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Situating the Authors

Charlotta Hillerdal is an archaeologist and academic co-lead for the Nunalleq Archaeology Project. In addition to excavation, her work focuses on community engagement with heritage. Alice Watterson is an archaeologist and digital artist who led the development of the community co-designed Nunalleq Educational Resource (Watterson et al. 2019). They contribute their observations and thoughts as professional archaeologists and incomers to the community. Quinhagak residents M. Akiqaralria Williams and Lonny Alaskuk Strunk are now in their 20s and belong to a generation in the village who have grown up with the archaeological project ever-present in their community. They give personal accounts of their experience of Nunalleq and reflect on the impact of archaeology locally for themselves and their peers. Jacqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland is from the generation before and offers a retrospective look at the changes she has witnessed in her community over the past two decades since she herself was a young adult.

The Nunalleq Project

The Nunalleq Project is an embedded community archaeology project set up in collaboration between the Alaska Native village of Quinhagak and the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. This project was initiated by the local community, and born out of fear of loss of cultural heritage to coastal erosion. The local community began finding ancient artifacts on the beach, which made them seek archaeological advice. In 2009, an initial small-scale excavation on the tundra erosion edge facing the Bering Sea was the starting point of the Nunalleq Project and over a decade of archaeological research in Quinhagak (Hillerdal et al. 2019; Knecht and Jones 2019).

Nunalleq (the Old Village), given its name by local Elders, would prove to be an extremely well-preserved Yup’ik settlement, dating to the late pre-contact period, a time little known by previous archaeological and historic research. Thousands of well-preserved artifacts, ranging from everyday household objects, hunting equipment, ceremonial objects such as masks and drums, pieces of clothing and jewelry, and even toys, together with architectural evidence, and an abundance of faunal and plant remains and other biological material, have steadily built a picture of life at Nunalleq AD 1570-1675 (Ledger et al. 2018). Many of the artifacts allude to Yup’ik life in the village today, and it is easy to recognise the link between Yup’ik subsistence on the tundra, river, and sea, then and now—hunting equipment and practices may have changed, but the importance of these activities and the strong link to a land that provides, remain (cf. Kawagley and Barnhardt 1998; Corntrassel and Hardbarger 2019). Others tell the story of a way of life that is no longer practiced, echoes of drums and dances long since forgotten (cf. Mossolova and Knecht 2019, 33). Both these sentiments—a sense of familiarity and a sense of wonder—evoke a deeply felt engagement with the past for many community members visiting the site or interacting with the artifacts at the annual end-of-season community workshops. Since 2018, such encounters are facilitated by the artifacts being accessible in the local archaeological repository The Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center, in everyday speech known as “the museum”.

This engagement was exactly what Elders and cultural bearers were hoping for when they went against traditional beliefs and supported excavation, and it was also what motivated community leaders to pursue and invest in an archaeological project in the first place (Knecht and Jones 2019, 27). As expressed by Warren Jones, Qanirtuuq Inc. CEO, and the instigator behind the project: “This Nunalleq project was started with future generations in mind. So that they will never forget where they came from” (KYUK Media 2018). This statement should be understood against a backdrop of colonial oppression and marginalisation. Moravian missionaries arrived in the Kuskokwim area in the late 19th century, shortly followed by the Catholic Church establishing itself on the Yukon River. Missionaries banned Yup’ik practices recognised as shamanism, including dancing (Fienup-Riordan 1987; Barker et al. 2010). A Moravian mission was established in Quinhagak in 1893. Quinhagak residents are proud of their Moravian heritage, but it also resulted in certain traditional practices being suppressed (Fienup-Riordan and Rearden 2013). The church has since somewhat revised their views, and are now much more acceptant and inclusive of Native spirituality (Henkelman and Vitt 1985). Whilst a sense of belonging is important for the well-being of any group of young people, it is even more so for Indigenous youth who often see their way of life and traditions questioned (Taylor and Usborne 2010; Rivkin et al. 2018). The archaeological material from Nunalleq has provided a point of interaction with the past for many Quinhagak residents, and we have seen it work as a catalyst for other types of involvement in cultural activities, such as dance and artwork (Hillerdal 2017, 72-75; Watterson and Hillerdal 2020, 213-215).

