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Proquest Dissertations Come On Ugzruk, Let Me Win: Experience, Relationality, And Knowing In Kigiqtaamiut Hunting And Ethnography Item Type Thesis Authors Wisniewski, Josh Download date 07/10/2021 10:41:47 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/11122/9068 COME ON UGZRUK LET ME WIN: EXPERIENCE, RELATIONALITY, AND KNOWING IN KIGIQTAAMIUT HUNTING AND ETHNOGRAPHY By Josh Wisniewski RECOMMENDED: V—i.p\ Is "! a . Advisory Committee Chair Ch$.ir, Department of Anthropology APPROVED: Dean, College of Liberal Arts )ean of the Graduate School / o Date COME ON UGZRUK, LET ME WIN: EXPERIENCE, RELATIONALITY, AND KNOWING IN KIGIQTAAMIUT HUNTING AND ETHNOGRAPHY A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Josh Wisniewski, B.A., M.A. Fairbanks Alaska December 2010 UMI Number: 3451166 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI Dissertation Publishing UMI 3451166 Copyright 2011 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. uestA ® ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 COME ON UGZRUK, LET ME WIN: EXPERIENCE, RELATIONALITY, AND KNOWING IN KIGIQTAAMIUT HUNTING AND ETHNOGRAPHY By Josh Wisniewski RECOMMENDED: Advisory Committee Chair Chair, Department of Anthropology APPROVED: ______________________________ Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Dean of the Graduate School Date Abstract This ethnography of marine mammal hunting explores linkages between personal experiences and shared understandings of ecological phenomena among a group of Kigiqtaamiut hunters in Shishmaref, Alaska. Specifically it examines the relationships between Kigiqtaamiut hunters’ experiences in the world and means by which the experienced world is brought into being through hunters’ ways knowing. This work is informed by three spring hunting seasons spent as a member of a familial marine mammal hunting crew and over 20 months of fieldwork. It addresses hunters’ ways of learning, knowing and directly experiencing the reality of the phenomenal world. Exploring a multiplicity of modes and facets of experience connected to the relationships between hunters’ processual way of knowing bearded seals(Eringathus barbatus) through an experiential ethnographic investigation, I empirically examine the practices of hunting and the ethnography of hunting as linked, reflexive, and ultimately inseparable processescoming of to know. Considering the plausibility that a more rigorous presentation of a way of knowing can be realized through highlighting the reflexive and experiential interactions that shape these two concurrent phenomenological inquiries, this work suggests an “ethnography of knowing” to engage these multiple-linked processes of knowledge construction. It is suggested that separating hunters’ ways of being and knowing misconstrues the depth and complexity of local knowledge as actualized in pragmatic decision-making processes in context of hunting. By examining Kigiqtaamiut/bearded seal relations, the set of hunting practices that most significantly shape the hunting mode of being in Shishmaref are explored. Collapsed into this ethnographic and phenomenological analysis of human/bearded seal ecology are the connections between hunters’ ways of knowing, local pedagogy, the structure and usage of hunting narratives and topical lexicon to convey information and the significance of place and local histories. Analysis of these intersecting and mutually informative themes highlights how hunters’ means of learning and knowing as a continuous process of experience both shape and are shaped by socio­ culturally mediated experiences with natural phenomena. This work speaks to dimensions of hunters’ ways of knowing both manifest in and shaping lived experiences. In doing so, this work furthers regional ethnography, the anthropology of knowledge studies, human environmental relations and understandings of the human condition of being-in-the-world. iv Table of Contents Page Signature Page............................................................................................................................ i Title Page ...................................................................................................................................ii Abstract.....................................................................................................................................iii Table of Contents..................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ......................................................................................................................... vii List of Maps ............................................................................................................................ vii List of Tables...........................................................................................................................vii List of Appendices.................................................................................................................. vii Acknowledgements............................................................................................................... viii Introduction to An Experience in Knowings......................................................................1 Chapter 1 Ethnography for a Relational World 1.1 Toward a Theory of Relationality............................................................................... 10 1.2 Shared Experience as Relational Ethnography......................................................... 18 1.3 Conclusion....................................................................................................................38 Chapter 2 This Place Called Shish: Human Occupancy, Local History and Modern Hunting Life 2.1 Introduction..................................................................................................................40 2.2 The Country..................................................................................................................42 2.3 A History of Hunting and Human Occupancy in Western Alaska.......................... 45 2.4 A Brief Account of Colonial Encounters: Explorers, Whalers, Teacher-Missionaries, Reindeer, Influenza and Local Narratives...........................52 2.5 Hunting in the Post Contact Era and Early 20th Century..........................................84 V Page 2.6 “Shish”: A Modem Hunting Village in Bering Strait...............................................88 2.7 “I Just Love to Hunt” .................................................................................................101 2.8 Conclusions.................................................................................................................I l l Chapter 3 “Lets Go Look Around” Kigiqtaamiut Hunting: Being, Experiencing, and Knowing. 3.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................115 3.2 Human-Bearded Seal Ecology and Variability in Bering Strait............................121 3.3 The Rules of Old Folks “Arjizugaksrat iniqtigutait”,...............................................136 3.4 Luck/Success .............................................................................................................. 156 3.5 Presentations and Masked Deceptions in Hunting Practices.................................163 3.6 Having A Messed Up System...................................................................................169 3.7 Ugzruk Lexiconical Variations .................................................................................173 3.8 Self-Regulation as Relational Sustainability........................................................... 176 3.9 Conclusions.................................................................................................................184 Chapter 4. “You Wanna Malik Me?” Relational Knowings: Hunting as Experiential Pedagogy. 4.1 Introduction........................................................... 187 4.2 Kigiqtaamiut Conceptualizations of Knowings......................................................192 4.3 “You Wanna Malik Me?” Observation as Instruction ..................................194 4.4 Self-Regulated Action as Implicit Instruction.........................................................201 4.5 You’ve Got to Mess Up in Order to Leam..............................................................204 4.6 “He Doesn’t Know” ..................................................................................................209 4.7 Conclusions ............. 215 vi Chapter 5. He Knows the Ice: Hunting As Place Making Page 5.1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 217 5.2 Kigiqtaamiut Sea Ice Terminology.......................................................................... 223 5.3 Sea Ice Narratives ................................ 227 5.4 Conclusions...............................................................................................................
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