The Messenger Feast, called also Kivġiq, is a festival performed by both Iñupiat and Yup’ik peoples. It was traditionally held after a strong whale harvest, in a qargi (men’s/community house), and lasted four to seven days. (Fair 2000, 473)  The Kivġiq involves feasting, dancing, exchanging of gifts, storytelling, and athletic competitions.  The ceremonial served to solidify the bonds between the host community and another Inupiaq village.  The feast has been called “without question, the most elaborate socioceremonial occasion in. . .northern Alaska.” (Spencer 1959, 210)

The name “Messenger Feast” comes from the fact that invitations were carried between communities by envoys(Kingston 2001, 263).  As Ernest Burch has argued, Inupiaq people lived in autonomous villages, each of which might be thought of as a nation engaged in trade, conflict and collaboration with each other.  During the Kivġiq, communities could exchange resources from their home region for scarcer resources; for example, people living on the coast could trade the products from marine mammals for the vegetation and animals found in the interior.  Dances and athletic events could allow each community to show its physical strength and spiritual wealth in a nonviolent way, and reinstating intercommunal ties of friendship and kinship.  A community could only decide to hold a feast if it had the resources necessary to serve as a good host.  At various times, communities across the Seward peninsula extended such invitations.

While the decline of resources, the ravages of epidemics and the censorship of Christian leaders diminished the frequency of Inupiat festivals, the Kivġiq never disappeared.  In recent decades, the Kivġiq has served as a means of community renewal within and between Inupiat villages.   In Wales, this tradition is perpetuated by the annual Kingikmiut Dance Festival held since 1999, offering a profound and beautiful expression of survival and the ongoing vitality of this community and its traditions.

Description of the ceremonial

The ceremonial as an expression of an Inupiat world view

Material culture of the ceremonial

 

Sources for this page

Susan W. Fair, “The Inupiaq Eskimo Messenger Feast: Celebration, Demise, and Possibility”, The Journal of American Folklore, 2000, 464-494

Fogel-Chance 2002

Kingston

Spencer