Yupik (Asiatic Eskimo) live along the eastern shore of the Chukchi Peninsula and in Alaska on Saint Lawrence Island. Divided by an "ice curtain" during the Cold War, Siberian and St. Lawrence Yupik began to renew ties in 1988 and now travel without visas across the narrow expanse of water that divides them. Yupik folklore speaks of armed encounters, usually provoked by the neighboring Chukchi whom the Yupik characterized as hot-tempered and grudge bearing in contrast to their own self-image as peaceful and good-humored. Despite their acrimonious history, Maritime Chukchi adapted Yupik subsistence techniques for fishing and hunting large sea mammals and Chukchi influenced Yupik social organization and material culture.

Yupik supplemented their marine diet by hunting land animals and sea birds and by gathering eggs, sea products and edible plants. Summer was a time of intensive gathering and bird hunting. Yupik vocabulary reflects extensive zoological and botanical knowledge. The most intensive and critical periods of hunting were in the spring and fall when the crews of large, sea-going canoes pursued sea mammals. Seals were hunted individually in the winter. Until the middle of the 19th century, spears, harpoons, and thong nets were used for sea hunting; snares, bows, and bone-tipped arrows for hunting on dry land; and slings and snares for birds. Ingenious water-proof clothing protected the sea hunter's life, even if he fell into icy water. On ceremonial days, feasting and ritual singing and dancing carried prayers for a successful sea hunt and expressed gratitude for past success.

Yupik had contact with Russians from the 17th century and with American whalers somewhat later, but missionaries were not active in this region. The Soviet period brought schools and hospitals but also the value judgements of a dominant culture that denigrated the Yupik way of life. As a sedentary people, the Yupik were particularly vulnerable to assimilation. When their shamans and elders had been mocked into silence, the Yupik lost those who were the primary source of their cultural knowledge and traditions.

As a consequence of forced assimilation and the closing of traditional settlements, the Yupik became a minority amid new settlers. Traditional subsistence activities declined where Soviet policy considered hunting an "obsolete" activity, Yupik were economically marginalized. Since the early 1980's, the Yupik have gained a renewed sense of themselves as a people and have begun to hope for a better life. They have also reestablished contact with kin on the Alaska side. There is a strong movement among the Yupik to return to the settlements that were closed in the 1940s and 50s.

For more information:

Nickolay Vakhtin, "Asiatic Eskimos," in Encyclopedia of World Cultures Vol. 6, P. Friedrich and N. Diamond, eds., pp. 120-124(G. K. Hall and Co., 1994).