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5C u r r e n t A n t h ro p o l o g y Volume 45, Number 1,
February 2004 2004 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research. All rights reserved
0011-3204/2004/4501-0001$3.00
Looking Several Ways
Anthropology and NativeHeritage in Alaska
by James Clifford
The ambivalent legacy of anthropologists relations with
localcommunities presents contemporary researchers with both
obsta-cles and opportunities. No longer justifiable by assumptions
offree scientific access and interpersonal rapport, research
increas-ingly calls for explicit contract agreements and negotiated
reci-procities. The complex, unfinished colonial entanglements of
an-thropology and Native communities are being undone andrewoven,
and even the most severe indigenous critics of anthro-pology
recognize the potential for alliances when they are basedon shared
resources, repositioned indigenous and academic au-thorities, and
relations of genuine respect. This essay probes thepossibilities
and limits of collaborative work, focusing on recentNative heritage
exhibitions in south-central and southwesternAlaska. It also
discusses the cultural politics of identity and tra-dition,
stressing social processes of articulation, performance,and
translation.
j a m e s c l i f f o r d is Professor of History of
Consciousness atthe University of California, Santa Cruz, and
founding director ofthe universitys Center for Cultural Studies
(Santa Cruz, CA95064, U.S.A. [[email protected]]). Born in 1945, he
was educated atHaverford College (A.B., 1967), Stanford University
(M.A., 1968),and Harvard University (Ph.D., 1977). Among his
publicationsare Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the
MelanesianWorld (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984),
(editedwith George Marcus) Writing Culture: The Poetics and
Politicsof Ethnography (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1986),The Predicament of Culture: 20th-Century Ethnography,
Litera-ture, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988),
andRoutes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century
(Cam-bridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). The present paper
wassubmitted 25 iii 03 and accepted 30 vii 03.
Gone are the days when cultural anthropologists could,without
contradiction, present the Native point ofview, when archaeologists
and physical anthropologistsexcavated tribal remains without local
permission, whenlinguists collected data on indigenous languages
withoutfeeling pressure to return the results in accessible
form.Scholarly outsiders now find themselves barred from ac-cess to
research sites, met with new or newly publicsuspicion. Indeed, the
anthropologistbroadly andsometimes stereotypically definedhas
become a neg-ative alter ego in contemporary indigenous
discourse,invoked as the epitome of arrogant, intrusive
colonialauthority.1
The history of anthropological relations with localcommunities
includes many examples of insensitivedata and artifact collection.
These, combined with gen-eral assumptions of scientific authority,
are understoodas modes of colonial domination from the other side
ofa structural power imbalance, and, as histories such asDavid
Hurst Thomass Skull Wars (2000) amply docu-ment, the resentment is
often justified. At the sametime, the sweeping condemnations of (or
jokes at theexpense of) anthropologists by indigenous peoples
areoften combined with generous words for individualswhose work has
been based on reciprocity, respect, andcooperation (see, e.g.,
Deloria 1997:210; Hereniko 2000:90).2 And anthropological texts are
frequently reappro-priated in Native discourses, invoked in
revivals of tra-dition. Indeed, the legacy of scientific research
done incolonial situations is ambiguous and open-ended. In
Ma-lekula, Vanuatu, A. B. Deacons research from the 1920sis
recycled in contemporary kastom discourses (Larcom1982, Curtis
2003). In California, the salvage anthro-pology and linguistics of
the A. L. Kroeber/Mary Haastradition at Berkeley is an invaluable
resource for tribalheritage activities. If Kroeber is currently
condemned forinsensitively sending Ishis brain to the Smithsonian
col-lection of Ales Hrdlicka or for pronouncing death sen-tences,
in his authoritative Handbook of the Indiansof California (1925),
on tribes now struggling for recog-nition, he is also gratefully
remembered by Yurok eldersfor loyal friendships and for recording
precious lore. Hisextensive, carefully researched court testimony
in the1950s on behalf of Native claims prefigures todays ad-vocacy
roles (see Buckley 1996:29495; Field 1999).3
This legacy presents contemporary researchersNa-tive,
non-Native, insider, outsider, halfie, dias-poricwith both
obstacles and opportunities. Les Field
1. The most famous salvo is, of course, chapter 4 of Vine
DeloriaJr.s Custer Died for Your Sins (1969)the book title borrowed
fromthat of a Floyd Westerman album, which includes the
wickedlysardonic Here Come the Anthros. See also Trask (1991),
Smith(1999), and, in a more humorous vein, Hughte (1994).2. Deloria
(pp. 21819) argues that for Amerindians assessments ofpersonal
ethics and integrity far outweigh professional qualifica-tions in
determining hospitality and cooperation in research. Thus,he
insists, the existence of individual friendships and
reciprocitiesshould not be taken as evidence that structural power
relations andcolonial baggage have been transcended.3. Kroebers
extensive notes for his testimony are in the BancroftLibrary.
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6 F current anthropology Volume 45, Number 1, February 2004
(1999) sees an unfinished history of complicities
andcollaborations. Fundamentally altered by the
politicalmobilization of Native communities, research can nolonger
be justified by assumptions of free scientific ac-cess and
interpersonal rapport. Explicit contract agree-ments and negotiated
reciprocities are increasingly thenorm. In postindependence
Vanuatu, for example, an-thropology and archaeology were formally
banned for adecade. Now research is permitted only when host
com-munities agree and when the foreign researcher collab-orates
with a local filwoka doing heritage work for theVanuatu Cultural
Centre (Bolton 1999, Curtis 2003). Insome contexts, anthropologists
find themselves re-cruited for land-claims litigation,
archaeologists for localheritage projects, linguists for language
reclamation. Inothers, fieldwork is forbidden or subject to
disabling re-strictions. Faced with these new, politicized
relations,scholars may regret a loss of scientific
freedomfor-getting the structural power that was formerly a
guar-antee of free access and relative safety and ignoring themany
implicit limits and accommodations that have al-ways been part of
field research. (Many scientists oncefelt authorized to remove
human remains, without con-sent, from graves in Native communities.
If this is nowbeyond the professional pale, it is the result of
ethicaland political constraints on scientific freedom.) As Na-tive
intellectuals and activists challenge academic au-thority, lines
can harden: the current Kennewick Man/Ancient One struggle for
control of an ancientskeleton is a notorious case in which
unbending nativeand scientific positions face off in court
(Thomas2000). Even where relations are less polarized, it has
be-come clear that local communities need to be able tosay no,
unambiguously, as a precondition for negotiatingmore equitable and
respectful collaborations. In practice,the complex, unfinished
colonial entanglements of an-thropology and Native communities are
being undoneand rewoven, and even the most severe indigenous
crit-ics of anthropology recognize the potential for allianceswhen
they are based on shared resources, repositionedindigenous and
academic authorities, and relations ofgenuine respect.4
This essay probes the possibilities and limits of col-laborative
work, focusing on a recent Native heritageexhibition in
southwestern Alaska: Looking Both Ways.I discuss the projects
contributors, conditions of pro-duction, and occasions of reception
primarily through acontextualized reading of its remarkable
catalogue,Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the
AlutiiqPeople, edited by Aron Crowell, Amy Steffian, and Gor-don
Pullar (2001). I was able to view the exhibition,
4. Deloria (2000:xvi) writes, in the Kennewick context,
Never-theless, in most areas, scholars and Indians have worked to
discoveras much as possible about newly discovered remains. When
schol-ars have gone directly to the tribes involved, much progress
hasbeen made. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999:15, 17) argues for
reci-procity and feedback in a range of current bicultural,
partner-ship, and multi-disciplinary research practices. Field
(1999) dis-cusses current possibilities and constraints in research
alliances,and his CA commentators offer useful complications.
which was linked with a local Alutiiq cultural festival(Tamamta
Katurlluta, August 31, 2002) in one of its Alas-kan venues.5 I also
discuss, more briefly, Ann Fienup-Riordans pioneering collaborative
work with Yupiit andthe recently opened Alaska Native Heritage
Center inAnchorage. The goal is not a complete survey of
heritageactivity in the region but an evocation of changing
Alas-kan Native identity politics touching on several
differentpractices of cultural revival, translation, and
alliance.
Heritage is self-conscious tradition, what Fienup-Rior-dan
(2000:167) calls conscious culture, performed inold and new public
contexts and asserted against his-torical experiences of loss. It
responds to demands thatoriginate both inside and outside
indigenous commu-nities, mediating new powers and attachments:
relationswith the land, among local groups, with the state, andwith
transnational forces. In contemporary Alaska, Na-tive
identifications have been empowered by global andregional movements
of cultural resurgence and politicalcontestation. They have also
been channeled and inten-sified by state policies, particularly the
Alaska NativeClaims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) and its
after-math.6 With the passage of this legislation, for the
firsttime, perhaps, it paid to be Native. The land-claimsmovements
of the 1960s and the formation of the Alaska
5. The festival was organized by members of the Alutiiq
commu-nities in Nanwalek, Port Graham, and Seldovia, working
closelywith staff at the Pratt Museum, Homer, Alaska, where the
exhi-bition was installed. I also visited briefly in the village of
Nanwalek.While my perspective on the project was greatly enriched
by theseencounters, my analysis remains essentially that of a
visitor, a con-sumer and critic of public performances and texts.
The many lim-itations and perhaps a few strengths of this outsider
position will,no doubt, be evident. The fact that I was unable to
visit the AlutiiqMuseum and Archaeological Repository in Kodiak
means that animportant dimension of the story is underdeveloped.
Aron Crow-ells Dynamics of Indigenous Collaboration in Alaska,
deliveredat Berkeley in spring 2002, piqued my interest. He later
introducedme to Homer and Nanwalek, and I particularly thank him,
alongwith my gracious Nanwalek hosts, James and Carol Kvasnikoff.
