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Angalkut/Shamans in Yup’ik Oral Tradition collects over thirty years’ worth of shaman stories, told as part of gatherings organized by Calista Education and Culture to document Yup’ik traditional knowledge. These conversations highlight the critical role angalkut played in Yup’ik life—healing the sick, interpreting dreams and unusual experiences, requesting future abundance through masked dances and other ceremonies, protecting the lives of young children, and dealing with the dead.
 
The book begins with an English introduction that places Yup’ik oral traditions in the context of shamanism in Alaska and other parts of the Arctic. Then first-person accounts presented in the original Yup’ik with accompanying English translations discuss the importance of shamans and shamanism in general, good and bad shamans, and shamans as healers. Narratives from Nelson Island, Canineq, Kuskokwim River, Akulmiut, and Yukon River describe shamans as healers, shaman journeys and performances, shamans and masked dances requesting abundance, shamans and the dead, malicious shamans, shaman confrontations, becoming a shaman, and those who have shaman abilities today. A detailed glossary and references are also included.
 
Today, not only are these angalkut gone, but so are those who witnessed and participated in their activities. Angalkut/Shamans in Yup’ik Oral Tradition is the first book devoted exclusively to Yup’ik angalkut; never before has the variety of angalkut roles been profiled in publication, including the richness of elders’ recollections of these individuals and their roles. There is great value in the stories they left behind. This fine-grained presentation of unique, bilingual first-person narratives is an essential resource for scholars and students interested in Yup’ik heritage, Yugtun language, shaman ethnography, and Alaska Native oral traditions.
 

Calricaram Naulluutem-llu Qanrutkumallra / Wellness and Illness in Yup’ik Oral Tradition brings together stories and information shared by more than a hundred Yup’ik tradition bearers over more than thirty years. Recorded during elder gatherings hosted by the Calista Elders Council beginning in 1997 and, since 2014, by Calista Education and Culture, the book passes on the words of wisdom that will remain enduring parts of these elders’ legacy.

Combining recent recordings with material from earlier gatherings, the narratives address various aspects of personal and community health: how people talk about sickness and health, traditional foods, qanruyutet (oral instructions) for living a healthy life, medicinal plants, medicinal uses of bodily fluids, ailments and treatments, traditional healing techniques, caring for those who are sick, mental health and mental illness, and epidemics.

Calricaram Naulluutem-llu Qanrutkumallra / Wellness and Illness in Yup’ik Oral Tradition invites readers to listen to these elders to better understand past practices and how they can contribute to a healthier future for all.

At Calista Education and Culture, we have been documenting Yup'ik traditional knowledge in southwest Alaska since 1998. During many of our discussions with elders, the subject of ircenrraat, the little people, would pop up. They are said to be miniature in size, and very crafty, and they exist in a different dimension with the ability to appear and disappear as they please in our world. Those who have encountered them have witnessed them hunting, fishing, and gathering together as our own people do. They have also stated that being invited to their dwellings for a day is like a year in our lifetime. We have been fortunate to have heard many stories, and we are pleased to put them together in this book. 

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

In this book, close to one hundred men and women from all over southwest Alaska share knowledge of their homeland and the plants that grow there. They speak eloquently about time spent gathering and storing plants and plant material during snow-free months, including gathering greens during spring, picking berries each summer, harvesting tubers from the caches of tundra voles, and gathering a variety of medicinal plants. The book is intended as a guide to the identification and use of edible and medicinal plants in southwest Alaska, but also as an enduring record of what Yup’ik men and women know and value about plants and the roles plants continue to play in Yup’ik lives.
 

This book presents stories, traditional tales, and qanruyutet (oral instructions) shared by elders from throughout southwest Alaska as part of the Yuuyaraq curriculum project. In what they say, elders provide a window into a uniquely Yup'ik view of how the world works and what it means to be a real person. And they have done so with their young people firmly in mind. Yuuyaraq embodies a way of life in which sharing is central -- sharing of food, of stories, of knowledge. Our hope is that this book carries this message forward, to audiences of all ages.