Nevertheless, older generations in the community often express a prevailing apprehension of disconnectedness among a generation of young people who seek their connections, cohesion, and context elsewhere. Reflecting on her own relationship with her Yup’ik identity as a teenager, Jacqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland considers the Elders’ concerns, ultimately empathising with both parties. She sees that it is especially challenging to be a young Yup’ik person today, finding themselves conflicted between a desire to be engaged in western culture, lingering repercussions of Yup’ik historically being demeaned for their traditions and speaking their language, and presently, a growing expectation to be connected to your Indigenous roots—it is not uncommon for young people today to feel social pressure for not knowing their culture. Consequently, today’s younger generations have a great deal to process and reconcile. Their resilience, it seems, manifests in negotiating new and evolving ways to identify with their culture.

The sentiment from older generations that young people have lost touch with their culture might in fact reflect these changing forms of interaction rather than an outright detachment. Something which, to some extent, was recognised by the Qanirtuuq Inc. Village Board in the brief for the digital media-based Nunalleq Educational Resource, with the motivation that this outreach material reach the younger generation in a format they would readily engage with “on their devices” (Watterson and Hillerdal 2020, 200).

An important point of engagement has always been the excavations themselves. During the season, there are regular visits from Quinhagak community members to the site, and many volunteer helpers for varying stretches of time, from a few hours to more or less the whole season. The majority of these volunteers are children and young people, and many of them return every year and become knowledgeable members of the archaeology crew. M. Akiqaralria Williams is one of these dedicated participants and has worked at the excavations and in the artifact lab since 2010, when she herself was a child. Younger generations in Quinhagak are thus forging their own relationships with the earth and archaeology of Nunalleq, and creating their own links with the past.

  • Vignette 1: Encounter, by M. Akiqaralria Williams:

    A ride down to the beach was something I had never expected. A ride for fresh air. As I was near the end of the beach, there were a bunch of people not known to me in the particular spot. Until curiosity got the best of me. Indeed! Did I learn what archaeology was! Being introduced, by a “Santa Claus” man known as Dr Richard Knecht into the field of my history hiding underground in the tundra. Things like this never really occurred to me. Only stories from the elders who had shared their stories passed down from generation to generation. My first few artifacts I have found, are a little too far back to remember. The artifact I can only recall with clarity was a small little ryegrass of a basket starter (Figure 1). The starter for a certain basketry I still have to learn how to make. Now up to this day, I am still learning what the artifacts are and how they are used. I will proceed to learn and continue the knowledge I have obtained and pass it on to the future generations.

Jacqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland acknowledges that the Project and unravelling 500 years of local history has been fascinating for the whole community, but that it has had a particular impact on their young people. From her vantage point of being from the generation before the “children of the dig” (Branstetter 2018), she witnessed an explosion of cultural revival within the community’s young people and a reinvigorated sense of Yup’ik pride.

Figure 1

Akiqaralria Williams digging at Nunalleq in 2013 and the “little basket starter” she uncovered

Akiqaralria Williams digging at Nunalleq in 2013 and the “little basket starter” she uncovered
Photo: Rick Knecht and Julie Masson-MacLean

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Charlotta Hillerdal looks back to the beginning of the Project; the first few years of excavating Nunalleq, we were accepted, but extraneously foreign. For most people in Quinhagak, archaeology was not something that concerned them. Ultimately, what sparked engagement was the artifacts themselves, but the scientific team made an effort to make archaeology a matter of concern for the community, maybe most successfully by providing an arena for interaction through the annual end-of-season “Show and Tell” community workshops (Hillerdal 2018, 378–380; Hillerdal et al. 2019). However, the most valuable advocates for archaeology in the community have been the children and young people volunteering and helping out at the site or in the lab, visiting with the school, and bringing the stories back to their families—story by story weaving the archaeology into the local history.

