Aleuts - Religion and Expressive Culture



Religious Beliefs and Practices. Aleuts, with very few exceptions, are members of the Russian Orthodox church. Services are conducted in Aleut, Chukchee, Slavonic, and English. The resident clergy are, for the most part, Aleut. In communities where there is no resident priest, services are conducted by lay readers, all Aleut. The greatest church festival is Easter, closely followed by Christmas (celebrated according to the Orthodox calendar on 7 January) and Orthodox New Year. At Christmas, young men representing their families bring Christmas stars into the church to be blessed before the families visit individual houses with their stars. "Starring," also called in Alaska slavig or selavig, adopted from the Russians, is a widespread custom, transcending the social and religious boundaries. Between the Orthodox Christmas and New Year, masking takes place. Masking, sometimes associated with a dance or a ball, is usually followed by ritual cleansing in a steam bath before going to church and communion. As of old, commencement of any new enterprise (such as the building of a modern harbor on the island of St. George, to cite but one example) requires formal blessing by the bishop. New houses are blessed either by the priest or by the church reader.

The use of the Aleut language today is largely confined to church services, except in more remote or larger communities, such as St. Paul and St. George villages in the Pribylovs, where the language is still maintained by a segment of the population in everyday life.

Arts. Aleut men traditionally excelled in ivory-, bone-, and wood-carving arts, whereas the women worked in basketry and created exquisite garments of fur and bird skin adorned with gut-on-gut appliqué work and hair embroidery. Of these crafts, only the basketry, justly world-famous, survives. Aleut interest in the traditional arts persists, and several young artists are engaging in carving in various media. Their efforts are supported by the Aleut Corporation: the offices display their work as well as examples of traditional Aleut arts, which the corporation acquires. An Aleut Foundation has been established which, in the words of its president and chairman of the board of the corporation, Alice Petrivelli, "will continue to grow and become a significant part of the effort to teach and inform our young people, and instill pride in our Aleut heritage."

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