Alaska Natives at the Time of the Invasions: A Cultural Profile Project

Draft 3

Do not quote or copy without permission from Mike Gaffney or from Ray Barnhardt at the Alaska Native Knowledge Network, University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Mike Gaffney suggests that one read the Teacher's Manual Preview first to get a good idea about the purpose and design of this secondary school textbook.

Mike Gaffney

Chapter 2
Organizing Our Thinking: Key Concepts

Sharpening our tools. Serious thinking requires that we define those words and ideas which play key roles in our thinking and research. Like an Iñupiaq ivory carver or an Aleut kayak maker or a Siberian Yupik whaling captain, we need the right tools to do our job properly. Our tools are the words and ideas we use to convey information and organize our work on the Cultural Profile Project.

Figure 2
Northern Alaskan Eskimos with harpoons and whale carcass, c. 1920

Unless stated otherwise, all photos are from the online Alaska Virtual Library and Digital Archives project, a collaborative effort initiated by the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Consortium Library at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and the Alaska State Library in Juneau.

But we must take this notion of words and ideas as tools one step further. The ivory carver, kayak maker, and the whaling captain not only need the right tools, they must be sure these tools are finely honed to precise points and cutting edges. Likewise, our words and ideas must be finely honed if we are to communicate precisely what we mean. This is why we now spend some time sharpening our tools by defining those concepts central to constructing a solid cultural profile.

What is a concept? Words and ideas that mentally organize and give meaning to a set of facts and images are called concepts. The word marriage, for example, is a concept because it mentally organizes and gives meaning to facts and images about this human institution. But here is an important point — exactly what meanings are assigned to a set of facts and images may well depend on one’s cultural perspective. Within the Hindu religious traditions of India, for example, the institution of marriage has a quite different set of meanings and images than marriage within the Judeo-Christian tradition found in the United States and Europe. [Judeo-Christian tradition = Western cultural values based on the teachings of the Old Testament of the Bible, also known as the Torah in Judaism, combined with the teachings of Jesus Christ as described in the New Testament.]

Over time, widely used words like “culture” can take on a variety of meanings. Much like the bungee cords we use to secure supplies to a sled or into the bed of a pickup truck, the concept of culture has been stretched to describe many things. What definition is assigned to it at any given time depends on the interests and purposes of the people using it. When watching news programs on TV, for example, we hear terms like “pop culture” which usually refers to the world of popular arts and entertainment, fashion, and celebrities. Another term we hear on the news is “culture wars” which refers to the continuing political and social controversy over such issues as abortion rights, religious activity in public schools, and gay marriage. Or here in Alaska we might talk about “corporate culture” when examining the unique goals and operations of an Alaska Native corporation compared to those of a traditional American corporation like General Electric or Apple Inc.

The concept of culture is also central to the broad scientific field of anthropology. It figures in almost everything anthropologists do, whether studying ancient ruins or a society’s folklore and oral traditions. Yet we find almost as many definitions of culture as we find books on anthropology. Why? Because each book has its own purposes which require defining culture in a specific way. Without question, the concept of culture is central to our work here and all of Chapter Eight is devoted to describing what we mean by our concept of culture. But we must deal with other definitional problems first.

Alaska Native? Indian? Native American? Surely those terms used most often in our work need clear definition. At the very top of the list are words historically rooted in the English language which do two things. First, they distinguish the indigenous peoples of North America from non-Native groups who came later. For example, the name Indian versus the name European. Secondly, many of these often used names also identify what early Europeans saw as obvious differences between certain indigenous groups – for example, between Indians and Eskimos. By the way, “Indigenous peoples” means those human groups using and occupying the land at the time of first contact with invading outsiders. Usually “Native people,” “aboriginal people,” “original people” carry the same meaning.

