Kotlik Day 2 (first half)

Well I guess I should begin from last night, after I got back from exploring the village, I met another search and rescuer staying at the school and I watched some more native dancing with him on the computer, he was watching some videos that he had recorded recently. The Yup’ik style of dancing is different but pretty. If you imagine hula dancing, then take away all the lower body motion and add upper body movement and lots of hand movement, you might be able to get a vague impression of it. The men kneel in front and use feather “fans” in their dance, while the women stand in the back and use grass and antler fans for their part in the dance. Each dance tells a story and in the background you have men drumming (traditionally it would’ve been seal skin drums but no longer) and chanting the story in time to the dance. It is really cool; maybe one day I can see it in person. Afterwards he invited me to join him at his friend’s house for dinner so I tagged along. There were about 7 of us there for dinner (4 search and rescuers, the hosts, and myself). We ate some kind of soup for dinner (it was not fish… a bunch of different noodles and maybe rice with some vegetables and some type of meat), it was pretty good and I got to meet some very nice people and talk. The people here tease each other constantly and laugh a lot; it’s a very friendly atmosphere. After talking for a while we came back to the school, and the younger guys I met here tried to teach me the Yup’ik alphabet (in the IPA it is /a, aa, ə, i, ii, u, uu, p, t, c, k, q, s, z, v, ɣ, ʁ, x, X, l, ɫ, m, n, ŋ, w, y, ai, au, ia, iu, ua, ui/ at least these are the basic sounds they thought were important I start with. Through teaching me the sounds they also taught me some words and even gave me a minimal pair for the distinction between /a/ and /aa/. It was pretty fun, and I learned I’m very bad at making uvular sounds; they tried to teach me and laughed a lot, but all in fun. I finally went to bed pretty late. I like these people, they’re night owls like me and not morning people. Most people stay up to past midnight and this morning around ten not very many people were awake. Good lifestyle. This morning I went to the tribal office and met one of the Yup’ik speakers (the language is actually called Yugtun while the people are Yup’ik), he is a very busy man but he said he’d be able to meet with me and do some recording, so on Thursday I get to get my very first official Yup’ik recording done and really start working. I’m going to begin with a Swadish list, so about a hundred vocabulary items that are theorized to be the most resilient to change in any language.

I then walked around a little bit more and ran into my friend the husky puppy, still timid, and after being chased and showing his submissiveness to an older dog they came and hung out with me and I spent a while petting him and he likes me now, he gave me many more kisses. I feel bad for him and I really want to take the little guy home with me, but I can’t. Apparently (a) I’m strange for petting these dogs and showing them some love (one of the guys living nearby commented on it) and (b) village ordinances says that the dogs have to be tied up so they don’t get in the way or get into the fish racks and steal the summer’s and winter’s food stores…which makes perfect since, but I still feel bad for the poor puppy (he’s still little so he’s probably only a few months old).

After this I joined, I guess my new friends at their house again and had a pancake and some coffee and talked awhile. They gave me the names of some more Yugtun speakers I should talk to about the language, and then we talked about the ancient Yup’ik morphemic pictographic writing system, about the knowledge that has been lost or is being lost (making parkas and boots for different seasons, making sinew thread, ect), the trouble in the schools, about their subsistence lifestyle and how the government is taking away their fishing rights and really hurting the community (all of it is a long story and involved and really sad and unfortunate and really actually just immoral what’s going on, but I’m not going to say anything more about it, its not my place as a Kass’aq). I learned a lot though and had a good time, they are really nice people and have good hearts. I have been invited back anytime I want food, so that’s nice! Here soon I will try to introduce myself to some more Yugtun speakers and start to get more recordings hopefully.

I’m writing this really early compared to usual though because there is a chance I’ll be joining some search and rescuers on the boats this afternoon (again not my place to say what happened but there are people here currently from all over the Yup’ik and Inupiaq areas). Anyways, they’re going to head down river and into the ocean and travel up and down the shores so it should be quite an experience!! If I end up joining them we probably won’t be back until 1-2am so this will just be the Kotlik halfday 2 post and I will post a day 2.5 and 3 tomorrow (or this evening if I don’t make it out with them. So everything is well, I’m having fun, learning lots, meeting a lot of new people, and slowly things are beginning to roll and fall into some sort of place.