Inpreparing this essay I have consulted with Crowell and Amy
Stef-fian primarily to verify matters of fact. Helpful comments on
earlierdrafts have been provided by Gordon Pullar, Sven Haakanson
Jr.,Ann Fienup-Riordan, Nicholas Thomas, and Anna Tsing. The
spe-cific emphases and interpretations are, of course, my
responsibility.6. ANCSA was a political compromise of several
different agendas:Native land-claims agitation and a new political
coalition (theAlaska Federation of Natives), the need of
transnational corpora-tions to build a pipeline across the state
for oil recently discoveredin Prudhoe Bay, and the desire of state
and federal governments toarticulate a new Native policy in the
wake of the failed termi-nation period of the 1950s and 60sa policy
that could defini-tively settle aboriginal claims, giving Native
groups a stake in eco-nomic development within a capitalist context
while avoidingwelfare and trusteeship responsibilities. The act
awarded 44 millionacres of land and nearly $1 billion to 13
regional Native corporationsand 205 village corporations. Eligible
Native shareholders had toshow a 25% blood quantum, and
participation was limited to in-dividuals born before the date of
the legislation. Unique in U.S.Native policy, ANCSA reflects the
specific history of Native-gov-ernment relations in Alaska, which
lacks a reservation system andgovernment trusteeship over tribal
lands as practiced in the lower48 states. It has served as a model
for Inuit self-determinationin Quebec, with ambivalent consequences
similar to those inAlaska, including the emergence of a Native
corporate elite (Mitch-ell 1996, Skinner 1997, Dombrowski
2002).
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clifford Looking Several Ways F 7
Fig. 1. Distribution of native languages in Alaska.
Federation of Natives (AFN) made a self-determinationpolitics
based on Pan-Alaskan alliances possible. Nur-tured by strengthening
circumpolar and FourthWorld connections, large-scale tribal or
nationalidentifications emerged, supplementing more local vil-lage
or kin-based affiliations. Heritage preservation andperformance
have been an integral part of these changingNative articulations.
The result has been more formallyarticulated notions of culture or
tradition appropri-ate to changing indigenous senses of self.
For example, the people who now call themselvesAlutiiq (and
sometimes also Sugpiaq) live in villagesand towns on Kodiak Island,
on the southern coast ofthe Alaska Peninsula, on the Kenai
Peninsula, on PrinceWilliam Sound, and in urban Anchorage (figs. 1
and 2).Their somewhat uncertain status as a coherent entity in1971
is indicated by the fact that Alutiit are dispersedamong three of
the ANCSA regional corporations. In fact,many individuals
rediscovered or renewed their sense ofNative identity in the
process of ANCSA enrollment.Their collective history had been one
of intense disrup-tion and trauma: the arrival of the Russians in
the lateeighteenth century, bringing labor exploitation, massa-
cres, and epidemics; United States colonization after1867, with
missionaries, boarding schools, and intensemilitary presence during
World War II; devastation anddisplacement by a series of seismic
disasters and theExxon Valdez oil spill. While a great deal of
local tra-dition had been lost or buried, there were surviving
sub-sistence communities, kinship networks, a thriving Na-tive
religion (syncretic Russian Orthodoxy), and asignificant, if
dwindling, number of individuals whocould speak Sugstun, the
Eskimoan language indigenousto the region. Under the impetus of the
identity politicssweeping Alaska, affiliations partially
consolidated byANCSA, people were inspired to research, reclaim,
andtransmit their Alutiiq heritage (see Pullar 1992 andMason
2002).
Throughout Native Alaska, new forms of cultural/ar-tistic
production have been devised, along with new al-liances of Native
and non-Native interests and new sitesof performance and
consumption. Today these rangefrom regional elders conferences and
syncretic revivalsof midwinter dancing to language classes, carving
andboat-building workshops, tribal museums, nativetours, and model
villages for cruise-ship visitors. New
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8 F current anthropology Volume 45, Number 1, February 2004
Fig. 2. Alutiiq villages (adapted from Damas 1984:198).
cohorts of ethnically defined entrepreneurs, communityleaders,
and cultural brokers have emerged. Older formsof social, political,
and religious authority are simulta-neously recognized and
transformed, selectively trans-lated in changing situations. How
these practices takehold in local contexts varies considerably,
depending ondemographics and ecology, the timing and force of
co-lonial and neocolonial disruptions, possibilities and pres-sures
for resource extraction, and ongoing struggles oversubsistence.
Works like Looking Both Ways and theother heritage projects
discussed below are specific co-productions in a complex
social/economic/cultural con-juncture that both governs and
empowers Native life.
Broadly defined, heritage work includes oral-historicalresearch,
cultural evocation and explanation (exhibits,festivals,
publications, films, tourist sites), language de-scription and
pedagogy, community-based archaeology,art production, marketing,
and criticism. Of course, suchprojects are only one aspect of
indigenous self-determi-nation politics today. Heritage is not a
substitute for landclaims, struggles over subsistence rights,
development,educational, and health projects, defense of sacred
sites,and repatriation of human remains or stolen artifacts,but it
is closely connected to all these struggles. Whatcounts as
tradition is never politically neutral (Jolly1992, Briggs 1996,
Clifford 2000, Phillips and Schochet2004), and the work of cultural
retrieval, display, and
performance plays a necessary role in current move-ments around
identity and recognition. This essay worksto keep in view multiple
producers and consumers ofNative heritage, stressing the
constitutive processes ofpolitical articulation, contingent
performance, and par-tial translation.
Heritage projects participate in a range of publicspheres,
acting within and between Native communitiesas sites of
mobilization and pride, sources of intergen-erational inspiration
and education, ways to reconnectwith the past and to say to others:
We exist, We havedeep roots here, We are different. This kind of
cul-tural politics is not without ambiguities and dangers
(seeHewison 1987, Harvey 1990, Walsh 1992). Heritage canbe a form
of self-marketing, responding to the demandsof a multicultural
political economy that contains andmanages inequalities. Sustaining
local traditions doesnot guarantee economic and social justice;
claiming cul-tural identity can be a palliative or compensation
ratherthan part of a more systematic shift of power. In
postin-dustrial contexts heritage has been criticized as a formof
depoliticized, commodified nostalgiaersatz tradi-tion. While such
criticisms tend to oversimplify the pol-itics of localism, as
Raphael Samuel (1994) has argued,pressures for cultural
objectification and commodifica-tion are indeed often at work in
contemporary heritageprojects. But to conclude with a
moral/political bottom
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clifford Looking Several Ways F 9
line of objectification and commodification is to missa great
deal of the local, regional, national, and inter-national meaning
activated by heritage work.7
The politics of identity and heritage are indeed con-strained
and empowered by todays more flexible formsof capitalist marketing,
communication, and govern-ment. While recognizing these pressures
it is crucial todistinguish different temporalities and scales
(Tsing2000) of political articulation (local, regional,
national,international), performativity (linguistic, familial,
reli-gious, pedagogic, touristic), and translation
(intergener-ational, cross-cultural, conservative, innovative).
Globalcultural and economic forces are localized and to a
degreecritically inflected through these processes. Indeed,
theconnections affirmed in Native heritage projectswithland, with
elders, with religious affiliations, with an-cient, unevenly
changing practicescan be substantial,not invented or merely
simulacral. And for indigenouspeople, long marginalized or made to
disappear, physi-cally and ideologically, to say We exist in
perform-ances and publications is a powerful political act. In
thepast several decades, at regional and international scales,an
increasing indigenous presence has been felt in
manysettler-colonial and national contexts. This presence
in-dige`ne is reminiscent of the Presence Africaine move-ment of
the early 1950s, an assertion of cultural identityinseparable from
political self-determination. Todays in-digenous movements, like
earlier anticolonial mobili-zations, complicate dichotomous,
arguably Eurocentricconceptions of cultural versus political or
eco-nomic agency.8
Of course, the conditions of self-determination, ofsovereignty
are different a half-century after the greatwave of postwar
national liberation movements. Underconditions of globalization,
self-determination is less amatter of independence and more a
practice of managinginterdependence, inflecting uneven power
relations,finding room for maneuver (Clifford 2001).
Subalternstrategies today are flexible and adapted to specific
post-/neocolonial, globally interconnected contexts. This isnot an
entirely new predicament: indigenous movementshave always had to
make the best of bad political-eco-nomic situations. In a
relatively liberal settler-colonialmilieu such as contemporary
Alaskawhere Nativegroups, a real political presence, control
significant land
7. This essay extends an earlier discussion of the heritage
debatesand their application (in the work of Kevin Walsh and David
Harvey)to transnational contexts (Clifford 1997:21319). How are we
tounderstand the paradoxically globalizing and differentiating
func-tions of widespread claims to culture and identity
(Friedman1994, Dominguez 1994, Wilk 1995)? I have argued that the
paradoxshould not be reduced to an effect of globalizing or
postmodernpower structures (Clifford 2000). Something excessive is
going onin these diverse, proliferating movements. Hodder
(1999:14877)clearly portrays the complex determinations at issue.8.
A strong argument in this vein was provided by the Kanak
in-dependence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1996), who insisted on
anorganic connection between Melanesian heritage affirmations anda
broad range of self-determination struggles. On recent
argumentsthat portray merely cultural movements as divorced from
thereal politics of structural transformation, see Judith
Butlers(1998) riposte.
and resourcesbasic power imbalances persist. Thespaces opened
for Native expansion and initiative arecircumscribed, and key
conditions attached to the ap-parently generous ANCSA settlements
can be shown toserve dominant interests (Dombrowski 2002). At
thesame time, the social and cultural mobilizations nowpartially
articulated with state and corporate multicul-turalism in Alaska
predate and potentially overflow theprevailing structures of
government. Heritage work, tothe extent that it selectively
preserves and updates cul-tural traditions and relations to place,
can be part of asocial process that strengthens indigenous claims
to deeprootsto a status beyond that of another minority orlocal
interest group. My discussion of Looking BothWays makes this
guarded positive claim. The long-termpolitical and economic effects
of recent Alutiiq culturalmobilizations remain to be seen, but the
outcome willnecessarily be compromised and uneven.