For better or for worse, these historically entrenched terms for naming indigenous groups are like place-names on maps. Once a place is named and on the map, it is very difficult to change that name, no matter how reasonable the argument for change might be. A good example is found in the attempts over many years to officially change Mt. McKinley to Denali, which means the “great one” in the local Athabaskan language. Back in 1912, Hudson Stuck, Anglican Archdeacon of the Yukon, was a member of the first climbing team to reach Denali’s true summit of 20,320 feet. In 1914 he authored an account of that mountaineering feat. In the very first pages of his book, he made this appeal:

Forefront in this book, because forefront in the author’s heart and desire, must stand a plea for the restoration to the greatest mountain in North America of it immemorial native name…It is little more than seventeen years ago that a prospector penetrated from the south into the neighborhood of this mountain…and ignorant of any name that it already bore, placed upon it the name of the Republican candidate for President of the United States at the approaching election – William McKinley. No voice was raised in protest…

There is, to this author’s mind, a certain ruthless arrogance that grows more offensive to him as the years pass by, in the temper that comes to the “new” land and contemptuously ignores the Native names of conspicuous natural objects, almost always appropriate and significant, and overlays them with names that are, commonly, neither the one or the other.¹

Over ninety years later, the Reverend Stuck’s plea for an official place-name change to Denali is still unheeded, with no possibility for change in sight.

Indeed, historically embedded names for indigenous peoples are still widely used today by both Natives and non-Natives to make the same kinds of broad ethnic and cultural distinctions. Not surprisingly, whatever naming scheme is used – Indian, Native, Native American, Eskimo, Aleut – not everyone will be satisfied. Someone is sure to argue strongly for a different naming method.

Given the available naming options and strong feelings about them, perhaps all one can do is avoid confusion by being consistent when using these terms. The use of Native American in the last chapter of the book, for example, should have exactly the same meaning as when it was used in the first chapter. Now let’s tackle this problem of indigenous naming as best we can.

We use the general terms Indian or American Indian to identify Lower-48 indigenous peoples. If the discussion is about Indians in Alaska, we always use specific linguistic and tribal designations. For example, Koyukon Athabaskan Indians, Tlingit Indians, and so forth. In fact, we also use Lower-48 tribal names whenever possible. For example, Cherokee, Oglala Sioux, Chiricahua Apache. But there are times when a general term like “plains Indians” or “Northwest Coast Indians” better fits our immediate purpose. [Linguistics = the study of languages and their characteristics.]

It’s a good thing Columbus didn’t think he had discovered Turkey!
– Longstanding American Indian joke

Note that we have developed two basic rules for the naming of indigenous North American peoples. The first is consistency of use. This also includes keeping the naming rules as simple as possible. The more complicated the rules, the harder it is to maintain consistency. The second rule for indigenous naming is to be as tribally specific as we can whenever we can. We want the naming process to be so clear that we never have to answer a question like: But what Indians or Eskimos are you talking about?

Native American is used when referring to all indigenous people living within the fifty states of the United States. Hawaii is included although at this time the indigenous Hawaiians are not a federally recognized tribal group. They do not have the self-governing status of mainland tribes or the sovereign to sovereign relationship with the federal government as this principle has been historically developed in Indian law. We use the term Native only when discussing Alaska.

While we can argue for the overall use of Indian when referring to the lower-48, we cannot make the same argument when it comes to Alaska or Canada. In both places we must deal with the historically entrenched term of Eskimo. Again, we will be as tribally specific as possible. We use Iñupiaq, Central Yup’ik, Siberian Yupik when talking about Alaskan Eskimos. For Canada we use Inuit, usually qualified by a geographical place – for example, Baffin Island Inuit or Northern Quebec Inuit. There are, however, times when Eskimo is the more useful term – for example, when discussing the general subsistence culture of Eskimo whaling. And of course we have still another distinct Alaskan cultural/linguistic group historically know as the Aleut, the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands and the western end of the Alaska Peninsula.

What about the word, tribe? There are those who shy away from this word because in some minds it is associated with ethnocentric images of Native Americans as primitive and uncivilized.² We do not shy away from its use here for the simple reason it is a significant legal term used in everyday discussion of Native civic affairs. As we will see, “tribal sovereignty” and “federally recognized tribes” are two legal concepts with precise meanings. Whatever ethnocentric images the word “tribe” may have once conveyed no longer apply.