Traditionally, Yup’ik history is transmitted in stories told by Elders, and as qanruyutet, wise words and teachings from the ancestors, linking past knowledge to the present in guiding young people on how to live a good life (Fienup-Riordan 2005, 9-12). Finding the story in objects from the past is an evolving contemporary concept. One of the strengths of Nunalleq is the way in which oral history and archaeology combine to write the story for us. As expressed by Yup’ik Quinhagak resident and local community historian Willard Church, “It validates the history of the people” (Branstetter 2019). From a community perspective, archaeology is able to expand the story with details from the artifacts and the excavation. Oral history is able to tell us why, but the artifacts are able to tell us what, when, and how.

Lonny Alaskuk Strunk shares Willard Church’s sentiments: “For me personally, Nunalleq archaeology and artifacts endorse all of the oral history that I have been told. I’ve heard stories growing up about how the bow and arrow war started and admonishments not to go towards the old village. I’m glad that the archaeology team was able to dig there and extract all of the artifacts and information before the coastal erosion reached the site.”

The archaeology also adds a depth of time to local history, which was not necessarily evident before. For Alaskuk, whose family is closely connected to the church, encountering Nunalleq artifacts was the first time he thought about his village history prior to western contact.

Akiqaralria believes that the excavation has changed many people’s perceptions of the past. She observes many similarities in practices now and then, with differences found mainly in materials and methods; the net mender, uluat, steambath dipper, spoons and ladles, darts, fishing lures. We still use them up to this day. Just in various sizes and modern fishing. She also sees how archaeology and local knowledge collaborate to form a stronger narrative about the past, each contributing with their strengths.

  • Vignette 2: Discovery, by Lonny Alaskuk Strunk:

    During summer breaks, it was a common occurence to hear my best friend say “do you want to go check out the archaeologists?” We would get on the four-wheel and head down the beach, where we would meet the strangers who were so interested in our own culture. They would show us, with great excitement, the artifacts from that day’s dig. I was always intrigued by each artifact and the mystery of how my ancestors lived. But one day in particular stands out, the day the caribou mask was unearthed from the grounds of Nunalleq (Figure 2).

    My parents were interested in visiting the archaeologists, so we took a ride down to the beach and walked to the dig site. Everyone there was focused on their work in one corner of the site. A few minutes after we arrived Charlotta dislodged a mask out of the mud, flipped it over and revealed a smiling caribou. It felt surreal seeing and experiencing a dance mask, so close to my home and we were all in awe with how unique and cute it was.

    Whenever I see the Nunalleq artifacts, they feel foreign to me, a place in time that I don’t fully comprehend. Before western contact, they had only materials gathered from the land, only spoke the Yup’ik language, lived with different social structures, held different spiritual practices, and possessed a different worldview. Despite the differences in our lives throughout time, there are common threads that I can feel living in the present-day in the village. They pull me into the mysteries of the artifacts and the lives of my ancestors who left them behind. I want to learn more and unravel the connections between my village’s past and how we live today.

Figure 2

The day the caribou mask was found. Lonny Alaskuk Strunk at the top of the trench, taking photos

The day the caribou mask was found. Lonny Alaskuk Strunk at the top of the trench, taking photos
Photo: Dora Apurin Strunk

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The importance of Yup’ik language, Yugtun, for Yup’ik identity is often emphasised in the community. The loss of “proper” spoken Yugtun among younger generations, who in their daily use of the language often mix Yugtun and English, is a large cause for concern among older generations and Elders. Jacqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland belongs to one of the last generations to speak Yup’ik fluently. She grew up with her grandparents, speaking Yup’ik every day, living the subsistence lifestyle and hearing the old stories and teachings—which was the only life she thought existed when she was young.