In the next section I introduce the Looking Both Waysproject and
juxtapose it with other heritage exhibitionsand publications that
have responded to the changingNative situation in Alaska. Having
presented a range ofexperiences, I return to the troubling question
of howNative presence in the post-ANCSA period should
behistoricized. The subsequent section focuses on the Alu-tiiq
projects portrayal of an emergent multi-accentedhistory and
identity. In a concluding discussion I returnto the limits and
possibilities of collaborative heritagework for anthropologists,
archaeologists, and linguistsforging new relationships with Native
communities.
Native Presence: Recent Heritage Projects
contexts: looking both ways
Looking Both Ways, a sign of the changing times, is
theculmination of two decades of Native reorganization
andrenegotiated relations with academic researchers.
Twoarchaeological negotiations epitomize crucial aspects ofthe
process. In 1984 the Kodiak Area Native Association(KANA), under
the new presidency of Gordon Pullar, en-tered into a partnership
with the archaeologist RichardJordan to involve Native youth and
elders in an exca-vation in the village of Karluk. Local people
were deeplymoved by confronting carved wooden masks, stone
tools,and spruce-root baskets from their ancestral past. Onewomans
face reflected both confusion and sadness. Fi-nally speaking, she
said, I guess we really are Nativesafter all. I was always told
that we were Russians (Pullar 1992:183). The Karluk project, with
its Nativeparticipation and local dissemination of results,
wouldbecome a model for subsequent excavations in
Alutiiqcommunities (Knecht 1994). In 1987 the Kodiak
Islandcommunity of Larsen Bay petitioned for the return ofancestral
bones and artifacts collected in the 1930s bythe physical
anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka and preservedin the Smithsonian
Institutions collections. After fouryears of sometimes bitter
struggle, the materials werereturned and the skeletal remains
reburied (Bray and Kil-
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10 F current anthropology Volume 45, Number 1, February 2004
lian 1994). The Larsen Bay repatriation was a landmarkin the
wider renegotiation of relations between UnitedStates Indian
communities and scientific institutionsthat resulted in the Native
Graves Protection and Re-patriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990, and it
was a rallyingpoint for the dispersed Native peoples on and
aroundKodiak Island who were coming to see themselves ascustodians
of a distinctive Alutiiq history and culture.
During the 1990s Smithsonian policy, particularly atits Arctic
Studies Center, directed by William Fitzhugh,moved decisively in
the direction of collaboration withindigenous communities. KANA,
formed in 1966 duringthe period of land-claims activism, had
already added acultural heritage program animated by the
archaeologistRichard Knecht. This initiative would develop during
the1990s into the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Re-pository,
first directed by Knecht and now by the Alutiiqanthropologist and
activist Sven Haakanson Jr. By theend of the decade the museum had
moved into a newfacility in Kodiak, built with Exxon Valdez
oil-spill com-pensation funding. It has expanded rapidly and now
sus-tains a full range of educational, community archae-ology,
arts, and curatorial programs.9 Its board ofdirectors is composed
of representatives from KANA andfrom eight Alutiiq village
corporations, and it sponsorsprojects throughout the Kodiak Island
area. While themuseum is Native-centered, its staff represents
diverseheritages and works to reach the very mixed current
pop-ulation of Kodiak Island: Alutiit, U.S. Americans, Fili-pinos,
Pacific Islanders, Central Americans.
The Alutiiq Museum board hesitated before agreeingto cosponsor
Looking Both Ways. Memories of the Lar-sen Bay repatriation were
fresh and suspicion of theSmithsonian still strong. Aron Crowell,
director of theAlaska office of the Arctic Studies Center, with
helpfrom museum staff, eventually secured support from theboard
members, who recognized that a well-funded trav-eling show on
Alutiiq heritage was a chance to putAlutiiq on the map. For the
Smithsonian, collaborationwith the museum was critical to the
projects success.Local networks from more than a decade of
KANA-spon-sored heritage work could be activated, two crucial
el-ders planning sessions could be organized, and an ap-propriate
Native venue would be available. At theopening, four generations of
an Alutiiq family cut theribbon, and visitors who had traveled
considerable dis-tances to attend were met by a team of
well-preparedyouth docents who had acquired specialized knowledgeof
specific parts of the exhibition. Speeches, a RussianOrthodox
blessing, traditional dancers, and a banquetmade the opening a
ceremony and a celebration (see Alu-tiiq Museum Bulletin 7[1]).
The exhibition was built around artifacts lent by
theSmithsonian, most of them collected by William J.Fisher, a
German-born naturalist and fur trader, duringthe last two decades
of the nineteenth century. Masks,clothing, and items of daily and
ceremonial life were
9. See the Alutiiq Museum web site for a description of its
diverseprojects: www.alutiiqmuseum.com.
exhibited, along with prehistoric and historic specimensfrom the
Alutiiq Museums archaeological repository.While the presentation
was strongly historical, enlargedcolor pictures of individuals
(drying salmon, picking ber-ries), video recordings, and images of
contemporary vil-lages reminded viewers of the present
momentofwhose heritage this was. The exhibition themesOurAncestors,
Our History, Our Way of Living, OurBeliefs, and Our Familysustained
a focus on com-munity. The old objects, returning after a century
andstill linked with specific places and people, provokedemotional
reactionssadness, recognition, gratitude,kinship. Texts
accompanying the artifacts included bothscholarly
contextualizations and quotes from elders re-corded at planning
meetings.
Works of traditional art, old and new, were juxtaposed.A
breathtaking skin hat once worn by shamans andwhalers, collected on
the Alaska Peninsula in 1883, hadbeen embroidered with caribou
hair, yarn, and strips ofthin painted skin (probably esophagus),
and further em-bellished with puffs of ermine and sea otter fur
(Crowelland Laktonen 2001:169). The centrality of human-ani-mal
relations was artfully, sensuously manifested inmany of the
objects. Perhaps the most stunning objectwas a ground-squirrel
parka sewn in 1999 by Susan Mal-utin and Grace Harrod of Kodiak
Island after studyingan 1883 example in the Fisher collection in
Washington,D.C. It is made from ground squirrel pelts and
accentedwith strips of white ermine along the seams. Mink andwhite
caribou fur are used on the chest and sleeves. Thetassels are of
dyed skin, sea otter fur, and red cloth withermine puffs (Crowell
and Luhrmann 2001:47). The ex-hibition also included an example of
the decorated Rus-sian Orthodox Christmas star that is paraded from
houseto house during midwinter rituals of visiting and giftexchange
made for the exhibition by students at St. In-nocents Academy in
Kodiak. (A color photo of the youngmen, grinning and looking very
Russian, accompaniedthe 3-foot star.) A mask carved by Jerry
Laktonen, nowa successful Native artist, commemorated the
ExxonValdez disaster that had forced him to quit commercialfishing
and take up sculpture (see www.whaledreams.com/laktonen.htm).
The diverse mix of objects, texts, and images gatheredfor the
exhibition signified a complex Alutiiq heritageand identity.
Cultural continuity through change wasmanifested by juxtaposing
ancient, historical, and con-temporary objects and images. The
explicit messageswere straightforwardhistorically descriptive,
evoca-tive, and celebratory. The exhibitions catalogue
offersconsiderably more diversity of perspective in its ac-counts
of cultural and historical process. Extensive andbeautifully
produced, it contains hundreds of historicaland contemporary
illustrations, with detailed chapterson culture, language, and
history, on archaeological re-search results and collaborations, on
contemporary iden-tity and subsistence practices, on spiritual life
and reli-gious traditions, on elders recollections and hopes.
Thevolumes dedication quotes Mary Peterson, a Kodiak Is-
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clifford Looking Several Ways F 11
land elder: To all the new generations. They will learnfrom this
and keep it going.
The cataloguethe term hardly captures the booksscopeexplores a
wide range of old and new places,crafts, and social practices.
Heritage is a path to the fu-ture.10 The late Sven Haakanson Sr., a
Kodiak Island el-der, inspired the projects title: Youve got to
look backand find out the past, and then you go forward. Haak-anson
was speaking at an elders planning conferenceheld in 1997, when men
and women from the Alutiiqculture area gathered to talk about the
old days and waysforward: childhood experiences in the 1920s,
parents andgrandparents, subsistence hunting and fishing,
religionand social values, elements of a transformed, transform-ing
way of life. The catalogue contains many excerptsfrom this meeting,
as well as testimony from Alutiiqactivists, community leaders, and
scholars. Diverse Na-tive voices are juxtaposed with contributions
from non-Native scholars.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Looking BothWays is its
multivocality. In the very first pages we en-counter the names of
51 elders who participated in theexhibition or are quoted in the
book. The final chapteris composed of nine extended statements. The
remainingsections are written/assembled by scholars who haveworked
closely with local communities. One of the vol-umes editors, the
Native activist and educator GordonPullar, contributes an
illuminating chapter entitledContemporary Alutiiq Identity (2001).
Virtually everypage juxtaposes quotations, images, and short
essays.The textual ensemble makes space for some 40 individ-ual
authorsNative and non-Native writers of free-standing essays or
sources of extended testimonies. Quo-tations from individual elders
are scattered throughout.No one holds the floor for very long, and
the experienceof reading is one of constantly shifting modes of
atten-tion, encountering specific rhetorics, voices, images,
andstories, and shuttling between the archaeological past,personal
memories, and present projects.
In the midst of a chapter called SugucihpetOurWay of Living
(Crowell and Laktonen 2001), a pagebegins: Fishing sets the pace of
the subsistence year. Insummer, five varieties of salmon gather in
the bays orascend rivers to spawn. The following page: I remem-ber
in the summertime my dad would wake my sistersand me up early to go
fishing. The first tells us aboutkinds of fish and how they are
dried, smoked, andcanned. The second recalls the chore of cleaning
thecatch while being swarmed by vicious flies (pp.
