A Yupiaq Worldview: A Pathway to Ecology and SpiritOscar Kawagley is a man of two worlds, walking the sometimes bewildering line between traditional Yupiaq culture and the Westernized Yupiaq life of today. In this study, Kawagley follows both memories of his Yupiaq grandmother, who raised him with the stories of the Bear Woman and respectful knowledge of the reciprocity of nature, and his own education in science as it is taught in Western schools. Kawagley is a man who hears the elders voices in Alaska, knows how to look for the weather and to use the land and its creatures with the most delicate care. In a call to unite the two parts of his own and modern Yupiaq history, Kawagley proposes a way of teaching that incorporates all ways of knowing available in Yupiaq and Western science. He has traveled a long journey, but it ends where it began, in a fishing camp in southwestern Alaska, a home for his heart and spirit. |
Contents
The Meeting of Old and New | 7 |
Akiak and the Yupiit Nation | 39 |
Yupiaq Science Technology and Survival | 55 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
activities Akiak Alaska Native allowed animals asked balance become begin better body close concepts consciousness considered constructed continue culture cutting develop earth ecological effects elders environment especially experience feelings fish fish camp force give given homes human hunting idea important indigenous individual knowledge land language living longer look machines maintain materials means mind Native natural necessary observation person perspective plants possible practice present principles problems questions recognize removed respect river scientific sense shaman skills skin social society spiritual stories taught teacher teaching things thinking thought told traditional understand universe values village weather Western worldview young Yupiaq Yupiaq worldview Yupiit