For Lonny Alaskuk Strunk, a year studying overseas in Japan dawned a realisation that he had a better grasp of the Japanese language than he did of his own. This spurred him on to combine Yugtun with his studies in computer science. Today he is working towards strengthening the knowledge of Yugtun among younger generations through computational linguistics and the development of a digital Yup’ik language learning tool (Liu et al. 2021). Both generations recognise the importance of language to cultural identity, something which in turn has been emphasised to the archaeologists and manifests most frequently in correctly naming artifacts from the excavations in the local dialect (i.e. Watterson et al. 2019). Another area where the language is actively represented in youth culture is in yuraq, the Yup’ik drum dances, which have seen a revival locally in recent years.

The full size caribou mask described by Lonny Alaskuk Strunk in the vignette 2 was as the very last mask to be found at Nunalleq. It was found at the base of a wall belonging to the earliest occupation on the site, so this caribou mask had been sitting hidden in the sod wall of the house for almost as long as it stood there. For the excavator, a find like this is meaningful beyond archaeological discovery. These artifacts have an innate intensity that leaves no one unaffected.

Yuraq, pre-Christianity, was essentially spiritual and a means of connecting and communicating different worlds (Ayunerak et al. 2014, 94; Fienup-Riordan 1996, 307). Hence, Yup’ik dancing was often targeted by missionaries, discouraged, and eventually disappeared in many communities (Barker et al. 2010, 6), including Quinhagak (Mossolova and Michael 2021, 6). Masks, drum handles, and other regalia linked to dancing uncovered at Nunalleq witness the time-depth and significance of this spiritual tradition, and dancing has played a substantial part in cultural revitalisation movements. In the annual “Show and Tell” of 2013, Yup’ik dancing once again became part of the Quinhagak cultural fabric, with what was for many community members the first public performance in living memory taking place outside the school setting (Figure 3). In our discussion of archaeology and heritage in Quinhagak, the relationship between material culture, language, dancing, and Yup’ik identity is intrinsically connected.

Figure 3

Quinhagak dancers at their first Quinhagak performance at the 2013 Show and Tell

Quinhagak dancers at their first Quinhagak performance at the 2013 Show and Tell
Photo: Charlotta Hillerdal

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For Alaskuk, yuraq represents an intersection between past and present, and has become a vibrant part of his culture and heritage. He shares his passion for dance with Nalikutaar, who learned Yup’ik dancing when living outside of Quinhagak, attending high school in Sitka, AK. She recalls it took her nearly two years to muster the courage to join the school’s Yup’ik dance group. She admired the dancers for their calm confidence and was intimidated by how natural it seemed for them. She had never known dance in her own community, nor had her mother’s generation, and she worried for some time that due to this, she was perhaps less deserving of taking part.

The first time there was a dance performance in Quinhagak after more than forty years since Quinhagak lost the art of yuraq was in the late 1990s, when Nalikutaar and her sister, Jenine Capenruilnguq Heakin, performed two songs for an event at school. It was an unconventional performance, just the two sisters taking turns drumming and singing, while the other one would dance. She explains that the old Yup’ik ways are that men are the only drummers and singers, and women dance—men can dance too but traditionally, women did not drum or sing. She recollects it as being an awkward experience; knowing all of these unconventional factors, knowing yuraq had been lost in Quinhagak for decades, not being able to figure out the expressions on people’s faces and if it was accepted or not. In the end, people commended them, saying they were good singers and dancers. But she recalls them being somewhat stunned, as dance simply had not been done publicly for so long. Following this, she explains that over the years, others began teaching yuraq within the school and it gradually became more present within the community.

With the excavation of Nunalleq, and the wealth of ceremonial life expressed in the dance related artifacts, attitudes towards dancing became more accepting in the village, and dance has, since that first performance at the 2013 Show and Tell, become part of the Nunalleq story. Nalikutaar reflects that although the language may not be spoken as much, yuraq has in many ways expanded to fill that space, becoming a new means for younger generations to explore their Yup’ik identity.

