Central Yup'ik Eskimos - Sociopolitical Organization



Social Organization. In aboriginal times, class distinctions were absent. An individual, male or female, achieved standing within the community from a combination of factors including age, family connections, generosity, and demonstrated skill and knowledge. These same factors control status within the community today. Women occupied a position of equality with men. Slavery did not exist, although during the historic period, orphans were often required to perform innumerable menial jobs within the community. Intermarriage with nonnatives has not resulted in marked class distinctions and at present accounts for fewer than one out of ten marriages.

Political Organization. Traditionally, Yup'ik Eskimos had no formal organization to make political decisions. Leadership was vested in the elder heads of large and well-respected families. When major decisions were required or serious problems arose in a village, residents responded in unison but only when numerous extended families were affected. In the case of interregional hostilities, two or more villages might form an alliance for the purpose of a retaliatory raid against the opposing group. Although interregional alliances changed over time, their relative stability prior to the arrival of the Russians indicates their strength and importance in organizing interregional relations. The arrival of the Russians did little to alter the principles of village and regional political organization, although the subsequent population decline decreased the size and influence of leading families.

Federal oversight of the region expanded in proportion to the growth of the nonnative population after 1900. Under the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, traditional councils, as well as IRA councils, were formed in some villages and began to act as governing bodies within the community. Permanent villages began to acquire municipal governments in the 1950s, and city councils were established. Recently a number of villages have disbanded their municipal governments in favor of the traditional and IRA councils. By this action, they hope to divest themselves of state control and reassert their sovereign rights in a nation-to-nation relationship with the federal government.

Social Control. The moral guidelines for life, which were taught to children from their earliest years, produced a high degree of social control within traditional Yup'ik society. If these rules were broken or ignored, gossip, ostracism, teasing, ridicule, and social withdrawal were traditionally important mechanisms of social control, and they still are today. Fear of retribution by a member of either the human or the spirit world was also a powerful control mechanism. In the case of homicide, blood vengeance by a close relative of the deceased prevailed. At the turn of the century, Yup'ik Eskimos were for the first time subject to American civil and criminal law, and formal sanctions began to be levied against offenders. Civil offenders were brought before the city council. Later regional magistrates were employed to decide local civil offenses, while more serious crimes were referred to the state and federal judicial systems. At present, local village public safety officers and state troopers take offenders into custody. Individual villages and regional organizations are working to regain local jurisdiction over civil issues and increased community control.

Conflict. Interregional hostilities, including bow-and-arrow warfare, were a regular aspect of traditional life in Western Alaska. Ironically, warfare was brought to an abrupt halt by death itself when the epidemics of the early 1900s dramatically reduced the native population. Neither Russian nor early American activity in the region produced an organized aggressive response by the Yup'ik people, and the history of native-nonnative interaction in the region has been largely peaceful. In 1984, however, villages along the middle Kuskokwim and lower Bering Sea coast organized into the Yupiit Nation, a political entity representing a nonviolent but nonetheless aggressive response to increasing nonnative control over their lives.


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