Volume 17 Number 3
May 1978

Thonum F. Johnston

In the first half of the present century, the dance songs and group mimetic dances of the Alaskan Eskimo were the target of misguided missionaries and educators, who saw them as the work of the devil and a bar to acculturation. A fostered negative self-image in music, language, and religion led to the decline of all three. In the 1960s the emergence of the Third World, the Civil Rights movement, Indian activism, Alaska statehood, Alaska Native Land Claims, and the Alaska Bilingual Program led to a reversal of the trend, and traditional musical performance became a prominent part of a cultural renaissance. Eskimo music now fills new social roles as a badge of ethnic identity. It has recently forced its way into the western-style schoolroom in Eskimo villages, and is a rallying cry in the political arena.

The distinctive sound and social patterns of Alaskan Eskimo music are a learned social act. They are shaped not only by Eskimo culture, but by Arctic environment effect. The Western newcomer, cued from an early age within his specific harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic matrix, finds Eskimo musical sound largely incomprehensible. He has no cultural reference for its use of microtonal inflections, asymmetrical pulse, nasal timbre, glottal pulsation, and lack of vertical harmony (Eskimo singing is always in unison).

The social context of Alaskan Eskimo music is replete with psychological associations which are elusive to temperate zone peoples. For instance, present-day musical ceremonies mark the time of spring whaling, and the time of mid-winter socialability. Songs eulogize hunting skills on the sea ice, express relations with whaling spirits, serve as mementos of heroic and comic encounters with sea mammals, and evince much humor (a prime Eskimo social lubricant). Dance expresses sex role differences and the distribution of labor in a harsh environment. Motions resembling scanning, harpooning, hauling, etc., belong to the men, while those resembling carcass-disassembly, skin sewing, etc., belong to the women. The early missionaries and teachers misunderstood Alaskan Eskimo music. They perceived lasciviousness where there was none. They called it the work of the devil and attempted to destroy it.

A missionary wrote in 1890 that "We have condemned the masquerades and seek to suppress them." In 1894 he wrote "This has given us more heart and courage than anything else: there was no masquerade this year from Bethel to Ougavig, that is, in six prominent villages. A custom that has existed for generations, and one about which these people have clung most tenaciously, has been put aside" (see Note 7). The Bethel Eskimos, however, continued to attend dances in other villages, whereupon a missionary reported, "The battle against evil in Alaska has not yet been won. . . . They have been attending some of their old heathen plays" (see Note 2).

This destruction of Alaskan Eskimo music varied regionally, according to the arbitrary division of Alaska among the various Western religious denominations. Episcopalian Point Hope encouraged and still encourages Eskimo dance. At Kobuk, Noorvik, Selawik, and Kivalina, Eskimo dancing was banned from 1926 to 1976, by a Californian sect called The Friends (not Quakers).

Attempts were made to substitute Western music. Nelson reports that "At St. Michael the men were invited into the Fur Company house where there was a small organ. . . . An old man said that he did not understand what the noise says. . . . ‘It sounds confusedly in my ears and is strange to them. I like better to bear the drum and singing in the kashim, for I understand it.’"

The music’s survival is to some extent dependent upon survival of the language. Many early teachers despised the language and forbade its use in the school. This persisted as late as 1956: "When I began school in 1956, I spoke only Eskimo. None of the teachers spoke or understood Eskimo. The teachers punished us by slapping our hands with a ruler when we spoke our own language" (see Note 9). The deprecation and destruction of Alaskan Eskimo musical forms represented a wholly unnecessary and unjustified act of Western colonialism. It persisted until the 1960s, when world and local events led to a surge of Alaskan nativism. The emergence of the Third World, the Civil Rights movement, Indian activism, Alaska statehood, and Alaska Land Claims produced a reaction to the longtime deprecation of Alaskan Eskimo cultural forms. Eskimos began to realize what loss of indigenous culture entails: "There is a white part of me and a Native part of me. The white part has no childhood or parents. The Native part has no adult" (see Note 10). The prime role of education was perceived: "It’s a must that we include our history and our culture in our schools before we lose it all" (see Note 14). Eskimo youth began to stress ethnicity: "Young Eskimos are searching for their identity and digging up the Eskimo culture" (see Note 9).

In 1963 the Tanana Chiefs organization, representing 23 Athabascan villages, affiliated with the Alaska Native Brotherhood and with the Eskimo Inupiat Paitot. A June issue of the Native newspaper, Tundra Times, marked this by symbolically exalting the Nuchalawoyya musical festival. The Native Land Claims Act in 1971 required that beneficiaries demonstrate nativeness not only genetically but socially. This presumably includes a knowledge of Native music.