  • Vignette 3: Presence, by M. Akiqaralria Williams:

    After the first time I learned about archeology, I always wondered what it was like to see and learn about things that never really occurred to anyone including me. It was like a little child asking for candy and getting it; the rush of adrenaline after finding something at the site that was a part of my history. It was a type of awakening inside no one can explain. When you think about it, the artifacts hold something no one ever knew much of, until someone who knows about it comes and tells a story. The lab holds many more stories that will give you a sense of rush as you are seeing and looking at the artifacts. Cataloging was a homophone that I had never expected—before the project I thought it was a magazine to look at only! My other thrill is fixing something as intricate as baleen. That was a woo for me right there! As time went by completing most of the tasks, I had to learn what it was like to give a tour to people. My friends were my final rush, and seeing the people intrigued (Figure 4). The stories made sense and changed the way I thought about our past. Who would have thought that everything was made of wood and grass? Even what is still used to today, fur clothing for warmth.

Figure 4

M. Akiqaralria Williams (on the left, in red) at the 2017 Show and Tell

M. Akiqaralria Williams (on the left, in red) at the 2017 Show and Tell
Photo: Rick Knecht

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In the summer of 2018, 80 crates with over 60,000 artifacts arrived in Quinhagak. This was the Nunalleq collection coming back home from Scotland, where it had been on loan to the University of Aberdeen for the purpose of research and conservation. The largest Yup’ik pre-contact collection in the world is now housed in the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center at the center of Quinhagak, under custodian of the community, and directly available to anyone in the descendant community (cf. Ornicul 2015). Following the ethos of the yearly end-of-season community Show and Tell sessions, the artifacts are not behind glass (cf. Andrews 2017), but accessible in purpose-built cabinets with drawers facilitating interaction (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Children visit the Culture and Archaeology Center in Quinhagak to see the artifacts, as Nalikutaar notes, “It seems to never get old for them!”

Children visit the Culture and Archaeology Center in Quinhagak to see the artifacts, as Nalikutaar notes, “It seems to never get old for them!”
Photo: Stephan Jones

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This is the first repository of its kind in the region, with artifacts located in their original environment and managed by the same people whose story they represent. Jacqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland reflects on the impact of having the Nunalleq material home in the village: “We are very proud of having our own museum, the kids have such a sense of pride in it as well, there are always trips going back and forth from the school to the museum—it seems to never get old for them!”

The presence of the artifacts in Quinhagak, themselves tangible connections to Yup’ik culture, are witness to a more intangible effect on the community, particularly the younger generations. Latour and Lowe (2011) consider the intangible presence or “aura” of original artworks and artifacts, something Yup’ik culture would attribute to yuk, the spirit that inhabits all physical things, both alive or inanimate. In Quinhagak, the intangible presence of the artifacts appears to spark an insatiable curiosity with many. We would argue that this spark is a vital component to inspiring life-long learning, where individuals take initiative to engage more directly with their heritage following an initial encounter with the collection.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Quinhagak and forced all in-person community gatherings to cease, the Center had already taken on its intended function as a hub for all kinds of cultural activities. The Quinhagak dancers had taken their regular practices here, dancing next to the artifacts. One of their first rehearsals in the “museum” they performed especially for the collection to “make peace with the artifacts that first scared them” (Mossolova and Michael 2021, 8). The archaeological material is thus active—and interactive—in the community.

An important aspect of artifacts for people in the community, and how they often interact with them, is what they do rather than what they are. In the hands of local craftspeople, as well as Elders, an artifact can take on an active form. Theirs are stories of fishing and hunting, carving and weaving, dancing and playing. Approaching the artifact in their active form—as doing rather than being—has also been a learning experience for us professionals. The story of Nunalleq is not contained within sod walls, but travels in the entire landscape.

This is also where Lonny Alaskuk Strunk identifies an especially valuable contribution made by the artifacts, in how the techniques used to design and create the crafts could be studied and learned. He sees how these techniques are connected to cultural activities such as carving, weaving, and sewing. They should be preserved and passed on in order to help connect and solidify a shared identity as Yup’ik people.

