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Lesson 1
What's In a
Name?
Description
Students Learn who the Alutiiq people are and where their
ancestral homeland is located. They watch a videotape of
Alutiiq Elders talking about their own experiences and lives.
Objectives
1. Students define and spell the terms "Alutiiq," "Sugpiaq," and
"Aleut"
2. Students identify the geographic homeland of the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq
people.
Materials
> Map of Alaska (not included in this packet)
> Student Reading 1: Beginning an Alutiiq Journey
> Videotape: Looking Both Ways
(15 minutes)
Strategies
1. If you live in an Alutiiq area, or have Alutiiq students in
your class, consider inviting a parent or Elder to the class as
you progress through this unit.
2. Look at the map of Alaska and locate the Alutiiq areas.
Then look at the Alutiiq Region map [p.21].
Note that this shows present day and historic villages
as well as the
boundaries of Alaska Native Corporations. Point
out the Alutiiq
settlements on the map.
> How many settlements are there?
> What do they have in common geographically?
[They are on the coast in a relatively mild part of
Alaska, where sea
ice does not impede travel during the winter.]
> Who are the closest neighbors of the Alutiit?
3. Write the words
a. Alutiiq
b. Sugpiaq
c. Aleut
on the board. Practice saying them. An approximation
would be
Ah loó
tik.
Soog' pee ahk. A' lee oot. To obtain a more
authentic pronunciation, introduce the "q" sound, which is
similar to a "k," but said far back on the tongue near the
uvula. When a word in the Alutiiq language ends in "q,"
this means it is a singular word. Plural words (3 or more
of a kind) end in "t." Thus the term for three or more
Alutiiq people would be "Alutiit."
4. Older students will need to understand usae of the
terms Alutiiq, Sugpiaq, and Aleut, since they are sometimes
synonymous. Note that this is explained in the third
paragraph of Student Reading 1.
5. Distribute Student Reading 1. Discuss the reading.
Review the terms Alutiit have used to refer to themselves over
the centuries. Ask students if they know of other examples
of groups being called by a term they do not use themselves.
Two examples are "Eskimo" and "Indian." Ask students if
they ever been called something by someone else that they didn't
call themselves. How did they feel?
6. View the videotape
Looking Both
Ways. Briefly discuss it in class. For
instance:
a. What parts of Alutiiq culture did the speakers
talk about that you
can see or touch?
b. What parts of Alutiiq culture did the speakers
talk about that you
cannot see or touch?
c. Even objects that you can see and touch have
an unseen
dimension to them.
Help students explore this.
d. Ask students to draw pictures inspired by
their favorite parts of
the videotape.
Student Reading
Beginning
an Alutiiq Journey
Until recently, history books stated that the Pacific Eskimos
had died out, and with them, their language and culture.
As a
school girl living on Kodiak Island in the early 1990's, Jean
anderson remembers reading this and thinking, "How sad that
those people don't exist any more!" It was not until she
went to college that she realized that the "extinct" Pacific
Eskimos that anthropologists described were her own people:
those of the Kodiak Archipelago, Prince William Sound, lower
Kenai Peninsula, and the Alaska Peninsula.
It is not
surprising that Jean did not recognize herself in the written
descriptions. Her family had never called themselves
"Eskimos." They were "Aleuts" when speaking English, "Alutiit"
(the plural of Alutiiq) in their own language, and in the old
days, before Russians introduced the term Aleut, they were "Sugpiat"
(the plural of Sugpiaq, meaning "a real person"). Theirs
is an Inuit (Eskimo) language, closely related to Central Yupik.
This is why anthropologists called the group "Pacific Eskimos."
The Alutiiq/Sugpiaq
people and their ancestors have lived in
southwestern and southcentral Alaska for thousands of years.
Throughout this time, their maritime culture evolved into a rich
and varied set of beliefs, knowledge, and customs. Part of
that evolution involved contact with people of other cultures.
Sugpiat always knew they were not the only people on the earth.
They traded, fought, and sometimes intermarried with many
neighbors, including the unangan of the Aleutian Islands,
Central Yupiit and Denaina Athabascans to the north and the
Eyaks and Tlingits to the east.
But in the
late 1700s the Sugpiat met a group of foreigners who chaned
their lives more than had any other contact. Russian fur
traders and explorers arrived in the middle of the century and
did not leave for another hundred years. while they were
there, they introduced new ideas, objects, foods, beliefs,
languages, diseases, and customs. Later, after the United
States purchased the Russian holdings in Alaska in 1867,
Americans brought other changes. The electronic age has
continued the process of changing local cultures in Alutiiq
parts of Alaska by introducing ideas from all over the world.
The centuries
of contact with others have meant that the Alutiiit/Sgpiat
have added tools and ideas to their culture for thousands of
years. they have continued to change as the world has
changed around them. In fact, changes have been so great
that modern Alutiiq culture is very different from the ancient
culture that archaeologists dig up. Still, the Alutiiq
people continue to this day. The exhibition that inspired
this unit, Looking Both Ways, is both a celebration and a
rededication of that culture. Alutiiq Elders have given
their time, knowledge, and expertise to make public the
fascinating story of their people. the cultural richness
shown in the exhibition offers a resounding denial to the
startling news Jean Anderson heard a decade ago.
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