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Yupik peoples

The Yupik (/ˈjuːpɪk/; Russian: Юпикские народы) are a group of Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples of western, southwestern, and southcentral Alaska and the Russian Far East. They are related to the Inuit and Iñupiat. Yupik peoples include the following:

Total population

33,889
22,000[1]

~1,700

Population[edit]

The Yupʼik people are by far the most numerous of the various Alaska Native groups. They speak the Central Alaskan Yupʼik language, a member of the Eskaleut family of languages.


As of the 2002 United States Census, the Yupik population in the United States numbered more than 24,000,[5] of whom more than 22,000 lived in Alaska, the vast majority in the seventy or so communities in the traditional Yupʼik territory of western and southwestern Alaska.[6] United States census data for Yupik include 2,355 Sugpiat; there are also 1,700 Yupik living in Russia.[7] According to 2019-based United States Census Bureau data, there are 700 Alaskan Natives in Seattle, many of whom are Inuit and Yupik, and almost 7,000 in the state of Washington.[8][9]

Origins[edit]

The common ancestors of the Eskimo and Aleut (as well as various Paleo-Siberian groups) are believed by anthropologists to have their origin in eastern Siberia, arriving in the Bering Sea area approximately 10,000 years ago.[13] Research on blood types, supported by later linguistic and DNA findings, suggests that the ancestors of other indigenous peoples of the Americas reached North America before the ancestors of the Eskimo and Aleut. There appear to have been several waves of migration from Siberia to the Americas by way of the Bering land bridge,[14] which became exposed between 20,000 and 8,000 years ago during periods of glaciation. By about 3,000 years ago, the progenitors of the Yupiit had settled along the coastal areas of what would become western Alaska, with migrations up the coastal rivers— notably the Yukon and Kuskokwim— around 1400 AD, eventually reaching as far upriver as Paimiut on the Yukon and Crow Village on the Kuskokwim.[10]


The Siberian Yupik may represent a back-migration of the Eskimo people to Siberia from Alaska.[15]

(born 1973), currently serving as the U.S. representative from Alaska's at-large congressional district since September 2022; she was formerly a judge on the Orutsararmiut Native Council tribal court as well as executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, Bethel city councilor, and member of the Alaska House of Representatives

Mary Peltola

(1936–2021), first certified traditional doctor in Alaska

Rita Pitka Blumenstein

(born 1989), Olympic snowboarder

Callan Chythlook-Sifsof

(1933–2017), businessman and politician

Moses Paukan

Saint (1916-1979), Eastern Orthodox priest's wife (matushka) who was canonized as a saint in 2023 by the Orthodox Church in America

Olga Michael

(1893–1974), Alaskan Native leader

Crow Village Sam

List of Alaska Native tribal entities

List of

Notable Central Alaskan Yupʼik people

Barker, James H. (1993). Always Getting Ready — Upterrlainarluta: Yupʼik Eskimo Subsistence in Southwest Alaska. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press.

Branson, John and Tim Troll, eds. (2006). Our Story: Readings from Southwest Alaska — An Anthology. Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska Natural History Association.

Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska. (1968). Alaska Natives & The Land. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press.  0-19-509427-1.

ISBN

. (1983). The Nelson Island Eskimo: Social Structure and Ritual Distribution. Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska Pacific University Press.

Fienup-Riordan, Ann

Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (1990). Eskimo Essays: Yupʼik Lives and How We See Them. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (1991). The Real People and the Children of Thunder: The Yupʼik Eskimo Encounter With Moravian Missionaries John and Edith Kilbuck. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.

Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (1994). Boundaries and Passages: Rule and Ritual in Yupʼik Eskimo Oral Tradition. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.

Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (1996). The Living Tradition of Yupʼik Masks: Agayuliyararput (Our Way of Making Prayer). Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press.

Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (2000). Hunting Tradition in a Changing World: Yupʼik Lives in Alaska Today. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

Fienup-Riordan, Ann. (2001). What's in a Name? Becoming a Real Person in a Yupʼik Community. University of Nebraska Press.

Jacobson, Steven A., compiler. (1984). Yupʼik Eskimo Dictionary. Fairbanks, Alaska: , University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Alaska Native Language Center

Jacobson, Steven A. "Central Yupʼik and the Schools: A Handbook for Teachers". Juneau: Alaska Native Language Center, 1984.

Kizzia, Tom. (1991). The Wake of the Unseen Object: Among the Native Cultures of Bush Alaska. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

. “Culture and Change for Iñupiat and Yupiks of Alaska.” 2004. Alaska. 12 Nov 2008

MacLean, Edna Ahgeak

Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.

ISBN

Morgan, Lael, ed. (1979). Alaska's Native People. Alaska Geographic 6(3). Alaska Geographic Society.

Naske, Claus-M. and Herman E. Slotnick. (1987). Alaska: A History of the 49th State, 2nd edition. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.

Oswalt, Wendell H. (1967). Alaskan Eskimos. Scranton, Pennsylvania: Chandler Publishing Company.

Oswalt, Wendell H. (1990). Bashful No Longer: An Alaskan Eskimo Ethnohistory, 1778–1988. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.

Pete, Mary. (1993). "Coming to Terms." In Barker, 1993, pp. 8–10.

Reed, Irene, et al. Yupʼik Eskimo Grammar. Alaska: University of Alaska, 1977.

de Reuse, Willem J. (1994). Siberian Yupik Eskimo: The language and its contacts with Chukchi. Studies in indigenous languages of the Americas. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.  0-87480-397-7.

ISBN

Alaska Native Language Center

Archived 2017-09-02 at the Wayback Machine

Genealogical tree

of Yupik languages.

The distribution map

the identification of Inuit portrayed in photographic collections at Library and Archives Canada

Project Naming