The Nunalleq collection contains a uniquely large number of well-preserved grass basketry and cordage (Masson-MacLean et al. 2019). The main technique used for manufacturing grass artifacts at Nunalleq was twining, a technique that has largely been abandoned for coiling in contemporary grass crafts (Masson-MacLean et al. 2019, 90-95). Finding these grass artifacts created strong interest among the community to bring these old techniques back into practice, and in the summer of 2019, the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center sponsored a couple of workshops at the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center. The workshops were led by Quinhagak resident Grace Anaver, one of the few Yup’ik artists who still practice the twining tradition (Crowell 2019). Both Akiqaralria and Nalikutaar attended the workshop. To Nalikutaar, realising the complexity of the old ways of making basketry was astounding and led to a sense of wonderment at how her Elders knew these things and how the people of Nunalleq had mastered it so seemingly effortlessly (Figure 6).

Figure 6

Grass basketry workshop and Jacqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland with her finished basket

Grass basketry workshop and Jacqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland with her finished basket
Photo: Jacqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland

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Akiqaralria and Alaskuk both think it is significant that the village owns the Nunalleq artifacts. They see it as beneficial for the village members and especially for the youth to experience and interact with them regularly. However, Alaskuk also expresses a concern that their remote location in Quinhagak somewhat prevents them from reaching a broader audience, and that opportunities for experts to study and learn from them might be missed. This concern is addressed by the ongoing development of a co-curated “Digital museum”, which will make artifacts available to an international audience in digital form as 3D objects and photographs. Ultimately, the impact of their presence in the community is more valuable than easy accessibility for a global community. As expressed by Akiqaralria, it is important to share the story and history which defines the people of the community and for them to know where they came from.

  • Vignette 4: Immersion, by Lonny Alaskuk Strunk:

    A few weeks after the caribou mask was unearthed, there was the annual Show and Tell. This year was special because the conserved artifacts from previous years would be returning home. To commemorate this, they were going to hold workshops and a potluck celebration, Alice and Charlotta reached out to the local dance group and asked if they could perform. They proposed crafting a new song to honor the occasion.

    When performing at a celebration it is customary to prepare 3-5 songs to share. At yuraq practices we learn and dance songs from other villages, but at performances we only dance the songs we have permission to perform. Because Kuinerraq doesn’t have a long history of dancing, the number of songs to perform is pretty limited. It’s customary to create new songs while still practicing older songs to freshen and expand the selection. As a dance group, we decided the theme of the Nunalleq dig site would be a great idea to add to our repertoire.

    I was lucky enough to have lived in another village, Atmautluak, that practiced yuraq. It was during middle school, when I lived there, that I first learned how to yuraq regional and local songs. Here I found a new thread of my culture tying me to my heritage. I was able to travel and perform the past and present. These threads grew when I joined the Inu-Yupiaq dance group during college and learned more songs from throughout the region. I was even able to compose my first yuraq song during an Alaska Native art appreciation class. It was a struggle not only to find the rhythm and words to express my vision but also to gather the confidence in myself that I knew enough to honor my culture in song. In the end, I learned enough about the structure of yuraq songs and the emotions tied into songwriting that I felt comfortable in helping the Quinhagak dance group compose a song about Nunalleq (Figure 7).

Figure 7

Left, some of the Quinhagak dancers songwriting in the site tent led by Crystal Carter and below, at dance practice in the village. Right, demonstrating the Nunalleq Song, led by Lonny Alaskuk Strunk drumming; the dancers motion checking for finds during trowelling and finding an artifact from their ancestors

Left, some of the Quinhagak dancers songwriting in the site tent led by Crystal Carter and below, at dance practice in the village. Right, demonstrating the Nunalleq Song, led by Lonny Alaskuk Strunk drumming; the dancers motion checking for finds during trowelling and finding an artifact from their ancestors
Credit: Alice Watterson

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  • One of the guests for the celebration was Chuna McIntrye, a renowned Yup’ik artist from the neighboring village of Eek. He ran a small yuraq workshop that the dance group and I attended. There he stunned us by teaching a song that his grandmother taught him. Chuna told us it was originally from the Nunalleq area. I was surprised to learn that a song from my own area lived on with our neighbors for years and years. With two new songs, the Nunalleq song and the gift from Chuna, we performed at the potluck. It was a very special moment to be able to share a once lost song and a new composition, both that would not have happened without Nunalleq. The dig site has brought us back so much, reconnecting my village with artifacts and reuniting us with songs. Without Nunalleq, there might not have been the push to revitalize the dance group and strengthen the connections to our histories.