It should be evident that we take very seriously the need to be clear and specific when referring to the variety of Native American cultures and languages. This is why we have an expanded discussion of Alaska Native cultural pluralism in the very next chapter.

Do we mean “cultural group” or “ethnic group”? Toward the end of Chapter One, we introduced the concept of ethnocentrism. Just a moment ago we used it again when discussing use of the term, “tribe.” Ethnocentrism comes from the word ethnicity which, in turn, comes from the Greek root word ethnikos which simply means people. As commonly used today, ethnicity signifies differences between groups based national origin, religious beliefs, language, or cultural traditions and history. Many people often use the terms ethnicity and ethnic identity to mean much the same thing as culture and cultural identity. On TV and radio and in newspapers – indeed, in everyday speech – ethnic group has become a popular way of identifying different segments of American plural society – African Americans, Jewish Americans, Arab Americans, Irish Americans, and so on.

However convenient they may be, the use of such broad terms as ethnicity and ethnic group presents a problem. These words make us forget that within what we might categorize as an ethnic group, there can exist different cultural traditions. Alaska Natives, for example, can be thought of as a large ethnic group whose traditions and cultural perspectives differ significantly from other American ethnic groups such as Hispanic-Americans or Asian-Americans. This is why we emphasize the plural and not the singular when discussing Native Alaska. We say Native languages, cultures and histories. We must remember that within the larger Alaska Native ethnic group there exists different cultural traditions, hence different cultural identities. Let’s look at one example.

Although historically identified by outsiders as Indians as well as Alaska Natives, the cultural traditions, histories, and identities of Koyukon Athabaskans differ from that of Gwich’in Athabaskans. And certainly these interior Athabaskans differ from other Indian groups such as the Tlingit and Haida of Southeast Alaska. This and many other examples reflect the cultural pluralism of Native Alaska.

Whether thinking about ethnicity or culture, “distinctive” is the key word to keep in mind. Members of the group have a common ethnic or cultural identity because they share some combination of language, race, religion, history or cultural traditions that distinguishes them from others. The group’s members feel strongly that there is something about who they are, what they do and what they value in life is distinctive. And this distinctiveness and the ethnic identity it expresses is recognized by other groups³

There appears, moreover, to be a clear relationship between the extent to which a group feels its values and traditions are under attack by outside forces and how passionately and loudly that group lays claim to an exceptional way of life and the need to protect it from outside threats. Such public declarations of an exceptional culture are meant to alert all members of the group to impending dangers. It also serves as a sign of group unity and strength to all challengers. Under such pressures, ethnic or cultural identity also becomes a political identity – sometimes an aggressive, even militant political identity.

A striking example of the aggressive political promotion of a cultural identity in today’s world is the rapid rise of Islamic fundamentalism as a global force. There are Muslim groups throughout the world who believe their traditional way of life is under attack by the predominantly Christian West. Many have reacted violently to the American government’s policies and presence in the Middle East, including its invasion and occupation of Iraq. Many Muslim fundamentalists view America’s insistence on building Western-style democratic institutions in their regions as a direct threat to their interpretation of Islamic values and law.

Ethnocentrism and ethnic/cultural identity. Beware, however, that our ethnic or cultural identity can easily become a source of our own ethnocentrism. Unfortunately it is rather easy for any of us to become ethnocentric. On the one hand, it is natural to feel ethnic pride as Iñupiaq or Tlingit, or as an Italian-American or as a Chinese-American. It is, after all, the traditions of a person’s cultural group which most probably organized and gave meaning to much of that person’s early life. It is also natural to have feelings of individual self-worth flow from ethnic pride. In fact a group’s ethnic, national, or cultural identity has a dim future if members do not gain emotional strength from this collective birthright.

Yet at the same time it is a short, slippery slope from feelings of ethnic pride to feelings of ethnic superiority, perhaps even feelings of a God-given superiority. Suppose, for example, we come upon a new land much as the Spanish came to the Americas shortly after the expeditions of Christopher Columbus in the 1490s. And like the Spanish who had just achieved victory over the Muslim Moors, we are brimming with great self-confidence and religious fervor. After all, the Moors were a powerful North African Islamic civilization who ruled parts of Spain for several centuries. Moreover, the indigenous people we discover possess land and resources we covet.