17678).Interspersed illustrations show (1) contemporary com-mercial
fishermen netting salmon, (2) IqsakHalibuthook, from about 1899,
and (3) an ivory lure in the shapeof a fish, ca. a.d. 6001000,
found in an archaeologicalsite on Kodiak Island. In Looking Both
Ways, Aron
10. In Pacific Island contexts tradition (kastom) is often
articulatedwith development. On this complex temporality, a
traditionalanticipation of the future, see Wagner (1979), other
versions ap-pear in Sahlins (2000:419) and Kame eleihiwa
(1992:2223). Tilley(1997) offers a provocative Melanesian case of
what Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998) calls the second life of
heritage.
Crowell writes, the commitment has been to diversityof
perspective, depth of inquiry, and genuine collabora-tion among
scholars, Elders, and communities (2001:13). The books five pages
of acknowledgments, men-tioning many institutions and an enormous
number ofindividuals, are integral to its message. But if the
generalstrategy is inclusive, it is not synthetic. Differences
ofperspective are registered and allowed to coexist. Thevolumes
three editors represent the range of stakehold-ers in the
project.
Crowell, director of the Alaska office of the Smith-sonians
Arctic Studies Center, came to the Looking BothWays project from
prior work in the archaeology andpostcontact history of the region
(e.g., Crowell 1992,1997) and is currently pursuing collaborative
archaeologywith Alutiiq communities on the Kenai Peninsula.
Asproject director he arranged the loan of artifacts, raisedgrant
money, and served as primary orchestrator/nego-tiator of the
exhibition and the text. He is the author orcoauthor of four
chapters in the catalogue. Crowells abil-ity to work both as a
Smithsonian insider and as a long-term field researcher enmeshed in
local collaborationsand reciprocities was instrumental in
facilitating theprojects coalition of diverse interests.
Gordon Pullar has been a leader in Alutiiq heritageprojects
since the early 1980s, and it was his early con-versations with
William Fitzhugh of the Smithsonian,followed by Crowells
presentation of artifact photos toa 1988 conference on Kodiak
Island, that led to concreteplans for bringing the old Alutiiq
objects to Alaska. Pul-lar chaired the Looking Both Ways advisory
committeeand served as political liaison to various groups and
or-ganizations. He and other Alutiiq activists and elderswhose
ideas influenced the project were much more thanNative consultants
recruited after the basic vision wasin place; they were active from
the beginning in an evolv-ing coalition.
The archaeologist Amy Steffian, currently deputy di-rector of
the Alutiiq Museum, works on collaborativeexcavations with
communities on Kodiak Island. In thewake of the Larsen Bay
repatriation struggle, Steffianrequested and received tribal
permission to resume studyof the Larsen Bay sites. Her experience
established thatintense local suspicion of archaeology and
anthropologydid not preclude research collaborations in
situationswhere trust could be established. Moreover, the fact
thatthe Alutiiq Museum is an archaeological repository
in-stitutionalizes the idea that excavated heritage can bemade
available for study while remaining under localcontrol. Along with
other museum staff members andcommunity supporters, Steffian helped
insure that Look-ing Both Ways would be a broadly based gathering
ofpeople as well as an impressive collection of artifacts.
The projects success depended on bringing togetherNative
authorities, skilled professionals, and institu-tional sponsors.
Primary financial donors included theSmithsonian Institution, the
National Endowment forthe Humanities, Koniag Inc., the Alutiiq
Heritage Foun-dation, the Anchorage Museum of History and Art,
andPhillips Alaska. Additional support was provided by an
-
12 F current anthropology Volume 45, Number 1, February 2004
impressive cross-section of Alaska institutions, publicand
private, and nearly two dozen Native regional andvillage
corporations. As I have suggested, the projectscollaborative
expression of Alutiiq heritage and iden-tity reflects an open-ended
moment of cultural emer-gence, weaving together discussions,
struggles, and ac-commodations sustained over more than two decades
ina shifting context of power. A look at several precursorsand
allied projects may provide a better sense of thatcontexta dynamic
conjuncture that, while locally par-ticular, has analogues
elsewhere.11
precursors: crossroads and agayuliyararput
In 1988 Fitzhugh and Crowell edited the major
Russian-American-Canadian collaboration Crossroads of Conti-nents:
Cultures of Siberia and Alaska. Prehistory, his-tory, anthropology,
archaeology, and art criticism cametogether in a richly documented
and illustrated accountof the transnational world of Beringia.
Small Siberian andAlaskan Native groups were shown to be part of a
larger,dynamic indigenous region with a deep history of
inter-connection and crossing that had been obscured by na-tional
projects and cold war partitioning. The projectbrought together for
the first time many powerful andevocative artifacts collected in
the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries and preserved in
Washington, D.C., St.Petersburg, New York, and Ottawa. The effect
was re-velatory not simply for students of cultural flows but
forNative Alaskans, who rediscovered lost aspects of theirtribal
histories and a deep transnational context for newindigenous
alliances. In Looking Both Ways, Ruth Al-ice Olsen Dawson, chair of
the Alutiiq Heritage Foun-dation, recalls her encounter with the
Crossroads exhi-bition at its Alaskan venue, the Anchorage Museum
ofHistory and Art (2001:89):
For the first time we saw snow-falling parkasmade out of bird
skins and decorated with puffinsbeaks. We saw ceremonial masks,
regalia, baskets,rattles, pictures, and drawings. The impact for
mewas overwhelming. The exhibit sparked the start ofthe first
Native dance group in Kodiak in years. Andinstead of wearing
European calicos, we wore snow-falling parkas, shook puffin-beak
rattles, and worebeaded head-dresses. It was a revelation.
There are no voices like Dawsons in Crossroads ofContinents, and
this may be the volumes most strikingdifference from Looking Both
Ways. All the contributorsto the earlier collection are non-Native
academics, andthe contemporary lives of Koryak, Chukchi,
Yupik,Aleut, Tlingit, and others appear only at the very end intwo
surveys of current history in Russia and Alaska.Named individuals
emerge in a brief final section on 18
11. Quick equivalences are risky, however, and the devil is in
the(historical) detailscolonial, post-, and neocolonial. A more
sys-tematic comparison of Alaskan Native identity politics with
sim-ilar phenomena elsewhere would require work at a different
scalefrom that of this essay.
Alaskan Native artists. There are no photographs of liv-ing
people, whereas in Looking Both Ways they areeverywhere, mixed with
historical photos and MikhailTikhanovs fabulous
early-nineteenth-century portraits(prominent in both volumes).
Seven years after Cross-roads opened, Fitzhugh and Valerie
Chaussonnet of theArctic Studies Center, recognizing the original
exhibi-tions limited audience, designed a smaller, less cum-bersome
version for travel to local communities on bothsides of the Bering
Strait (Chaussonnet 1995). In thisproject images of contemporary
populations are featured,along with writings and quotations by
indigenousauthorities.
In 1996 a major exhibition entitled Agayuliyararput(Our Way of
Making Prayer) opened in the heart ofYupik countryToksook Bay,
Nelson Island. In its sub-sequent travel to the regional center,
Bethel, and thento Anchorage, New York, Washington, D.C., and
Seattle,the exhibition of Yupik masks reversed the itinerary
ofCrossroads, starting in venues accessible to indigenouspeople and
moving to more distant urban centers.Masks acquired by U.S. and
European museums duringthe late-nineteenth-century frenzy of
salvage collect-ing now traveled back to their places of origin.
AnnFienup-Riordan, an anthropologist whose long-termfieldwork on
Nelson Island has been part of oral-historyprojects sponsored by
Yupik authorities, conceived theexhibition in dialogue with elders.
Its success dependedboth on this local commitment and on the
cooperationof museum professionals in Alaska and in Washington,New
York, Seattle, and Berlin. The exhibition catalogue,The Living
Tradition of Yupik Masks: Agayuliyararput(Our Way of Making Prayer)
(Fienup-Riordan 1996), is amodel of richly documented collaborative
scholarshipand stunning visual presentation. While the
anthropol-ogist appears as its author, large sections of the text
arestrongly multivocal, built around quotations from eldersrecorded
memories and interpretations of the masks.
In Hunting Tradition in a Changing World, Fienup-Riordan (2000)
reflects on her changing relations withYupik communities over the
years. She traces an evo-lution from assuming scholarly
independence towardsomething more like alliance anthropology and
towardtextual forms that manifest the collaborative nature ofthe
work.12 Hunting Tradition moves beyond systematicquotation to
intersperse among its essays seven free-standing texts written by
Yupiit. Along with clusteredaccounts of Yupik Christianity and
extended urban-ruralnetworks, Fienup-Riordan provides an
illuminating anal-ysis of the mask exhibitions origins and
especially of itssignificance in different venues (pp. 20951). The
namechosen by the Yupik planning committee, Agayuliyar-arput, fused
old and new meanings. In the pre-Christianpast agayu referred to
performances honoring animals or
12. It is arguable that her choice to remain unaffiliated with
anyuniversity or governmental institution has given her the
flexibilityto pioneer collaborative styles of work, engaging in
relations andprojects which might have seemed unprofessional before
theybecame, under pressure, the norm.
-
clifford Looking Several Ways F 13
persons who were providers, and it has since taken onthe
Christian sense of praying. Our Way of MakingPrayer thus
articulates a process of historical transla-tion. (It was not
guaranteed that priests and conservativeChristians in the local
communities would approve ofthe paganism associated with the
renewed enthusiasmfor mask making and dancing. In fact they did,
with en-thusiasm.13) Fienup-Riordan describes how, as the
exhi-bition traveled beyond Yupik communities, the
nameAgayuliyararput, rich in local significance, diminishedin
prominence, becoming a subtitle.