Alice Watterson considers the influence of the younger generations on the design and content of the 2019 Nunalleq Educational Resource which was co-designed with the community in Quinhagak and aimed at regional schools in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta area. Somewhat understandably, our default position at the beginning of the project was to engage with the Elders and archaeologists as the core sources of knowledge. We quickly realised, however, that in addition to these voices, the younger generation had much to contribute, and that this contribution was different, but no less valuable. Their contributions varied, from helping shape interviews with Elders and archaeologists by submitting questions they would like to ask, to recording sound bites and voiceovers to guide users through the Resource. Most notably, in writing the new yuraq song for Nunalleq, we also worked closely together to make a short film documenting the process from their perspectives (Watterson 2018). Dance revealed itself as a significant anchor point for the younger generation as both a means to connect with tradition and the archaeology of Nunalleq, and a way to forge a new and evolving relationship with their Yup’ik cultural heritage.

Jacqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland witnessed the conflicting ideas about yuraq that were prevalent among the Elders in Quinahgak in the late 90s and early 2000s, when she was hired by the local tribal organisation to form a Youth dance group one summer. A couple of Elders were upset about the practicing of yuraq and they asked the dance group to stop. Nalikutaar’s grandmother was the one who encouraged her to continue: “My grandma, she was all about it!” Despite the encouragement, Nalikutaar felt uncomfortable continuing dancing in the village, so she took the dance practice to the beach. She recollects taking her grandpa’s four wheeler with the trailer to pick up the dancers and drive down to the beach with the kids in the trailer, sometimes as far as the Arolik: “We were dancing without knowing we were near Nunalleq!” Sometimes, her grandmother would join them and dance with the kids, being so proud of them. She also acknowledges the support of a number of older members of the community over the years who supported the dancers in the school and helped with song composition and practices.

Attitudes towards yuraq have changed in the village since Nalikutaar was young. The artifacts related to dancing and ceremonial life helped resolve some of the conflicts, and brought back a general acceptance and appreciation of dancing to Quinhagak. Nalikutaar speculates that reluctance was maybe connected to a sense of loss and feeling despondent about being unable to pass songs on like other communities. This change in attitude she sees as linked to the Elders’ acceptance of Nunalleq to be explored and excavated, an open mindedness that led to some of their local history being saved and unravelled, eventually leading to cultural revival.

M. Akiqaralria Williams perceives the artifacts as unknown, but somehow, at the same time, familiar. She links this to an embedded cultural knowledge, and the artifacts visualising the stories shared by Elders. Lynn Church, originally from Quinhagak, who was employed by the Project as camp manager in the first years of excavation, also sees how this visualisation actually inspired story telling: “People started seeing artifacts (…) That’s when the Elders started talking. They started talking about their stories that they didn’t want to tell before. Their memories started to come back” (Branstetter 2019).

In many ways, the Nunalleq excavation has worked as an incentive in the community for reconnecting with traditional Yup’ik culture, and to emphasise the worth of history. It also provided an area where younger and older generations can meet and find a common language to move forward into a future that is strengthened by the past.

Final Reflections: Past, Present and Future

Archaeology and traditional transmission of Yup’ik history are expressions of different ontologies. Jacqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland puts forth that Yup’ik ways of being are different to western science structure, where all the “whys” are answered. “Part of being Yup’ik is just knowing that, just knowing and not asking why, because some of that is tied into traditional knowledge and all the stories for teachings.” If archaeology is to be relevant in a Yup’ik context, it needs to be aware of this and allow for a more collaborative and open-ended relationship with the past. Perhaps the reason archaeology has resonated so clearly with younger generations is their ability to navigate and reconcile these different cultural traditions.

