The Boy Who Lived With Seals

When their son disappeared, his parents thought they would never see him again. But years later, the boy was spotted swimming with the seals. Shannon's haunting pictures dramatize the bittersweet beauty of this traditional story from the Chinook people of the Northwest. Full-color illustrations.

The Yupiit in southwestern Alaska are members of the larger family of Inuit cultures. Including more than 20,000 individuals in seventy villages, the Yupiit continue to engage in traditional hunting activities, carefully following the seasonal shifts in the environment they know so well. During the twentieth century, especially after the construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, the Yup'ik people witnessed and experienced explosive cultural changes. Anthropologist Ann Fienup-Riordan explores how these subarctic hunters engage in a "hunt" for history, to make connections within their own communities and between them and the larger world. She turns to the Yupiit themselves, joining her essays with eloquent narratives by individual Yupiit, which illuminate their hunting traditions in their own words. To highlight the ongoing process of cultural negotiation, Fienup-Riordan provides vivid examples: How the Yupiit use metaphor to teach both themselves and others about their past and present lives; how they maintain their cultural identity, even while moving away from native villages; and how they worked with museums in the "Lower 48" on an exhibition of Yup'ik ceremonial masks. Ann Fienup-Riordan has published many books on Yup'ik history and oral tradition, including Eskimo Essays: Yup'ik Lives and How We See Them, The Living Tradition of Yup'ik Masks and Boundaries and Passages. She has lived with and written about the Yupiit for twenty-five years.

This book brings together as complete a record of traditional Yupik rules and rituals as is possible in the late twentieth century. Incorporating elders' recollections of the system of ruled boundaries and ritual passages that guided their parents and grandparents a century ago, Ann Fienup-Riordan brings into focus the complex, creative Yupik world view - expressed by ceremonial exchanges and the cycling of names, gifts, and persons - which continues to shape daily life in communities along the Bering Sea coast. Her analysis is illustrated with many contemporary and historical photographs. Identifying "metaphors to live by, " Fienup-Riordan tells of "the Boy Who Went to Live with Seals" and "the Girl Who Returned from the Dead." She explains how in Yupik cosmology their stories illustrate relationships among human beings, animals, and the spirit world - the "boundaries and passages" between death and the renewal of life.

Before it was written, this book was spoken. For ten winter days in 1977, the orator Paul John—widely respected as a dean of Yup’ik elders, and recognized for his tireless advocacy of Yup’ik language and traditions—held an audience of Yup’ik students rapt at Nelson Island High School, in southwest Alaska. Hour after hour he spoke to the young people, sharing life experiences and Yup’ik narratives, never repeating a tale. Now, more than a quarter-century after Paul John’s extraordinary performance, Sophie Shield’s translations and Ann Fienup-Riordan’s editing have brought his words back to life, and to a new audience. This book records one elder’s attempt to create a moral universe for future generations through stories about the special knowledge of the Yup’ik people. Tales both authentically Yup’ik and marked by Paul John’s own unique innovations are presented in a bilingual edition, with Yup’ik and English text presented in facing pages. As Paul John says, "In this whole world, whoever we are, if people speak using their own language, they will be presenting their identity and it will be their strength."

A lost boy who has grown up in the sea with seals returns to his tribe but is strangely changed.

A lost boy who has grown up in the sea with seals returns to his tribe but is strangely changed.

This volume contains insightful essays on significant spiritual moments in eight different Native American cultures: Absaroke/Crow, Creek/Muskogee, Lakota, Mescalero Apache Navajo, Tlingit, Yup'ik, and Yurok.

After witnessing the birth of a seal, Ben forges a close bond with it, observing and sharing her life in the ocean.