After the passage of the Act, there was a proliferation of strong local political chiefs whose major function was to obtain federal monies and to disburse them to their constituencies, thus gaining local power and prestige, often demonstrated within the context of lavish social and musical potlatches (give-away feasts). During the lengthy process of establishing Alaskan Native Land Claims, a political solidarity has been forged. There has developed a sense of purpose and unity in ethnic alliance. In the large northern Eskimo town of Barrow, in March 1976, a series of Eskimo planning sessions involved elected representatives from Greenland, Quebec, Ontario, the Northwest Territories, and Alaska. This was to plan the First Innuit Circumpolar Conference, scheduled for November. The planning sessions were funded by an $80,000 grant from the Lilley Foundation. Barrow official William Neakok stated that, "The concept of a racial nation of Eskimos will be discussed, including language, music, all culture, and the ocean we share--the sixth Arctic nation, a philosophical and cultural nation of Eskimos" (see Note 12). The five Arctic nations are negotiating an Arctic seabed treaty under the auspices of the United Nations, and the Eskimos wish representation.

The large Alaskan Eskimo Native corporations are employing field workers to collect and archive folktales and songs. Villages such as Gambell and Savoonga, Emmonak and Alakanuk, Pilot Station and St. Mary’s have seen a resurgence of the Eskimo inter-village inviting in, where competitive dance-teams vie in musical creativeness and musical humor. In many remote villages there is a renewed interest in dance mask design, the making of decorative feathered dance fans, and elaborately beaded dance parkas and mittens. This is not for the tourist trade, but for the demonstration of community pride when the dance-team travels. Considerable prestige derives from the exhibition of rehearsed and uniformed dance-teams.

Like the bilingual program begun in 1973, Eskimo music in the schools can do much to counter the desultory effects of culture shock. Rural Eskimo youngsters enter the white schoolroom at an age when they are steeped in traditional values and orientation, speaking only Eskimo, eating foods from the sea, and coded to the distinctive, permissive Eskimo child-rearing pattern.

Traditionally, Eskimo learning stems from observation and the analysis of sensory perception: weather prediction and the drift of game. It is non-verbal and ecological whereas white learning is verbal and literate. Eskimo discipline consists of positive reinforcement: a feast for the boy’s first kill, but nothing said about the one that got away. The school’s concept of family obedience appears alien to Eskimo children, for at home there are many survivals of the ceremonial house system where male inculcation was effected by all of the men in the community, leaving the home a place where the father could love without restraint.

The use of Eskimo teachers is rare. Many schools are staffed with out-of-state teachers who stay only a year, and who do not understand local culture. Silence is mistaken for sullenness and truculence. Unfamiliarity with Western learning processes is mistaken for stupidity. Slowness at learning Mother Goose rhymes is mistaken for unmusicality.

Recently there has been a remarkable transfer of the musical heritage--normally the prerogative of the aged--into the classroom. At Selawik, over missionary protest, the students and parents demanded and obtained Eskimo dance classes in the school for formal credit. The process took three years, and the first exhibition, given during a ten-minute intermission at an inter-village basketball game in 1976, was the first time in more than 50 years that Maw villagers had seen Eskimo dancing in public.

At Kotzebue, Eskimo dancing was instituted in the schools in 1971 as part of the regular curriculum. It was funded under Title I, for cultural programs which included soapstone carving and skin-sewing. It then moved to Evening School, and in 1976 it formed part of the Bicentennial Cultural Awareness Program, funded by NEH and the Alaska State Council on the Arts. The present program calls for ten weeks of Eskimo dance classes scheduled for every Wednesday afternoon. One hundred teenagers attended the first meeting; 80 currently are enrolled.

In Alaska today many social problems are connected with Native migration to the urban areas: alcoholism., suicide, mental illness, and unemployment. Much of this stems from the emphasis placed upon technological adaptation, and the neglect of deep-rooted psychological needs such as self-esteem, peer-group support, continuity in value orientation, and the availability of traditional Eskimo success avenues as well as those of the white community. Through culture contact, the Alaskan Eskimo has learned from childhood of white intellectual and technological "superiority," of the so-called advantages of material acquisition and the work ethic. He has heard how his lifestyle lacks cleanliness, his work habits lack regularity, and how his language is archaic. This negative self-image has been reinforced during the assimilationist period by his own institutions. The first edition of the Alaska Native Brotherhood Constitution specified that "English-speaking members of the Native residents of the Territory of Alaska are eligible to membership."’

