The Yupiit in southwestern Alaska are members of the larger family of Inuit cultures. Including more than 20,000 individuals in seventy villages, the Yupiit continue to engage in traditional hunting activities, carefully following the seasonal shifts in the environment they know so well. During the twentieth century, especially after the construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, the Yup'ik people witnessed and experienced explosive cultural changes. Anthropologist Ann Fienup-Riordan explores how these subarctic hunters engage in a "hunt" for history, to make connections within their own communities and between them and the larger world. She turns to the Yupiit themselves, joining her essays with eloquent narratives by individual Yupiit, which illuminate their hunting traditions in their own words. To highlight the ongoing process of cultural negotiation, Fienup-Riordan provides vivid examples: How the Yupiit use metaphor to teach both themselves and others about their past and present lives; how they maintain their cultural identity, even while moving away from native villages; and how they worked with museums in the "Lower 48" on an exhibition of Yup'ik ceremonial masks. Ann Fienup-Riordan has published many books on Yup'ik history and oral tradition, including Eskimo Essays: Yup'ik Lives and How We See Them, The Living Tradition of Yup'ik Masks and Boundaries and Passages. She has lived with and written about the Yupiit for twenty-five years.

These essays, some by Native voices, focus on two related themes: cultural revival in YupÆik communities, and the intercultural production of indigenous practices and knowledge.

The book offers fascinating and engaging material.

This stimulating book of essays contributes fresh ways of thinking about meanings of tradition in the late twentieth century.

Fienup-RiordanÆs latest book is a stimulating look at her anthropological and personal relationships among the YupÆik in southwestern Alaska. Reflecting on 25 years of research in the region . . . she offers several views of the changing world of Alaska Natives, of the relationship between anthropologist and subjects, and of the very goals of anthropology herself. . . . [She] addresses these topics and more with grace and humor.

If you donÆt believe that indigenous cultures have survived and even thrived in the modern world, read Hunting Traditions in a Changing World. Fienup-Riordan shows that, far from relinquishing their culture, the Yupiit (the YupÆik people) are eagerly reclaiming it. This reclamation project is not simply an effort to record dances, songs, and customs; it is a way to engage and shape the present. . . . As an ethnographerÆs report on the changing culture of anthropology and on the changing culture of the Yupiit, this book is fascinating, innovative, empathetic, and plain god reading.