Since these discovered peoples are not going to give away their land, labor, and resources, we resort to conquest and colonization to acquire the wealth we desire. We begin by convincing ourselves that our own cultural institutions and values are universally correct, perhaps even divinely approved. It quickly suits our purpose to find these new people to be deficient in their institutions and values. If indeed we were to find them to be our equals in custom and character, then justifying our conquest and colonization of them becomes much harder, both to ourselves and to others. And if we wish to remove and enslave them, it surely suits our purpose to regard them as a subhuman race fit only to haul our burdens and pick our crops.

Of course the ethnocentrism supporting our conquest emphasizes the most attractive images of ourselves. Through the work of our missionaries and other agents, we steadfastly advance what our cultural values affirm as virtuous behavior. But of course the indigenous folks quickly notice that how we often behave in real life does not match what we say is the virtuous life. We are soon caught in the hypocrisy of “do as I say, not as I do.”

Racism goes beyond ethnocentrism. If we are merely ethnocentric, we still believe the other group’s cultural deficiencies can be largely overcome by social and educational programs carried out by our missionaries and government agencies. We can believe in their eventual assimilation into our way of life, even to the point of intermarriage.

But if we are racists, then we brand an entire group of human beings as genetically inferior – as biologically and intellectually subhuman. We believe these genetic deficiencies can never be overcome by the educational and occupational opportunities we ourselves enjoy or hope to enjoy. So we conclude they are fit only for the most menial tasks which we, the superior race, must assign. Our political and economic control over them must be absolute. We will not tolerate any talk of assimilation. We fear their assimilation, so we demand total social segregation from them.

Figure 3
Racial Segregation in Juneau, c. 1908

Alaska State Library, Winter and Pond Collection, PCA 87-1050

In United States history, of course, the most obvious example of racism and its brutal consequences is found in the centuries of American slave trading and slave owning followed by nearly a century of legal racial segregation in the southern states. And let’s not forget that Alaska also had its own period of racial segregation when Natives were by law prevented from participating in economic opportunities such as establishing mining claims. As the photo in Figure 3 above shows, Alaska Native were also barred from using or working in many hotels and restaurants.⁵

Shall we use “ethnicity” or “culture?” Our answer is that it makes the most sense to stick with culture and cultural identity when working on the Cultural Profile Project. This is because Native cultures in traditional times had not yet been dragged into the world-wide mix of historic national and ethnic divisions. They had not yet been labeled as a single ethnic group – as a single group called “Alaska Natives.” This ethnic labeling would come later with the invasions when the Russians and Americans sought to legally define the relationship between themselves and Native people. What land rights did Native people possess under the new colonial regime? What measure of sovereignty would Native tribes retain? What responsibility, if any, did the colonizers have for protecting the legal and human rights of Native people?

From the point of view of the colonizers, these and other political and legal questions did not require recognizing cultural differences among Native groups. A single indigenous ethnic group called Alaska Natives – all of whom were certainly different from the Russians and Americans – worked just fine.

“Traditional times,” “pre-contact history,” and “tradition.” Traditional times refers to Native life before the invasions brought about lasting social change. Often this distant past is referred to as pre-contact Native history. But the term “contact” can be misleading because simple contact between Natives and outsiders rarely resulted in Native social change.

The crews of the two ships of Vitus Bering’s 1741 expedition to Alaska, for example, made contact with several Aleut communities. Yet these encounters had no immediate impact on those communities. The outsiders quickly came and went. So we need to keep in mind the difference between what was just an encounter between Natives and non-Natives and what was regular and sustained contact leading to social change. Regular and sustained contact, in fact, did not come to the Aleutians until 1744 when Russian fur traders/trappers invaded Attu and Agattu Islands.