In Toksook Bay and Bethel the most important mean-ings of the
masks centered on who had made them andwhere they were from. Place
(rather than theme or style)was the organizing principle determined
by the localsteering committee. It was also decided that Yupik
lan-guage had to appear prominently in the exhibitionsname and in
the elders interpretations, painstakinglytranscribed and translated
by Marie Meade, a Yupik-language specialist, teacher, and
traditional dancer (seeMeade 2000). These vernacular materials were
featuredin a specially printed bilingual catalogue that precededthe
lavishly illustrated English-language version. Avail-able at
Toksook Bay and Bethel, the Yupik cataloguesold out quickly and was
adopted in school curriculateaching local culture and history.14
The exhibition open-ing coincided with an already established dance
festival,a gathering of hundreds of people flown in from
remotevillages by light aircraft, and thus it became part of
anongoing tradition of midwinter gatherings.
In Anchorage, Alaskas largest urban center, where sig-nificant
Native communities live more or less perma-nently, the masks were
seen as part of a wider pan-Alas-kan indigenous heritage. In New
York, at the NationalMuseum of the American Indian, the masks were
con-textualized less in terms of local Alaskan practices thanas
contributions to great Native American art. In Wash-ington, D.C.,
and Seattle, formalist, high art presen-tations predominated.
Fienup-Riordan portrays thesecontexts not as distortions but rather
as aspects of a po-tential range of Yupik meanings in the late
twentiethcentury. The centering of the exhibitionits planningand
opening in Toksook Bayreflects a crucial priorityfor a renewed
politics of indigenous authenticity. It isnot, however, the sole
priority, and the local is actively
13. The Oregon Society of Jesus web site
(http.www.nwjesuits.org/ignati/nwjf9508.htm) proudly recounts Fr.
Rene Astrucs role inlifting the Catholic Churchs ban on Yupik
dancing and encour-aging its revival. The dancing priest was an
active agent in thesocial and cultural rearticulations that made
Agayuliyararputpossible.14. An interesting contrast is provided by
Julie Cruikshanks (1998:16) account of Athabaskan elders insistence
that their recordedstories and memories be published in English:
What emerged . . .was a strong commitment to extend communication
in whateverforms possible, writing being one way among many. There
was alsooptimismprobably a result of a history of self-confident
multi-lingualismthat English is just one more Native language, in
factthe dominant Native language at the end of the century.
TheYupik and Athabaskan linguistic situations differ, and notions
ofcultural authenticity need to be grounded in specific limits
andpossibilities of translation and communication.
defined and redefined in relationships with a variety ofoutsides
and scales of belonging. A worldwide web,in Fienup-Riordans
provocative expression (2000:15182), of Yupik kinship and culture
obliges us to con-sider a range of overlapping performative
contexts, tac-tical articulations, and translations: rural/urban,
oral/literate, family/corporate, Alaskan/international.
Hunting Tradition concludes with a recent visit to theBerlin
Museum fur Volkerkunde by a group of Yupikelders accompanied by the
anthropologist (Fienup-Rior-dan 2000:25270). The discussions there
were governedby Yupik protocols and agendas. The goal was not
thereturn of traditional artifacts preserved in Germany.
Thevisitors expressed gratitude for the museums curator-ship, since
in the old days it was customary to destroymasks after use. They
were primarily interested in thereturn of important stories and
knowledge renewedthrough the encounter with the old masks, spears,
andbows. What mattered was not the reified objects butwhat they
could communicate for a Yupik future. Un-derstood in this
historical frame, museums, as the elderPaul John put it, were part
of Gods plan.
The Living Tradition of Yupik Masks (Fienup-Riordan1996) looks
both ways: to a recollected past and to adynamic
present-becoming-future. The catalogue por-trays Yupik cultural
production enmeshed in specificcontact histories: colonial (Russian
and American) andnow post-/neocolonial (indigenous resurgence).
Thetranslated renditions of the masks meanings and usesare not
located solely or even primarily in traditional(pre-1900) contexts.
The catalogue emphasizes contacthistories of collecting (including
aesthetic appropriationof the dramatic masks by the surrealists),
periods of mis-sionary suppression, and recent movements of revival
inCatholic, Orthodox, and Moravian communities. Theperspectives of
different generations on rearticulated cur-rents of spirituality
and aesthetics are kept in view. Thecollaborative genesis of the
exhibition and its local sig-nificance are stressed from the outset
in a chapter titledOur Way of Making an Exhibit.15
It is instructive to compare The Living Tradition ofYupik Masks
with an earlier Smithsonian-sponsored cat-alogue and exhibition
devoted to similar objects and his-tories from the same region.
Inua: Spirit World of theBering Sea Eskimo, by William Fitzhugh and
Susan Kap-lan (1982), was an innovative project for its time.
Likethe later exhibition, it returned objects held in Wash-ington
museums to Alaskan venues, though not to Na-tive homelands. Its
focus was a collection of artifactsacquired in the late 1870s by
Edward William Nelson inwestern Alaska. The narrow time period,
contextualizedin a broad historical/archaeological/natural frame,
gavethe exhibition a temporal/social specificity that sepa-rated it
from more common cultural or primitive artapproaches. A final
section of the catalogue, Art inTransformation, provided a glimpse
of later develop-
15. Fienup-Riordans deepening collaborative work will be
mani-fested in two forthcoming publications (2004a, b) the latter
com-plemented by a bilingual version for local use.
-
14 F current anthropology Volume 45, Number 1, February 2004
ments: the discovery of representational ivory carvingand the
emergence of individual Eskimo artists whowould develop new graphic
styles and carving traditionsfor an expanding art market. Except
for these last pages,however, contemporary populations were absent
fromthe book. An Eskimo voiceunattributed quotationsfrom recorded
mythsappeared as a kind of chorus.
If Inua seems dated today, this is a comment less onits
substantive achievements, which remain considera-ble, than on
rapidly changing times, identifications, andpower relations. The
lack of visible participation byYupit and Inupiat in the exhibition
process contrastswith the explicit collaborations described by
Crowell andFienup-Riordan. Moreover, the earlier exhibitions
focuson the Bering Sea Eskimo, including under this rubricboth
Yupik and Inupiaq, would today be ruled out bythe disaggregation of
Eskimos into Inuit, Inupiat, Yu-piit, and Alutiit, an outcome of
Alaskan and CanadianNative identity politics during the 1980s and
90s. Thisprocess was significantly (though not solely) driven bythe
struggles surrounding ANCSA, whose politics of Na-tive regrouping
were making headway at the time Inuawas produced. Subsequent
decades would see many ar-ticulations of Fienup-Riordans conscious
culture. TheNative corporations created after 1971 offered new
lead-ership roles and sources of funding for
cultural/heritageprojects such as the Alutiiq Museum, other
cultural cen-ters, and education and language initiatives. Local,
re-gional, and international dance/art/storytelling
festivals,Native studies programs in universities (sometimes
in-cluding elders in residence), Native participation inresource
management, teacher training programs, thegrowth of indigenous art
markets, and cultural tourismall these contributed to a sharply
increased Native pres-ence in Alaska public culture.
A full historicalpolitical, social, economic, and
cul-turalaccount of the increased Native presence and her-itage
activity in Alaska after the 1970s is beyond mypresent compass.
However, a few reflections on howthese movements are related to the
social and economiccontexts created by ANCSA may be useful. The
relationsare intimate, partial, and overdetermined. Recent
studiesargue that the Native corporate structure through whichthe
U.S. Congress settled aboriginal land claims hashad ambiguous and
in some cases disastrous conse-quences. Ramona Ellen Skinners
survey Alaska NativePolicy in the Twentieth Century (1997) shows
how a lawintended to foster indigenous self-determination
becamerecognized as a recipe for eventual termination,
limitingNative status to those born before 1971 and
ultimatelyallowing unfettered sales of tribal assets. Amendmentsto
the law attempting to correct its temporal limit oncorporate
participation and slowing the transfer of stockto non-Natives have
only partially dealt with its fun-damental problems. ANCSA, from
this perspective, is apact with the devil of capitalism. By making
Native as-sets indistinguishable from other private property,
thelaw has significantly expanded participation in the Alas-kan and
international economy. But this developmentcomes at the cost of
extinguishing aboriginal title to
land, creating Native capitalist elites, and forcing
short-sighted, profit-motivated decisions about resource
man-agement. Kirk Dombrowskis recent discussions (2001,2002) are
particularly informative on these effects, par-ticularly in the
timber-rich south.
Overall, the economic situation of Alaskas Native cor-porations
is quite uneven, and ANCSAs articulation withthe new identity
politics has taken different forms in dif-ferent Native contexts,
depending on resource wealth, ex-tractive pressures from powerful
corporations, and degreeof urbanization and acculturation. It is
obviously impor-tant to distinguish the community-based heritage
edu-cation and revival practiced by institutions like the Alu-tiiq
Museum, the midwinter Orthodox starringceremonies and Yupik dance
festivals in Toksook Bay,pan-Alaskan institutions like the Alaska
Native HeritageCenter, and the Indian villages maintained for
cruise-shiptourists along the South Alaska Inland Passage. In
eachcase, one needs to ask what old and new cultural and
socialelements are being articulated, what audiences are
beingaddressed by specific performances, and what are the
so-cial/linguistic relations and tradeoffs of translation.
Suchquestions are critical for a nonreductive understanding ofa
complex historical conjuncture.
Native Alaska is caught up in a local/global constel-lation of
forces that can be roughly characterized as
post-1960s/neoindigenous and corporate/multicultural. Her-itage
projects reweave diverse social and culturalfiliations in ways that
are aligned by this conjuncturewhile also exceeding it. Multiple
historical projects andpossible futures are active. In Dombrowskis
ethnograph-ically nuanced analysis (2001) and the related but
morefunctionalist account of Kodiak capitalism by ArthurMason
(2002), cultural politics appears as largely a matterof corporate
ideology, commodified tribal symbols, andtourist spectacles: an
Alaskan identity industry. In thisperspective, which brings Native
class and status differ-ences into view, the state and corporate
capitalism ul-timately call the shots. I would argue for another
viewof determination in which capitalism and state powerdo not
produce indigenous identities, not at least inany global or
functional way, but set limits and exertpressures (Williams
1977:8389). Struggles over indige-nous practice occur, as
Dombrowski rightly puts it,within and against Western institutions
and hege-monic ideas such as culture.
