who were the first to camp in Bethel. Her's was the first house that was built here. George and Lucy had 14 children but seven died. She delivered all of her children at home by herself except for the last two who were delivered in the hospital. George Bieber died several years ago leaving many grandchildren and great grandchildren and it is these children Lucy especially likes to sew and make things far. She also sews for her children and their spouses. From her sewing, cooking and caring for her family, Lucy's other interest is her church. She's a faithful member in the Moravian church and is a special soloist.

She sings many church hymns from memory. Lucy says she relies on God and loves to sing while sewing or preparing food. You know those stories telling nice in the museum, the wooden one. I realized now that I learned the art of skin sewing then by using the story knife. When I was a young girl, I dearly loved to play with the story knife. After my mother put my boots on in the morning and after I put my partner on, I would take my story knife out which I usually placed under the mattress every evening and go outside. When I was a young girl, when I was a young girl, when I was a young girl, I would start at one end and start drawing, pretending to make my tips, pretending to make the focus, putting down or drawing whatever I like by using my story knife.

That is how I learned about sewing, by making designs with my knife on the snow. And when I started sewing on skin, I made them like the things I drew with my story knife. Did you have someone teaching you how to sew? No, I didn't have anyone teaching me. You just watched? Yes, I just watched. One woman taught me how to make good sew. How to sew those boots on?

At first I sewed them badly and I would only do what I did. And after I married, my husband used to have me sew. He'd let me sew on my own. I was a young girl, then, and I enjoyed being outside. I wouldn't want to sew. And I'd cry because I hated to sew. Are you teaching any sewing now? Are you teaching anyone how to sew? I only tell them how or cut out the material for them. For people who want to make the same kind of things I do, I show them how.

I use paper patterns. And up to this day, people come in here and leave with paper patterns as I give them. When you make something to sew, or when you make something for someone, do you make them the same? I sew things all the same. I don't think differently about any of them, whether I'm sewing something to sew or otherwise. I try to sew on them all equally well. Even the ones you're going to sew, the ones I'm going to sew, or something for my family, I work on them all the same way. I treat them all the same. Which of the things you sew do you look forward to doing the most? Do you like to work on things to wear on one's feet and on things to wear over the body?

Are you useful? Because they are useful. These are the things I like to work on more than the others. They are something to use for the body's warmth. The way you sew, perhaps it is not the same as the way your mother sewed. Perhaps she made different things, different items, different from the things you make now. Or perhaps she used different first. Yeah, she used first and she sometimes helped me when I first started sewing, when I first started making parkas. How about her way of making designs? Do you make the same designs and trimmings as she did? Yes, I do some of the things she did. I use the same decorations, but they seem to be better than hers because I have many more things to work with. So you have more things to work with than your mother did.

Yes, I have many different items to work with. Would you tell a little bit about how some families had their own designs or decorations? Religious had their own designs. In some villages they had parkas that were like the ones made in the Yukon. They talked about Yukon's styles. They were the ones they created here around the chest. You know, they make these decorations out of calf skin, cutting them up into small pieces to metric designs. The designs on the chest area were made like that, but they were just long pieces. That design is from the Yukon area. I have a finished parka here that I still have to finish with pastels. I'm making it for my daughter-in-law, Charlie's wife.

They say this is a Northwest Coast style. They have a hood like this out of calf skin. That food is that food is that. What nurture is it? So you use that style, even though it is not your family design. Even though it is not our family or area design, I use it because I like it. I am making these parkas for my family, decorating them like this. I'm making them for my son's wives, but I still have to make one more for the wife of the owners of these mittens. I haven't made one for her yet. I'm nearly finished making parkas for all of my daughters-in-law. And this parka is for Charlie's wife. I'll finish it after I put tasels on this other one. So we use designs and decorations, you too, even though they are not your family designs.

I use what I like. Perhaps in some villages they are designs differ, either in this area or out in the Yukon area. Is that right? They are different or they are not the same. Even the approver area designs and decorations are different from this area. Are the decorations and designs different in men's clothing? The design or decoration and men's parkas are different. They are never the same as the women's parkas. The men's parkas are like this, that is when they have parkas that are decorated. When a man has a decorated parka, it will have a border and on that shoulder area will be a strip of Wolverine. And also on the shoulder is a piece of white calf skin.

And then there are three Wolverine tasels here, under the Wolverine strip on the shoulder. And here on the breast are two, one across the other. And down there is one tasel, and on the back of the parka on the lower left side is another. And on the back there is a Wolverine tail, each side flanked with a tasel. They say the tasel on the lower right side is part of the one in the back. These represent pretend arrows. The arrow is shot, it goes into a person and goes through on the other side. Those people in the past used to say that this is why that decoration of a tasel was put on. This pretend arrow that was shot into a man. It's a big start. How about children's parkas?

The children's parkas, the little boys' parkas were also like that. They were like the men's. You mentioned that certain furs were used by men in the past. Is that right? Those two reality are what are they again? Different villages have different terms for some things. That village says to beauty, and in another village they'll say, can a cleat. The back fur was used for men's parkas. The back fur of the muskrat, the men's parkas were made out of them. And the women only, the belly fur.

One probably saw skins differently according to what kind they choose. Some skins are very difficult to sew on. And these reindeer leg skins are very hard to prepare or soften. The leg skins are especially hard to do. We work very hard using these scrapers to work on those legs. The reindeer skins to prepare them. We work very hard sweating to do two legs. That is why I tell them. Others don't like to buy my tucks made out of reindeer legs because they know how hard it is to work on them. But even though they are hard to work on, I work on them because I get some benefit from my work. I use these scrapers to prepare them. I use these scrapers to prepare them. I use these scrapers to prepare them separately from the cinch.

You can oh you can enjoy this. This is my painting! a .

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..