–Sarah Diver

The Inupiaq peoples for centuries continuing into the present have lived along the Bering Strait, Kotzebue Sound, and interior parts of Northwest Alaska with relatively few changes in their homeland geography.(Issenman 1997; Ray 1975, 4-7) Northwest Alaska is composed of a vast variety of land typologies of landforms, including coastland, tundra, brushland, small lakes and ponds, marshes, lava beds, and vast forests of spruce and birch.(Ray 1975, 6) In the middle of the summer, the long days are mild (about 55 degrees Fahrenheit) but not hot; whereas, the few hours of sunlight the winter makes temperatures in the circumpolar region very cold with temperatures on average reaching no more than a few degrees above zero. (Ray 1975, 7) Given the stormy autumns with high winds and the seasonal ice packs, Inupiaq people must be highly attuned to their surroundings as well as highly resourceful in order to stay warm, dry, and well fed throughout the year. (King 2005, 12-23)  Around the late 19th century, when the drawings in question were likely produced, Iñupiaq daily lives and survival methods heavily relied upon the animals they could hunt and the vegetal plants and berries they could forage, and subsequently, where they lived and the structures they built varied seasonally. (King 2005, 12-23) While most contemporary Inupiat live in permanent homes now, this connection to the plants and animals of the arctic, beginning many centuries ago, continues today. (Ray 1975, 4-7)

The types of animals Iñupiaq people hunt are as varied as the types of landforms there are in Northwest Alaska.  Animal skins, meats, organs, and other by-products are readily used for clothing, boats, shelter, technology, food, and other objects for daily or ceremonial use. All Iñupiaq people depend on fish and seals for their diet. Some groups that live further inland depend mainly on caribou, whereas other groups that live on the coast depend primarily on walrus and whales. Hunting, thus, is an enormously important activity for the Iñupiat because they use animals for so many essential functional purposes. (All preceding information in this paragraph is from Ray 1978, 287) At the time the drawings in question were produced, the task of hunting and processing animals was divided between the sexes; where, men traditionally hunted and made tools for the hunt while women cleaned, processed, and transformed the animal bodies into various items.(Burch 2006, 64-65) This division of labor was furthermore connected to marriage, which was understood as a sexual and emotional partnership as well as a necessary economic one.(Burch 2006, 79-80) Economically speaking, the strict division of labor between men and women required coupled marriages in order for raw materials to be successfully harvested and processed. Therefore, a very successful hunter sometimes took more than one wife as both a mark of prestige and to help mitigate the large amount of animals he harvested. A husband and wife became the essential unit to ensure individual survival and wealth; however, women and men both attended to gender specific groups, which dictated larger social and economic practices within the community. (Burch 2006, 81)

Towards the end of the 19th century, outside of the individual households that married couples shared, all of the men within an Inupiaq village spent most of their time, when they were not hunting or fishing, in the qargi, the men’s house or community hall.(Burch 2006, 105)  Each Inupiaq settlement was led by at least one umialik, a whaling captain who was a seasoned hunter and leader of a team of whalers.(Ray 1978, 286) It was the respected umialik who oversaw the practice of ceremonial life in the qargi and who distributed labor and food among the men who aided the hunts.  Women were only allowed to enter the community house when they delivered food or participated in ceremonies.  Though women and men were intimately connected through marital relationships, they also were loyal to their respective gendered social organizations and regulations, and more so, to the village on whole.

For a more specific statement about Iñupiaq aesthetics, see the page on Iñupiaq material and visual cultures.

This interview with Iñupiaq skin sewer Rita Olanna illustrates well the continuity of these practices into the present:

Sources for this page:

Burch, Ernest S.  Social Life in Northwest Alaska : The Structure of Iñupiaq Eskimo Nations. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2006.

Issenman, Betty. Sinews of Survival : The Living Legacy of Inuit Clothing. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997.

King, J.C.H. “Introduction.” In Arctic Clothing of North America – Alaska, Canada, Greenland, edited by J.C.H. King, Birgit Pauksztat, and Robert Storrie, 12-23. Montreal and Kingston: Mc-Gill-Queen’s University Press, 2005.

Ray, Dorothy Jean. “The Bering Strait Region.” Chap. 1 In The Eskimos of Bering Strait, 1650-1898. Seattle :: University of Washington Press, 1975.

Ray, Dorothy Jean. “Bering Straight Eskimo.” In Arctic, edited by William C. Sturtevant. Handbook of North American Indians. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1978.