All of the heritage work discussed here is connectedto
capitalism in variously configured relations of depen-dency,
interpellation, domination, and resistance. AsMarx said, people
make history but not in conditions oftheir choosing. This
observation has always been bru-tally relevant to Native peoples
experiences of conquest,resistance, and survival. Yet Marx also
affirmed that, inconditions not of their choosing, people do make
history.The unexpected resurgence of Native, First Nations,
Ab-original, etc., societies in recent decades confirms thepoint.
And while indigenous heritage and identity move-ments have indeed
expanded dramatically during the re-cent heyday of corporate
liberalism, this conjuncturedoes not exhaust their historicity.
Native cultural poli-
-
clifford Looking Several Ways F 15
tics builds connections extending before and potentiallyafter
the current moment. I am inclined to see thepraxis of indigenism16
in Gramscian termsas a con-tingent work of positional struggle,
articulation, andalliance.
interactions: the alaska native heritagecenter
The Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage is aprominent
sign of the expanding Native presence inAlaska. Its heritage work
at several scales and its mul-tiple audiences, community ties, and
corporate connec-tions contrast and overlap with the Yupik and
Alutiiqexhibitions. Opened in 1999 as a gathering place forall
Alaska Native groups, the Center functions as a siteof cultural
exchange, celebration, and education. EntirelyNative-run and not
dependent on academic experts, itdraws its funds from a broad range
of sourcestribal,corporate, and touristic. All of its programs are
approvedby a college of elders representing the principal
Nativeregions. Dialogue among indigenous peoples is pro-moted, and
communication with visitors, a high priority,is on Native terms.
The Center sometimes enters intocontracts with non-Native scholars
and facilitates col-laborative projects. For example, its staff
worked withthe Smithsonians Arctic Studies Center to produce
apedagogical video and web site for Looking Both Ways.Housed in a
new complex on the outskirts of Anchorage,the Center maintains
links with local and regional Na-tive authorities while cultivating
partnerships with abroad range of sponsors.
The Alaska Native Heritage Center is not a museumfocused on a
collection but something more like a per-formance space, featuring
face-to-face encounters.Everything is designed to facilitate
conversations be-tween different tribal Alaskans and between
Natives andnon-Natives. At the door, visitors are personally
greeted.The central space is a stage where every hour dancing
orstorytelling is presented. In the Hall of Cultures, visitorsare
encouraged to talk with Native artists and traditionbearers17 about
their work. All of the artifacts on displayare newly made
traditional piecesmasks, drums, kay-aks, parkas, boots, button
blankets, headgear. Outside,
16. The phrase is Dombrowkis (2002). My perspective is, with
dif-ferences of emphasis, consistent with the analytic approach to
con-temporary indigenism that he and Gerald Sider project for
theirnew book series Fourth World Rising (see Dombrowski 2001).17.
The public status of tradition bearer is a relatively
recentdevelopment in North American indigenous heritage politics.
Itdenotes individuals of deep cultural experience who are not
(yet)elders. The latter designation depends on traditional usage
and localconsensuswhich may, of course, include disagreement.
Tradition-bearer status is more closely linked with the politics of
heritage,and it can include people of more or less mixed background
whoin recent decades have returned to Native tradition,
reactivatingold crafts, languages, stories, and lifeways. It thus
denotes an activecommitment to transmitting community values and
knowledgeand recognizes the translation and education functions of
individ-uals mediating between (deeply knowledgeable) elders and
(rela-tively ignorant) youth. Its emergence is evidence that
heritage ac-tivism extends beyond the goal of simply salvaging
endangered lore.
around an artificial lake, five houses represent the
pastlifeways of Alaskas principal indigenous regions. Every-where,
young Native men and women act as hosts andinterpreters, actively
engaging visitors. During the sum-mer months, tourists visit in
large numbers, includingregular busloads of cruise-ship passengersa
lucrativemarket that the Center has successfully pursued.
Work-shops and gatherings support its yearly themes (for ex-ample,
boat-building, health and Native medicines). Inwinter, school
visits, art demonstrations, and workshopsare organized (Exxon Mobil
master artist classes, inwhich one can learn to make Tsimshian hand
drums,Alutiiq beaded headdresses, Aleut model kayaks, andother
emblematic Native artifacts). The Center also ar-ranges cultural
awareness workshops funded by WellsFargo Bank and adapted to the
needs of diverse clientssuch as the Girl Scouts, the FBI, the army
and the airforce, Covenant House, and various government
agen-cies.18
Like most Native heritage projects, the Center ad-dresses
diverse audienceslocal, regional, state, and in-ternational. The
performances, alliances, and transla-tions vary according to the
context. For tourists and othervisitors with limited time, the
Center provides a clearvision of Alaska Native presence and
diversity. Color-coded maps and labels identify five principal
Native cul-tures/regionsAthabascan Yupik/Cupik, Inupiaq/St.Lawrence
Island Yupik, Eyak/Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian,and Aleut/Alutiiqeach
endowed with a stylized imageor logo. The five traditional house
types reinforce thetaxonomy. A message of current vitality is
reinforced byface-to-face contacts, especially with young people.
ForAlaskans of various backgrounds, specialized perform-ances and
educational events offer more sustained en-counters with Native
artists and tradition bearers. Theagenda of gathering and cultural
communication specif-ically addresses Native people of all ages
from many partsof Alaska who are employed at the Center or attend
itsevents. Its work thus contributes to a loosely articulatedNative
Alaskan identification following from the wide-spread post-1960s
indigenous revival movements and thedifficult but largely
successful alliances leading to theANCSA land settlement.
Native resurgence, a complex process of continuitythrough
transformation, involves articulation (culturaland political
alliance), performance (forms of display fordifferent publics), and
translation (partial communi-cation and dialogue across cultural
and generational di-vides). All are clearly visible in a Center
publication thatdocuments and celebrates one of its annual themes
andsummer workshops: Qayaqs and Canoes: Native Waysof Knowing
(Steinbright and Mishler 2001). Teams ofmaster builders and
apprentices gathered at theCenter over a period of five months to
construct eighttraditional boats: two Athabascan birch-bark
canoes,four styles of kayak (Aleut, Alutiiq, and two CentralYupik),
a Northwest Coast dugout canoe, and a Bering
18. The Center web site (www.alaskaNative.net) provides
detailson programs and sponsors.
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16 F current anthropology Volume 45, Number 1, February 2004
Straits open skin boat. Only the last-mentioned boat typeis
still actively made and used; the others have enteredthe relatively
new category of what might be called her-itage objectsspecially
valued material sites of remem-brance and communication. (Such
traditional objectscan, of course, be recently made as long as
their con-nection to past models is recognizably
authenticforexample, the squirrel parka from Looking Both
Waysmentioned above.) In the primarily first-person accountsof boat
building, elders, heritage activists, youth, andother participants
in the workshop offer perspectives onkeeping the skills alive in
changing times.
A range of Native ways of knowing come togetherin Qayaqs and
Canoes: oral transmission from experi-enced elders, library and
museum research by Native andnon-Native builders, aspirations to
identity by youngerapprentices. In a variety of team contexts,
young familymembers learn from older master builders; men
learnseal-skin stitching (a traditional womans task);
womenparticipate in kayak framing (formerly a mans job); anAleut
activist of mixed heritage (an Anchorage policedetective who has
rediscovered his Native past throughkayak research and
construction) teaches the art to ayoung man of Inupiaq background
and to a young Alutiiqwoman from Kodiak Island; an 88-year-old
Athabaskanelder works in close collaboration with an
anthropologydoctoral student (originally from North Dakota)
record-ing traditional tools and techniques; an Alutiiq activistand
tradition bearer learns kayak construction from ayoung New
Englander who, through research and dedi-cated practice, has become
expert in the craft, and theyboth find out about waterproof
stitching from a womanof Cupik ancestry now living on Kodiak
Island; theAleut and Alutiiq groups observe the Yupik teams whoare
guided by more knowledgeable elders; extended net-works are
activated (Got a call from my dad in Chigniksaying he had a good
tip for me on dehairing skins).
Participants recall old stories of travel and contactamong
different Alaskan populations, and they see theirinterethnic
encounters at the Center as renewing thistradition. There are
repeated references to a sense of ex-panded Native affiliations,
the linking of different, newlyrelated heritages. Alutiiq
participants recall listening tospoken Yupik and getting the gist.
Elders find ways totranslate knowledge rooted in specific local
hunting andgathering practices for younger apprentices raised
inmore urban conditions. The performative nature of con-temporary
heritage projects is visible across a range ofoccasions: the public
accomplishment of painstakingcrafts and the final, exuberant
celebrations, dramaticlaunchings on Kachemak Bay with traditional
dancers,Orthodox prayers, formal speeches.
Different contexts of performancethe technicaldemonstrations and
talk that pervaded the workshop, theintertribal exchanges, the
public displays and celebra-tions, the circulation of an evocative,
elegantly illus-trated bookactivate different audiences and
situationsof translation. In their commentaries, the
participantsrecognize that tradition is being renegotiated for
newsituations. Young women express satisfaction at doing
work formerly restricted to men. Elders adjudicate whatpractices
are bound by rules and what can be pragmat-ically altered. In an
atmosphere of serious fun, peoplework within while pushing the
limits of tradition. GraceHarrod, who taught the Alutiiq team
waterproof stitch-ing, offers a humorous and far-reaching anecdote
(Stein-bright and Mishler 2001:87):
I called my mom on the phone in Mekoryuk. I said,Mom, Im going
to sew a kayak. Over the phoneshe just hollered, You dont know how.