The link between artifacts and Elders’ knowledge is repeatedly emphasised by the Yup’ik authors of this paper. To them, the artifacts are closely linked to ancestral voices and teachings. They are not mute, but vivid, embedded with knowledge, and, as expressed by Lonny Alaskuk Strunk, they let you see and feel the creativity in the material and tools used in their craft. When Elders know what particular artifacts are used for, they bring out more stories and knowledge of our history and how our ancestors lived.

M. Akiqaralria Williams also reflects on an inherited resilience of her people, that seemingly lasts through time, and that may be strengthened from insights drawn from the past. She expresses an admiration for the ancient engineering and accomplished craftsmanship reflected in the archaeology and artifacts created by ancestors who lived their lives without any of the modern technology we rely on today. She ponders, “From what I know and heard, sometimes they say that we have it the easy way instead of the hard way. Then again, we learn it the hard way before it gets easy…” She sees how artifacts had, and continue to have, a practical use in peoples’ daily lives, and how the hard work her ancestors went through, led up to where we are today. This insight can work as a learning experience for future generations, in the challenges they face from a changing world. She points to the importance of sharing the knowledge from the past; so, when hardship comes, generations to come will be prepared for anything that conflicts with their modern lifestyle. Thus, past, present and future are linked, collective, and active.

The biggest concern for the future, as expressed by all the Yup’ik authors of this paper, is that these voices will go silent with the passing of their older Elders, those in their 80s, and their fear of not capturing their Indigenous local knowledge in time to pass it on. Their hope is to engage in and transmit as much traditional local knowledge as possible before it is too late. The stories and local knowledge, the lived experiences, leave with the mind and body when Elders pass. This needs to be seized and shared with the generations yet to come. Without it, what will become of us, without telling them what it was like and where they came from?

In retrospect, drawing from what we have learned over the course of more than a decade of collaborative community-based research in Quinhagak, we can identify some key insights for future collaborations. Firstly, the importance of planning for and facilitating youth engagement at an early stage of a project, and in a more formalised way than on an ad-hoc basis. We would also encourage actively seeking those contact areas, often found by engaging with the local school. Always, we acknowledge the vitally important guidance and knowledge of Elders in the community, without whom we would not have the rich insights or immediacy of lived experience that they bring to the interpretation of the Nunalleq collection. Consequently, a core aim for the future will look towards creating more opportunities for intergenerational teaching spaces, where stories, skills, and ideas can be born and shared between Elders and these young culture bearers of the future.

Concluding Remarks

Community leaders and Elders often express concern over the lack of engagement with traditional ways of life among younger generations, while many from these younger generations, as evidenced by our authors, are acutely aware of what knowledge risks being lost. What these generations have in common is a shared resilience, as Chuna Macintyre observes: “Culture persists, it comes through in many forms, sometimes in very unexpected ways” (Watterson 2018). Ultimately, this resilience and connection to Yup’ik heritage looks different for each generation.

The generations now making up the community leaders have themselves often experienced a forceful estrangement from their culture in the form of boarding schools and regimental colonial legislation, and many have had to rediscover their heritage and reconnect with their roots. It is these generations who have been leading in cultural revival movements, of which the Nunalleq Project can be seen as forming a part. The generation who is now in their 20s, on the other hand, has formed a strong connection with their past, their heritage, and their culture. They are thus defining their own engagements, perhaps differently from what their Elders expect. They are empowered in their cultural connection in a different way—via cultural revival, postcolonial influences, and colonial structures being made increasingly accountable for the continued trauma they are causing among Indigenous people. Thus, standing on a different platform and with decidedly differing experiences of being Indigenous, they are now forming their own relationships with their traditional culture. These are the future community leaders, and they have a strong sense of Self and being Yup’ik.