Human-Land Relationships on the Upper Kobuk River (final report)
Magdanz JS (ed). 2002. Human-Land Relationships on the Upper Kobuk River (final report). Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Subsistence. Juneau, Alaska
At the beginning of the 20th century, Alaska’s Iñuit Eskimo were dispersed across the Arctic in small, extended family settlements. Within a few decades, most had moved to larger communities seeking education and other public amenities. Some Iñuit groups chose not to move into town. One such group was the Paamiut, the Pah River people, members of the upper Kobuk River society, whose story is told here through the oral histories of nine elders. The elders describe a small, self-sufficient, semi-nomadic group living apart from the mining and mission communities of Kobuk and Shungnak through the 1920s, 1930s, and, in a few cases, into the 1950s. Their self sufficiency may have been partly a matter of necessity. Several said they lived in the area because fish and game were scarce around the larger communities. One elder’s family “lived out” specifically because the salmon runs failed and they couldn’t feed their dogs from the village. In many ways, they lived a pre-contact life long after contact. By 1953, all except one man had moved into town. One consequence of community consolidation was the creation of apparently “unoccupied” land between communities. Although very much occupied in traditional minds, such land was sanctified as “public” by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. It was open to entry by urban hunters and fishers, and provided opportunities for commercial hunting and fishing services. Then the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1981 closed millions of acres of Alaska to non-subsistence hunting, forcing even more visiting hunters into “unoccupied” areas like the confluence of the Pah and Kobuk Rivers. On the upper Kobuk River, a few residents embraced the changes. Providing commercial hunting and fishing services would seem to be an ideal business for rural Native people. Other residents resented the growth of commercially supported hunting and fishing. Some resisted, aggressively and unlawfully in one instance, through formal regulatory mechanisms in another, but most frequently by applying informal social pressure on local transporters. Social pressures complicated local transporters’ operations, making it more difficult to compete successfully with non-local transporters.
- Type
- Unpublished Report
- Date of Issue
- 2002
- Publisher
- Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Subsistence
- Units
- GAAR , KOVA
- Keywords
- Ethnography, History, Inupiat, Kobuk, Kobuk River, Kuuvanmiut, Manueluk River, Pah River, Shungnak