So, mydad, Peter Smith, got on the phone, and I said, Dad,Im going
to sew a kayak. He said, Its going tosink in Eskimo. He started
laughing. I said, Dad,its going to be in a museum. Theyre going to
put itin a museum when Im done with it. He said, Goahead, sew it.
It wont sink in a museum.
One might be inclined to interpret this kayak as atraditional
object belonging to a nostalgic, postmodernculturea thing with
meaning only as a specimen anda work of art, artificially separated
from the currents ofhistorical change (thus unsinkable, in its
museum).But this would privilege the authenticity of objects
overthe social processes of transmitting and transformingknowledges
and relationships. It would miss the multi-accented,
intergenerational work of articulation, perfor-mance, and
translation that goes into the kayaks pro-duction and
interpretation. Similarly complex, open-ended social processes are
at work in the identity for-mations of those who have recently come
to be knownas Alutiiq.
Emergence and Articulation
Looking Both Ways documents an identity rearticulatedin new
circumstances, a historical process of emergence.The name Alutiiq
does not appear in Crossroads ofContinents, where the people south
of the Yupik areprimarily described as Pacific Eskimo, and even in
hermost recent book Fienup-Riordan (2000:9) writes of alarger
family of Inuit cultures, extending from PrinceWilliam Sound on the
Pacific Coast of Alaska . . . intoLabrador and Greenland.
Linguistic form here overridesdifferences of subsistence, history,
and environment. Butthe former Pacific Eskimo now reject
identificationwith the Inuit/Inupiaq/Yupik cultural family.
Another long-standing term for the people representedin Looking
Both Ways is Aleut. (Alutiiq was, in fact,an adaptation of the
Russian Aleuty in the sound sys-tem of Sugstun.) A Russian misnomer
for the chain is-landers (who generally now prefer to be called
Unangan),Aleut, in its expanded usage, registers common his-torical
experiences (Russian colonization, exploitation,massacres,
religious conversion, intermarriage) as wellas shared maritime
hunting economy and coastal sub-sistence. Linguistically, however,
the chain islanders andpeople of Kodiak differ markedly, and while
cultural andkinship ties are still significant, there has been a
strong
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clifford Looking Several Ways F 17
recent tendency to distinguish Aleut from Alutiiq.Tactical name
changesreflecting new articulations ofresistance, separation,
community affiliation, and tribalgovernanceare familiar and,
indeed, necessary aspectsof decolonizing indigenous politics.
Looking Both Ways makes serious attempts not tofreeze these
processes by objectifying Alutiiqness. Itsstrong archaeological and
historical emphases keepmany tangled roots in view. For example,
early explorersplausibly related the inhabitants of Kodiak Island
toGreenland Eskimos, to Siberians, to Aleutian island-ers, and to
Indians (Athabaskans and Tlingit). In theirarchaeological,
anthropological, and historical survey ofAlutiiq culture, Aron
Crowell and Sonja Luhrmann(2001) provide evidence that at different
moments eachof these connections made sense. Later, Russian
influ-ences were strong, and the Orthodox religion would sinkdeep,
tangled Native roots. In the late 1800s Scandina-vian immigrant
fishermen influenced local practices andwere absorbed by kinship
networks. The catalogues his-torical sections offer a multivocal,
nonessentialist ac-count of a fundamentally interactive tradition.
Gather-ing together much historical and archaeological evidencethat
has been widely dispersed and never before madeaccessible to Native
communities, Crowell, Luhrmann,Steffian, and Leer attempt the
difficult task of telling acoherent Alutiiq story for the first
time without mergingpast and present into a seamless culture. Since
doc-umentary evidence, in Crowell and Luhrmanns words,is partial
and imperfect at best (p. 30), they comple-ment the written record
with Alutiiq oral narratives.
Patricia Partnow, an ethnographer who has just pub-lished Making
History: Alutiiq/Sugpiaq Life in theAlaska Peninsula (2003), is the
only contemporary non-Native cultural anthropologist represented in
the vol-ume. (Jeff Leer, a linguist who has produced Kodiak
Alu-tiiq dictionaries, pedagogical grammars, and place-namerecords,
also makes important contributions.) Partnowacknowledges her
mentor, the late elder Ignatius Kos-bruk, and many Alutiiq
teachers. Until recently sheserved as vice president of education
at the Alaska Na-tive Heritage Center. These relations indicate the
kindsof involvements that make anthropological research pos-sible
in a region where only a decade ago, as GordonPullar recalls,
anthropologists were beginning to wearout their welcome (2001:78).
Partnow reports her Alu-tiiq hosts lack of concern with definitive
origins andsharp ethnic borders. By identifying themselves as
Alu-tiiq, she writes, they were privileging one part of
theirgenetic and cultural background and underplaying
theirAthabaskan, Russian, Scandinavian, Irish, and Yupikparts
(2001:69). Alutiiq identity is a selective rearticu-lation of
diverse connections, a sense of continuity ex-pressed in elders
traditional stories, both mythic andhistorical. (Partnow appears to
confirm Julie Cruik-shanks [1998] penetrating view of Athabaskan
eldersnarratives less as records of a past than as reconnectionsof
fragmented realities and reframings of current issues.)Partnow
identifies five core elements of identity: (1) tiesto land, (2) a
shared history and continuity with the past,
(3) the Alutiiq or Sugstun language, (4) subsistence, and(5)
kinship. These are not prescriptive elements of a cul-tural
essence, a check-list of authenticity. In todays con-ditions of
social and spatial mobility it is seldom possibleto exemplify all
five points equally. Instead, people ac-centuate different parts of
their Alutiiqness at differenttimes and in different places (p.
69). Alutiiq is a work-in-progress, a way of managing diversity and
change.Each one of Partnows five elements has
undergonetransformation since the Russians and, a century later,the
Americans established colonial dominance. Thechanges continue
through the intensifying indigenousmovements of the 1960s and the
land settlements andcorporate reorganizations of the 70s and
80s.
alutiiq tides and currents
There is nothing ready-made about Alutiiqness in thechapter on
contemporary Alutiiq identity written/as-sembled by Gordon Pullar.
He begins by invoking hismother, who resolutely identified herself
as Russianeven though her nearest truly Russian ancestors wereeight
generations distant. He, by contrast, growing up inthe cold-war
1950s, had rejected this historical identitybut without a clear
alternative. He cites others who, atthe time of ANCSA enrollment in
the early 1970s, re-sisted pressures to identify themselves as
Alutiiqsomebecause they felt that a Native identity would diminisha
hard-won Americanness and others like his grand-mother, who
commented: Are they trying to make anAleut out of you?
(2001:74).
Pullar and the elders he cites make it clear that Alu-tiiq
identification is something more than a return toan essential,
continuous Native tradition. Considerabledisconnecting and
reconnecting was involved in the pro-cesses out of which a new
unity was forged. Clarifyingfuzzy borders with near neighbors
involved specific re-alignments and a good deal of confusion.
Pullar quotesMargaret Knowles at the 1997 elders conference
thatguided Looking Both Ways (2001:81):
I realized that we are not the true Natives and thefact remained
that we really didnt even know whowe were. And that really bothered
me. It angered mebecause I . . . well, who are we? . . . I was
embar-rassed when Id be around other groups, Yupiks,who absolutely
knew who they were and where theywere from, . . . and I didnt. I
didnt know. And theysaid, Well it depends on what anthropologist
youtalk to. I always believed I was Aleut and thensomebody said,
No, youre really Koniag. And,No, youre really Pacific Eskimo, No,
youre Sug-piaq. No, youre really more related to theYupik.
Pullar traces the emergence of Alutiiq during the1970s as a
series of reidentifications in a specific histor-ical conjuncture,
the chaotic/creative aftermath ofANCSA.
Looking Both Ways represents an unusually clear and
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18 F current anthropology Volume 45, Number 1, February 2004
perhaps extreme example of constitutive political artic-ulations
that are active, to varying degrees, across thespectrum of Alaskan
Native identities and traditions.The elder Roy Madsen invokes long
lists of Russian andScandinavian names, comparing Alutiiq tradition
tobits and pieces of seaweed and twigs in swirling waterswhere the
ocean tide meets a stream. The culture, hewrites, has been pushed,
shoved, jostled and propelledfrom the time of our earliest
ancestors to the presentday. Madsen recalls the several languages
he heard asa child (including Slavonic at church) and his
fathersknowledge of English, Danish, German, and seven Es-kimo
dialects. In the tides and currents of historicalchange, the
homogeneous culture of our ancestors hasbeen transformed into the
heterogeneous culture that weexperience today, mixed, mingled,
blended and combinedwith those many other cultures, retaining some
of eachbut still with some recognizable and acknowledged as-pects
of the culture of our Alutiiq ancestors (2001:75).
Madsens vivid image of a culture in flux and recom-bination
imagines not a traditional core resistingchange but rather a series
of combinations of ancestraland foreign influences contributing to
the survival andadaptation of a Native people (indigenous Russian
Or-thodoxy is perhaps the most striking example). RobertLowie once
famously described culture as a thing ofshreds and patches. Roy
Madsen and many of the con-tributors to Looking Both Ways give this
conception anindigenous historical specificity. If people are
devoutlyOrthodox, it is because in the early years of brutal
co-lonial exploitation a degree of safety could be found
inreligious conversion, which brought with it Russian cit-izenship.
If the Alutiiq (or Sugtsun) language is endan-gered, it is because
of intense disruptions and all-too-familiar boarding school
prohibitions. If some have feltreluctant to embrace Native
identity, it is because mem-ories of bitter events (such as
Grigorii Shelikhovs mas-sacre of Kodiak Islanders at Refuge Rock, a
constitutivetrauma that Pullar highlights) have led to intense
psychicrepression and a sense of hopelessness brought on bydecades
of dependency on outsiders (Pullar 2001:76).But if indigenous
memory, coming to terms with a sadhistory, tells and retells horror
stories, it does so, in Look-ing Both Ways, to clear the way for a
more hopeful fu-ture. Pullar and many others tell a story of
struggle andrenewal.