We also make a major distinction between the meaning of traditional times and tradition. A tradition need not be an aspect of life lost to the invasions. A tradition may be a social institution — including the cultural values which sustain it — that survived the invasions. An example of a Native tradition surviving to modern times is the institution of Eskimo whaling found among the Siberian Yupik on Saint Lawrence Island and the Iñupiaq along the Arctic coast. Obviously the technology used by whaling crews has changed. Yet much of the social organization and cultural meaning of Eskimo whaling in traditional times has survived to the present day. Edward Etta, Mayor of the North Slope Borough, has said, “the whale is the centerpiece of our culture. It holds the coastal Inupiat together. If we lose the great whale and the environment that sustains it, we lose ourselves.”⁶

Clearly your cultural profile assignment focuses on Native life in traditional times. But an interesting question is: When and how does an institution or large idea become a significant tradition? What do we mean when we talk about “a Native tradition?” Do we mean only those pre-invasion cultural elements surviving to present times like Eskimo whaling? Or can we find a significant tradition brought to Alaska by outsiders which, over time, has been firmly adopted by a Native group and then shaped by them to fit their own purposes ? Can such cultural adaptations be considered equally important Native traditions today?

The early acceptance of Russian Orthodoxy by Aleut communities offers a good example of a significant Native tradition arising from cultural adaptation. The Russian Orthodox church has been part of the everyday life of some Aleut communities for at least 170 years. Surely enough time has passed for the Aleut practice of Orthodoxy to develop all the cultural and emotional power of any pre-invasion Native tradition. Another cultural adaptation from early outside influence making a mark on modern Native social life is Athabaskan fiddling in interior Alaska.⁷

Figure 4
Russian Orthodox Bells on Atka Island, Alaska, c. 1920
[c. = circa, which is Latin for “approximately around that time.”]

This is why we must make a distinction between the concept of traditional times and the concept of tradition. There exist today deeply felt cultural traditions which arose after contact and which have become part of Native everyday life and cultural identity. Consider the following view of tradition offered by the early 20th Century English author, G. K. Chesterton:

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy [a small group of rulers] of those who merely happen to be walking about.

How does my ethnic/cultural identity work in modern times? Imagine that the radio or television is on somewhere in your house. You are doing other things so you are only half listening. But then the program is interrupted by “breaking news” which gets your attention. You hear that in Anchorage someone has shot people at a school and is now holding hostages. At this time the news of this terrible event is sketchy.

Your ethnic/cultural identity has kicked in if one of your first thoughts is: “Oh my, don’t let it be a member of my ethnic group who is doing this dreadful thing!” If you are Native, for example, and further news says it is in fact a Native person, what is your next thought? If you are an Indian from Interior Alaska, it may be something like: “Please, don’t let it be an Indian!” But further news says that indeed the perpetrator is an Indian from Interior Alaska. If you are Gwich’in Athabaskan, your next anxious wish might be: “Please, don’t let it be a Gwich’in!”

So what do we learn from this little exercise? In America’s culturally plural society, one’s ethnic/cultural identity can have different layers, much like an onion. What our fictional Gwich’in Athabaskan is doing is pealing away the layers, starting with the outer, most general ethnic layer of being an Alaska Native. But once the news story establishes the perpetrator as a Native, then he peals away more layers until reaching the core of his Gwich’in cultural identity.

There is one final point to make on levels of identity in culturally plural America. When those with strongly felt ties to a particular minority group spend any significant time overseas, they may find their ethnic identity pushed aside by their American “national identity.” To live and work effectively in a foreign country requires constant thinking about how local people perceive you as an American. Unlike at home, you are forced every day to think beyond your ethnic identity. Being African-American or Native-American or Hispanic-American often becomes a secondary consideration simply because that is not the primary way people in most foreign lands think of you. In their eyes you are an American first and foremost.

What we should be thinking about – key study questions.

What is a “concept”?

What do we mean when we say “culture” has become an elastic concept?

What is the difference between ethnicity and culture?

Can you explain colonialism and how it has historically worked?

How is racism different from ethnocentrism?

Why distinguish tradition from traditional times?

Why do we use traditional times rather than pre-contact history?

Why have we chosen to stick with culture and cultural identity rather than switch to the currently more popular terms of ethnicity and ethnic identity?

Table of Contents | Chapter 3