Crowell, Aron, Amy F. Steffian, & Gordon L. Pullar (eds.)
2001 Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People. Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska Press.
Notes: xii, 265 p.: p., ill. (some col.), maps (some col.); 30 cm. ISBN: 1889963305Reviewed 14 Oct 2003 by:
Robert Lawless <robert.lawless@wichita.edu>
Department of Anthropology, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas, USAMedium: Written Literature Subject
Keywords:Pacific Gulf Yupik Eskimos Pacific Gulf Yupik Eskimos - Alaska - History - Exhibitions
Pacific Gulf Yupik Eskimos - Alaska - Ethnic identity - Exhibitions
Pacific Gulf Yupik Eskimos - Alaska - Antiquities - Exhibitions
Pacific Gulf Yupik Eskimos - Alaska - Religion - Exhibitions
Pacific Gulf Yupik Eskimos - Alaska - Social life and customs - Exhibitions
ABSTRACT: Reflecting trends toward greater indigenous participation in the representation of Native Americans, this book combines archaeology, ethnohistory, oral tradition, linguistics, ethnography, and museology to give a holistic portrayal of an Alaskan people.
A project of the National Museum of Natural History Arctic Studies Center, and the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository, this book is simply beautiful; almost every page has a color photograph, drawing, or map, and there are many historic black-and-white photographs and drawings all appropriately arranged in a 9x11 format. Combining cultural research with self-representation, this story of the Alutiiq includes the efforts of many people: anthropologists, indigenes, and indigenous anthropologists.The Alutiiq people occupy Alaska's south central coast from Prince William Sound in the east to the Alaska Peninsula in the west, including the Kodiak Island group and parts of the Kenai Peninsula. They have been heavily impacted for two centuries by Russian and Euroamerican imperialism. Chapters 2 and 4 describe the historical impact of the colonial powers, which included decimation by new diseases, especially smallpox and measles, slave-like debt to the fur-trading companies, the imposition of official languages, alien religions, strange technologies, and foreign political systems. Commercial fishing, copper mining, gold prospecting, logging, and oil exploration resulted in the ecological destruction of their lands.
In "Alutiiq Identity", Patricia H. Partnow, vice president of education at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, suggests that a combination of five elements characterizes the heroes in Alutiiq folklore and mark the ethnic identity of the people: ties to the land, a shared history and continuity with the past, the Alutiiq (Sugcestun) language, subsistence, and kinship (p. 69). Contemporarily it is difficult for Alutiiqs to share all five points -- "People accentuate different parts of their Alutiiqness at different times and in different places" (p. 69).
The most significant 20th century impact on Alutiiq identity occurred in 1971 when the U.S. Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, stipulating that Alaskan Native people were to receive legal title to 40 million acres of land and a cash settlement of nearly a billion dollars for lost land. Enrolling for these benefits was an extremely complex process, and although various and serious difficulties and controversies erupted, the editors conclude, "The struggle for a just land settlement brought people together [and] a new unity was forged" (p. 85).
In Chapter 3, Sven Haakanson, Jr., director of the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository and a Harvard-trained anthropologist, asks "Can There Be Such a Thing as a Native Anthropologist?" and concludes "Anthropology needs to embrace a new and more inclusive definition of collaboration, in which Native approaches to the field are just as valid as any others" (p. 79). In the accompanying commentary, apparently by Gordon L. Pullar, one of the editors, Haakanson's comments are interpreted as displaying doubts that "anthropologists who also happen to be Alutiiq can be taken seriously when they speak about their communities from an anthropological perspective" (p. 80). I have no knowledge of Haakanson's personal experiences in academia, but I do find it difficult to believe that trained, professional anthropologists would face any particularly widespread intellectual skepticism based solely on their ethnic background -at least that's not the academic milieu with which I am familiar. The growing literature on "native anthropologists" should be consulted on this issue.
Chapter 5 focuses on hunting, fishing, and gathering and emphasizes the spiritual relationships that the Alutiiq have with the natural world. There is a fascinating collection of color photographs of kayaks, weapons, clothing, and hunting hats. Chapter 6 discusses Alutiiq religion, including the continuing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, which claims a majority of the population. This influence is particularly significant since the czarist government withdrew their support when the United States bought Alaska in 1867, and the U.S. government subsequently attempted to suppress this sect.
The last chapter, titled "Alutiiq Paths", consists entirely of the words of nine Alutiiq elders interviewed in 1997 at the Elders' Planning Conference for the Looking Both Ways exhibition. They discuss Alutiiq struggles to preserve their language and culture, and they recount their personal perspectives on events that shaped their collective experience.
Cultures are not monolithic; most contemporary societies consist of interest groups, power elites, the inarticulate, the dispossessed, and the exploited. Anthropology will not benefit from control by any particular interest, yet this entire book, privileges the views of the "Elders" without revealing their agenda or its acceptance by other segments of the Alutiiq communities. This volume, nevertheless, seems to be a fairly successful collaboration between anthropologists and indigenes. The fact that several of the indigenous scholars are trained anthropologists no doubt contributed significantly to this success. In general, I suppose, the trend toward greater indigenous participation in the representation of Native Americans is a good thing. I am not convinced, however, that collaboration of this sort can always be this successful. Anthropologists certainly have an obligation and responsibility toward those that they study; such obligations and responsibilities are codified in the ethics of the discipline. Anthropologists also have obligations and responsibilities to the discipline, and it is inevitable that Looking in Both Ways (to use the title of the book in a rather different sense) is going to involve some conflicts, conflicts that perhaps anthropologists and indigenes could productively explore.
To cite this review, the American Anthropological Association recommends the following style:
Lawless, Robert
2003 Review of Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People. Anthropology Review Database. October 14. Electronic document, http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=1793, accessed November 22, 2009.© Anthropology Review Database
(available online: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/)