Elders remember their confusion and outrage when in1931 Ales
Hrdlicka arrived on Kodiak Island to dig uphuman remains for his
research collections at the Smith-sonian. Looking Both Ways
contains a photograph ofhundreds of boxes filled with bones
awaiting reburial ata 1991 ceremony presided over by Alutiiq elders
and Or-thodox priests. Pullar notes that the Larsen Bay
repatri-ation movement came at a time when the search foridentity
and cultural pride was underway on Kodiak Is-land. It became a
symbol for tribal self-determination(2001:95). Here, as elsewhere
in Native communities,repatriation has been a crucial process of
healing andmoving on. John F. C. Johnson, chairman of the
ChugachHeritage Foundation, contributes an essay on the return
of masks and other artifacts looted from caves in PrinceWilliam
Sound. He writes: A cultural renaissance isnow sweeping across
Alaska like a winter storm. Nativecultural centers and spirit camps
for the Native youthare being built across this great land and in
record num-bers (2001:93). Repatriation is a critical part of
theseheritage movements. It establishes indigenous controlover
cultural artifacts and thus the possibility of engag-ing with
scientific research on something like equalterms. Repatriation is
not, Johnson stresses, the end tothe thirst for knowledge, but is a
new starting point inbuilding trust and cooperation. . . .
Cooperation and part-nership with science is important if we want
to under-stand the full picture of human history (p. 92).
Dawson (2001) discusses the establishment of the Alu-tiiq Museum
and Archaeological Repository and de-scribes current archaeology
programs that include youthinternships, elder participation, and
the return of all dis-coveries to the community. Children from the
Kodiakschools now come to the museum to touch our past andlearn
about our people. The museum has helped turnaround local prejudices
about being Native. And the re-searchers now must come to Kodiak to
study the col-lections, instead of us begging for them (p. 90). As
Stef-fian points out, archaeologys important role may bepartly due
to the fact that Alutiiqswiftly conquered inthe eighteenth century
by the Russians, devastated bydiseases, and for centuries
participants in the capitalistworld systempreserved relatively less
traditionalculture than other Alaskan groups (2001:130).
Peopleconcerned with their Alutiiq heritage have needed,
fig-uratively and literally, to dig into their past to
findthemselves.19
While this history partly explains the openness ofmany Alutiit
to ongoing archaeological research, a shiftin relations of
authority and power has also been essen-tial. Steffian suggests as
much in her discussion of part-nerships in archaeology
(2001:12934). The self-deter-mination achieved through the Larsen
Bay repatriationsestablished new relations with institutions such
as theSmithsonian and the University of Alaska. At the sametime,
the growth of Native-led corporations, museums,and heritage
projects has provided new sites for organ-izing research and
disseminating results. Finally, andcrucially, relations of trust
and respect have been sus-tained over the past two decades by
individual scholarsworking in long-term, reciprocal relations with
com-munities. Knecht, reflecting on the seminal Karluk ex-cavation,
concludes: As archaeologists we had come toKodiak to study Alutiiq
culture but while doing so un-
19. The potential uses of archaeology by subordinate peoples
tohelp maintain their pasts in the face of the universalizing and
dom-inating processes of Westernization and Western science . . .
[and]to maintain, reform, or even form a new identity or culture in
theface of multinational encroachment, outside powers, or
centralizedgovernment are emphasized by Ian Hodder in an important
ar-gument for interpretive archaeology (1991:14). Hodder also
rec-ognizes that there are no political guaranteesthat heritage
ar-chaeology can be appropriated by development projects
andgovernmental resource management.
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clifford Looking Several Ways F 19
wittingly became an inextricable part of the very culturehistory
we had sought to understand (2001:134).
heritage relations, changing weather
The relationships are not without tension. When Daw-son defends
archaeology, she also recognizes that manyobject to archaeological
research as they feel it would bebetter left alone. For some this
may be appropriate. Butfor me archaeology has opened a new world.
The key isthat the Native people must control the research
effort.Otherwise its just another rip-off, with scientists com-ing
in and taking instead of sharing (2001:8990). Poweris openly an
issue in the new research partnerships. Pul-lar (2001:78) takes a
certain distance from the version ofAlutiiq anthropology,
archaeology, and history presentedby Crowell and Luhrmann:
The results of academic research are, of course, im-portant in
describing how Alutiiq people have cometo view themselves today.
But at the same time, thereader must decide how the various views
of Alutiiqculture and identity fit together. Listening to
Alutiiqpeople about how they view their own history isequally
important. There are times when the indige-nous viewpoint is
diametrically opposed to that ofWestern scholarship. The age-old
question what istruth? may be appropriate in this circumstance.The
proposition that there can be more than onetruth is often
overlooked.
Pullar does not object to anything specific in Crowelland
Luhrmanns discussion (which weaves together ac-ademic research
findings and elders memories) but ar-gues more generally that
academic and Native positionsof authority need to be distinguished
if new relations areto emerge. As do many indigenous intellectuals
today,Pullar urges that traditional origin myths be given
equalstatus alongside the findings of archaeology. The insis-tence
is less on agreement than on respect. He traces theemergence on
Kodiak Island of codes of ethics gov-erning scientific research
(prior community permission,direct participation, sharing of
results). Of course, morethan a few scholars will be reluctant to
accept such lim-itations, withdrawing to less fraught research
contextswhile privatelyand sometimes publiclyprotestingagainst
religious obscurantism and political censorship.Among indigenous
activists a corresponding suspicion isreinforced by painful
histories of arrogant, intrusive,or exploitative scientific
collecting. Indeed, Pullarsappeal for equality of indigenous myth
and Westernscience may represent, for the moment, a utopian
vi-sion, given histories of mutual suspicion and persistentpower
imbalances (for example, the unequal struggle oforal tradition and
documentary evidence in land-claimslitigation). In the face of
these antagonistic legacies,Looking Both Ways proposes a space in
which, as Pullarsays, the reader must decide how the various views
ofAlutiiq culture and identity fit together. Crowell, in
hisintroductory chapter, traces changing academic practices
and argues for the specificity and thus partiality of allways of
looking at culturefrom both the outside andthe inside (2001:8).
Part genuine coalition, part respect-ful truce, Looking Both Ways
offers varied perspectivesthat need to be adjusted, weighed, and
assembled. Whatis proposed by all contributors to the volume is not
atake-it-or leave-it vision of scientific versus Native truthbut a
pragmatic relationship: live-and-let-live wherethere is opposition,
collaboration in the considerable ar-eas of overlap.
Lines are drawn around heritage and identity but nothardened.
Sven Haakanson Jr., a recent Ph.D. in anthro-pology from Harvard
and currently director of the AlutiiqMuseum, offers a pointed
meditation on the predicamentof the Native anthropologist. He gives
no absoluteprivilege to insider knowledge (his own
academicfieldwork was among Siberian reindeer herders) and askswhy
the Native anthropologist is always, in effect, re-quired to speak
from an emic rather than an eticposition. Is not the whole purpose
of research to learn,including the exploration of different
approaches toknowing (hermeneutics)? If Natives cannot write
fromboth Native and scientific perspectives then what is thepurpose
of doing anthropology? (2001:79). Citing theexamples of Knud
Rasmussen (Greenlandic Inuit/Dan-ish), Oscar Kawagley (Yupik), and
Alfonzo Ortiz (Tewa),Haakanson argues that Native approaches to the
field,while not necessarily better, are just as valid as anyothers.
As do many others in Looking Both Ways, herecognizes differential
authorities while sustaining,where possible, contexts of exchange
and translation.
The Alutiiq heritage visible here is not a single thing,with
sharply defined insides and outsides. In Pul-lars words, it is
defined by a mosaic of historical eventsand overlapping criteria
(2001:95). Inflexible measuresof belonging such as the blood
quantum required forANCSA enrollment in practice exclude many who
can-not be sure of their exact ancestry. Looking Both
Waysemphasizes kinship, including alliance as well asblood (pp.
9596). This relational way of being Alutiiqdepends on participation
in Native life: residence in avillage, Orthodox religious practice,
language use, sub-sistence activities, heritage revival and
transmission.Alutiiqness is thus something constantly
rearticulatedin changing circumstances and power-charged
relationswith relatives and outsiders. Indeed, one is left with
theimpression that the political label Alutiiq, although itis
becoming institutionally entrenched (with the help ofprojects like
Looking Both Ways), cannot be a definitivetribal or national name.
In some communitiesAleut is still favored, and whereas Alutiiq
stronglysuggests Pullars historical mosaic, an alternative
eth-nonym, Sugpiaq, evokes ties with older, pre-Russiantraditions.
People use more than one term, depending onthe audience and the
occasion.
In Looking Both Ways descriptions of traditional formsof life
(archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, inter-spersed with
elders statements) evoke facets of a dis-tinctive style: our way of
living. To call this way ofliving Alutiiq consolidates and marks
off a discrete
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20 F current anthropology Volume 45, Number 1, February 2004
identity. Scholars have understood similar processes ofsocial
differentiation as ethnic boundary-marking(Barth 1969), the
processual invention of culture (Wag-ner 1981), and ethnogenesis
(Roosens 1989, Hill 1996).Each of these approaches captures
something of what isgoing on.20 All assume that selective, creative
culturalmemory, border policing, and transgression are funda-mental
aspects of collective agency. Culture is articu-lated, performed,
and translated, with varying degrees ofpower, in specific
relational situations. Economic pres-sures and changing
governmental policies are very muchpart of the process, and so are
changing ideological con-texts (for example, post-1960s cultural
movements andthe development of global indigenous politics).
Com-ponents of traditionoral sources, written texts, andmaterial
artifactsare rediscovered and rewoven. At-tachments to place, to
changing subsistence practices,to circuits of migration and family
visiting are affirmed.None of this suggests a wholly new genesis, a
made-upidentity, a postmodernist simulacrum, or the rathernarrowly
political invention of tradition analyzed by