Even the rural Eskimo high school graduate who attends college in an urban area, possesses a high expectation of failure at the beginning. Out of the social context of his own village and peer group, the use of alcoholic beverages often becomes a placebo for the social ills encountered. Therefore, the Eskimo hunter lost on the city streets has become a new theme in Alaskan Eskimo folklore: "The streets are full of many people, people I don’t know" goes a line in a new song! He is far removed from the exuberant team-dancer he once was in his Native community hall: "Never ever will I dance any more I thought, because for so long I have not danced" goes a line in another new song (see Note 1).

The evocative powers of music have long been known; the relationship of musical perception to the brain centers concerned with social recall are at present the subject of much psychological research (see Notes 14, 11, and 15). Not only ethnic musical sound, but the instruments, costumes, songwords, and diverse situational concomitants of ethnic musical performance play a significant role in defining ethnic identity: "Song forms and performances are themselves models of social behavior that reflect strategies of adaptation to human and natural enviromnents."

Village counselors who once jeered at surviving dance ceremonies as the pastime of backward old women, now vote funds to send these women to dance in Montreal and Washington. Eskimo college students in Fairbanks publish a series of articles annually, describing and extolling Eskimo dance and other esthetic pursuits. The University of Alaska was recently forced, by a united front of Native political organizations, to hire as Vice President for Rural Education a Native woman who is well-known as a dance-team leader.

Through such a variety of Alaskan Eskimo musical activities and behavior patterns, the pervading theme is one in which ethnic identity is stressed as a boost to self-esteem. It is here that the seeds of social frustration are being sown, leading perhaps to a greater degree of anomie than before. It has been stated that "A weak ego does not gain substantial strength from being persistently bolstered" (see Note 6) and Eskimo leaders, Alaskan educators, and others have confused individual identity formation with group ethnicity. Ethnic pride, while commendable, plays only a small role in the individual’s long-term development of a set of unified values and directions which organize a life and give it meaning.

Alaskan Eskimo traditional music is a prime educational tool which has been neglected in the school system, mainly because of the ignorance and insecurity of white teachers who do not understand it. Its legendary figures, ancient culture heroes, and comic animal subjects provide excellent songword topics. Its talking seals and ten-legged polar bears are more relevant than Mary’s little lamb. Its simple melodies and interesting rhythms are as esthetically satisfying as those the white teacher brings. Eskimo children’s songs would provide a cultural cushion immediately following the uprooting from the traditional home into the white classroom, but they are not heard, as yet. The logical step following adoption of Eskimo dance classes, is the training of teachers and aides in the classroom use of traditional musical material for the early grades: pebble-juggling game songs; hopping songs; string-figure games and the songs which accompany many of them. A valuable spin-off from this use would be the preservation of a segment of the musical heritage which is at present in danger of being lost.

1. Angaiak, J., "I’m Lost in the City." Eskimo Language Workshop, Fairbanks: 1971, p. 16, 8.

2. Butzin, A.F., Cited in W. Oswalt: Mission of Change in Alaska. San Marino: 1963, p. 81.

3. Collier, J., Alaskan Eskimo Education. Holt, Rinehart, Winston, New York: 1973.

4. Cyrus, A. E. "Music for Receptive Release." Journal of Music Therapy, 1966, p. 3.

5. Drucker, P., Native Brotherhoods. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 168, 1958.

6. Erickson, E., Identity and the Life Cycle. Psychological Issues, 1: 10, 1959, p. 47.

7. Kilbuck, E., Letter cited by W. Oswalt, op. cit.

8. Kilbuck, E., Report of the Mission Stations, cited by W. Oswalt, op. cit. p. 27.

9. Kunayak, R., "How Little Diomeders Lost Their Language." Theata. Fairbanks: 1974.

10. Kleinfeld, J., A Long Way from Home. University of Alaska, Fairbanks: 1973.

11. Mueller, K. H., "The Aesthetic Experience. . ." Journal of Music Therapy, 1964, 1.

12. Neakok, W., Statement to author, 1976.

13. Nelson, E. W., The Eskimo About Bering Strait. 18th Report, American Bureau of Ethnology, 1899.

14. Nick, M., Statement to Kennedy Subcommittee Hearings, Indian Education, 1969.

15. Robertson-DeCarbo, C. E. "Music as Therapy." Ethnomusicology, 1974, 18, 1.

16. Szwed, J. F. Afro-American Musical Adaptation. Afro-American Anthropology, New York: 1970, p. 220.

17. Van Valin, W. Eskimoland Speaks. Caxton, Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho: 1941.