Yupik Religion

This article is a variation on one posted above in the section describing the ethnic religions of Asia. The Yupik are a group of indigenous or peoples of western, southwestern, and southcentral Alaska and the Russian Far East. They are related to the Inuit and Iñupiat. The common ancestors of Eskimo and Aleut tribes such as the Yupik are believed to have originated in eastern Siberia, arriving in the Bering Sea area approximately 10,000 years ago. Traditionally, families spent the spring and summer at fish camp, then joined others at village sites for the winter. Traditional religious beliefs of the Yupik encompassed a system of cosmological reproductive cycles. Nothing in the universe ever permanently disappears, but is rathger reborn in succeeding generations. This view was reflected in elaborate rules concerning naming practices, ceremonial exchanges, regenerative rituals, and daily life. Over the past century, the Yup'ik have become active practitioners of Russian Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Moravianism. Although they have abandoned many of their traditional practices, the traditional generative worldview remains apparent in many aspects of contemporary village life. Traditionally, shamans exercised considerable influence due to their divinatory and healing role. When Christian missionaries arrived in the nineteenth century, they viewed the shamans as their adversaries. Many of the shamans actively resisted the influence of Christianity. Others, however, converted and became native Christian practitioners. Today the major Christian denominations in western Alaska are run by native pastors and deacons. Formerly, families spent the spring and summer at a fish camp, then joined others at village sites for the winter. The men's communal house, the qasgiq, was the community center for ceremonies and festivals that included singing, dancing, and storytelling. The traditional winter ceremonial cycle consisted of six major ceremonies and a number of minor ones. Individually, the ceremonies served to emphasize different aspects of the relationships among humans, animals, and the spirit world. Among other things, the ceremonies ensured the rebirth and return of the animals in the coming harvest season. Through dramatic ritual reversals of the normal productive relationships, the human community was opened to the spirits of game animals as well as the spirits of the human dead. These spirits were invited to enter and receive recompense for what they had given and would. hopefully, continue to give in return for Yupik ceremonial offerings. Masked dances dramatically re-created past spiritual encounters to better elicit the participation of the spirits in the future. Together, these ceremonies constituted a cyclical view of the universe whereby right action in the past and the present leads to abundance in the future.