Nunakun-gguq Ciutengqertut/They Say They Have Ears Through the Ground

Animal Essays from Southwest Alaska

by Fienup-Riordan, Ann

Lifeways in Southwest Alaska today remain inextricably bound to the seasonal cycles of sea and land. Community members continue to hunt, fish, and make products from the life found in the rivers and sea. Based on a wealth of oral histories collected through decades of research, this book explores the ancestral relationship between Yup’ik people and the natural world of Southwest Alaska. Nunakun-gguq Ciutengqertut studies the overlapping lives of the Yup’ik with native plants, animals, and birds, and traces how these relationships transform, as more Yup’ik people relocate to urban areas and as the environment changes. The book is presented in bilingual format, with facing-page translations, and will be hailed as a milestone work in the anthropological study of contemporary Alaska.

With Alice Rearden, Marie Meade, David Chanar, Rebecca Nayamin, and Corey Joseph.

Ann Fienup-Riordan is an anthropologist who has lived and worked in Alaska for more than forty years. She has written and edited more than twenty books on Yup’ik history and oral traditions.