Kobuk River Human-Land Use Relationships (Progress Report 2)

Magdanz, James

This report discusses progress and summarizes data collected in the second year of the Kobuk Human-Land relationships project. The project explores human-land relationships in the upper Kobuk River area of Alaska through oral life histories of elder Iñupiaq Eskimo. In the second year, four elder respondents from Shungnak, Alaska, were interviewed: Margaret Sheldon, Neal Sheldon, Daisy Tickett, and Wilson Tickett. Although the respondents ranged as far east as Alatna and as far west as Kiana, the focus of the project was on the Kobuk River above Kobuk village, particularly the Pah River area, which has been a locus of user conflicts. Census records and historical accounts suggest that most Native inhabitants of the upper Kobuk River settled in Kobuk or Shungnak early in the twentieth century. But, as is apparent from these life histories, about a dozen families chose not to settle in the mission-centered communities. Instead, they elected to remain in traditional family camps and settlements through the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and into the 1950s. The life histories describe a small, self-sufficient, semi-nomadic society living apart from the villages. Their self sufficiency may have been a matter of necessity. Several respondents said their families stayed in the area or moved into the area because fish and game were more available there than around Kobuk and Shungnak. (At the time, moose were only just becoming available and caribou were temporarily absent.) Margaret Sheldon’s family moved into the area for two winters in the 1950s specifically because the salmon runs failed and her family couldn’t feed their dogs in the village. Even when they were dispersed in the area, though, the families seemed to have frequent contact with one another, and much less contact with families in the villages of Kobuk or Alatna. And for some families, the Alatna contacts were at least as vital as the Kobuk contacts. Daisy’s family lived in the Alatna area for two years in the 1920s, and her aunt and her sister lived out their lives there. In addition to describing a society that has since been absorbed by the communities of Shungnak and Kobuk, respondents also provided many specific details about subsistence activities in the area. They described subsistence logging in what are now Gates of the Arctic National Preserve and Kobuk Valley National Park. They described frequent use of large log rafts for transporting people, equipment, dogs, subsistence foods, saw logs, and firewood. Daisy Tickett provided a precise date for her first observation of a moose in the Pah River area (September 1929), which may be the earliest recorded sighting.

Kobuk River Human-Land Use Relationships (Progress Report 2)

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