Upside Down

B. Blackman Margaret

Description

In the roadless Brooks Range Mountains of northern Alaska sits Anaktuvuk Pass, a small, tightly knit Nunamiut Eskimo village. Formerly nomadic hunters of caribou, the Nunamiut of Anaktuvuk now find their destiny tied to that of Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope, their lives suddenly subject to a century’s worth of innovations, from electricity and bush planes to snow machines and the Internet. Anthropologist Margaret B. Blackman has been doing summer fieldwork among the Nunamiut over a span of almost twenty years, an experience richly and movingly recounted in this book.

A vivid description of the people and the life of Anaktuvuk Pass, the essays in Upside Down are also an absorbing meditation on the changes that Blackman herself underwent during her time there, most wrenchingly the illness of her husband, a fellow anthropologist, and the breakup of their marriage. Throughout, Blackman reflects in unexpected and enlightening ways on the work of anthropology and the perspective of an anthropologist evermore invested in the lives of her subjects. Whether commenting on the effect of this place and its people on her personal life or describing the impact of “progress” on the Nunamiut—the CB radio, weekend nomadism, tourism, the Information Superhighway—her essays offer a unique and deeply evocative picture of an at once disappearing and evolving world.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Ethnic studies
• Indigenous peoples
• Anthropology

Informations

• Publié par: UNP - Nebraska
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780803203945
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

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Upside Down

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Upside Down

Seasons among the Nunamiut

margaret b. blackman

u n i v e r s i t y o f n e b r a s k a p r e s s l i n c o l n  l o n d o n

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“August” first appeared inIn Short: A Collec- tion of Brief Creative Nonfiction, edited by Ju- dith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones (New York: W. W. Norton,1996). “Remembering Susie Paneak” originally appeared as “One Died Alone, the Other in a Community’s Arms” in theRochester Democrat and Chron- icle, December14,1997. “Fifty Years in One Place” originally appeared inNorth American Review, vol.286, no.10. ©2004 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America   Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blackman, Margaret B. Upside down: seasons among the Nunamiut / Margaret B. Blackman. p. cm. isbn 0-8032-1335-2(cloth: alk. paper) 1. Nunamiut Eskimos—Alaska— Anaktuvuk Pass—History. 2. Nunamiut Eskimos—Alaska— Anaktuvuk Pass—Social life and customs. 3. Ethnology—Alaska—Anaktuvuk Pass. 4. Anaktuvuk Pass (Alaska)—History. 5. Anaktuvuk Pass (Alaska)—Social life and customs. I. Title. e99.e7 b6562 2004 979.8'7—dc21 2003013924

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List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction August Tulugak Lake and Beyond Maps Anaktuvuk Pass, You Copy? They Come In; They Go Out Picking The Upside Down Season Fieldnotes Writing History from the Pass The “New” Eskimo Of Meat and Hunger and Everlasting Gob Stoppers Staying Home Masks The Only Road That Goes There Is the Information Superhighway Remembering Susie Paneak The Exhibition Airplane! Airplaaane! Dispatches from the Field Fifty Years in One Place Weekend Nomads The Things We Carry Town May—North of North Ed’s Place Happy July Fourth Faces of the Nunamiut Notes

Contents

vii ix 1 5 9 17 21 31 41 47 51 59 69 73 85 89

97 107 111 119 129 143 151 161 169 177 181 191 197 205

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Illustrations

photographs Fireweed by Suaqpak Mountain, Anaktuvuk Pass5 Susie Paneak at Tulugak Lake9 cbtalk21 Dancing for tourists31 Picking berries41 Meryn and her friends47 Anaktuvuk Pass51 [-7], (7) Homer Mekiana in his post office59 Simon Paneak at home59 Lines: 151 to 225 Willie Hugo, on his father’s lap,1963 69 ——— Lela Ahgook and her store73 7.58264pt PgV 291Main Street, Brockport, New York85 ——— Normal Page Caribou-skin mask by Rhoda Ahgook89 * PgEnds: PageBreak Street corner, Anaktuvuk Pass97 Cemetery, Anaktuvuk Pass107 [-7], (7) Ethel Mekiana, Justus Mekiana, and Rachel Riley in Brunswick, Maine111 The Wien plane,1963 119 Lela Ahgook and Margaret Blackman129 Walking toward Giant Creek143 Coming home from camping151 Returning from caribou hunting,1959 161 Going to town169 Anaktuvuk Valley, May177 Anaktuvuk Pass,1959 181 Anaktuvuk women on the Fourth of July,1959 191 Wooden molds for masks197

Map of Anaktuvuk Area

map 16

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Acknowledgments

The essays in this collection balance on a pyramid of encouragement, crit- icism, and financial support from many sources. While no grant specifi- cally funded this project, the National Science Foundation, the North Slope Borough, The Whatcom Museum, The American Philosophical Society, the Alaska Humanities Forum, and SUNY Brockport got me from western New York to northern Alaska many times and funded a long list of oral history interviews and their transcriptions. There is an equally long list of those who patiently listened, read, and of- fered suggestions. As the essays accumulated, my enthusiasm for the project grew, as did my desire to share them. I unabashedly gave “readings” over dinner and on the phone; I distributed essays to friends at my gym, mailed and e-mailed them to family, friends, and colleagues. I handed them out at a city council meeting in Anaktuvuk Pass. Writing and disseminating aca- demic prose is a lonely enterprise; the reading is not for everyone. Not so wi th essays, as I pleasantly discovered. My distributions paid off. Many friends and family served as my reading public over the years, among them Ann Alger, Mark Anderson, Betty Berlin, Ed Berlin, Jim Berlin, Karen Brewster, Ginger Carlson, Marilyn Colby, Ed Hall, Meryn Hall, Pam Hyland, Sue Kenyon, Joel Latner, Molly Lee, Sarah McConnell, Karla Merrifield, Elaine Miller, Char- lotte Reid, Pat Sarchet, Carol St. George, Bill Schneider, Pat Soden, Richard Stern, Marilyn Trueblood, and Robin Weintraub. Anaktuvuk Pass readers of some of these essays include Lela Ahgook, Becky Hugo, Freida Rulland, and Vera Weber. Cristina Klein, Bruce Leslie, Ulpian Toney, and the members of my writ- ers group—Amy Andrews, Gail Bouk, Carol Burelbach, Bill Capossere, Bea Ganley, Jane Guibault, Jeanne Grinnan, Judith Kitchen, Jenny Lloyd, Betsy Nadaeu, Gwen Nelson, Gerry Sharp, Larry Sill, Marcia Ullman, Carol Wis- ner—offered sustained editorial commentary over the lot of this collection, as did Phyllis Morrow and Janet Berlo, who read the manuscript for the University of Nebraska Press. Jack Campbell provided information on the early history of the village. Grant Spearman carefully read and critiqued the essays with a knowledge of the Nunamiut that far surpasses my own. Judith Kitchen, who is such a fluent and lyrical essayist, helped me break out of academic writing and lent her considerable editorial talent to framing the final manuscript. Most of all she believed these essays were publishable and helped me find a home for them. To the people of Anaktuvuk Pass—especially those mentioned in these essays—who have welcomed me over numerous seasons of fieldwork in their village and put up with my questions,Quyanaqpak. In choosing to use peo-

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