A Yupiaq Worldview: A Pathway to Ecology and Spirit

Oscar 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 and 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. The second edition examines changes that have impacted the Yupiaq and other Alaska Native communities over the last ten years, including implementation of cultural standards in indigenous education and the emergence of a holistic approach in the sciences.