A villager once called it “next door to heaven,” a rocky islet with stilt homes perched on its steep slope, amid the bountiful Bering Sea.
Ukivok Village in 1978
NOAA Photo Library
Now an Oregon-based research team has recovered evidence that a village flourished 800 to 900 years ago on King Island, suggesting that Inupiat walrus hunters inhabited the tiny island 40 miles off the coast of Alaska’s Seward Peninsula for at least a millennium.
The multi-disciplinary group of scientists, led by OSU anthropologist Deanna Kingston, confirmed the age of materials at the village site using carbon dating techniques.
The finding came from a four-year archaeological investigation of the island’s culture, traditional knowledge, language, place names, animals and plants, underway with a $563,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Beginning in 2003, Kingston — whose mother grew up on the island — returned each year with 30 King Island elders and a scientific team that included an archaeologist, an ornithologist, a botanist and a linguist.
Most residents of King Island moved to Nome more than a half century ago, but maintained their identity as a unique Inupiat village through a dance group and other cultural traditions. Villagers still return to the rugged slopes to fish and hunt in summers. Kingston’s project aims to record and preserve their traditional ecological knowledge in the face of rapidly changing climate and ice retreat that threatens subsistence life.
Villagers return in summers
NOAA Photo Library
In an Associated Press story from 2003, Kingston said she expected to find a trove of ecological knoweldge by working with King Island elders and asking them to interpret the land and its lore.
“There are things elders know that they can teach to the western scientists,” she told AP’s Rachel D’Oro. “My oldest uncle was said to be able to predict the weather from the top of King Island. He would go up there to observe the conditions and then tell the others that ‘in three days, it willbe safe to cross to the mainland.’ And sure enough, in three days, they could cross.
“I’ve heard King Island called a place next door to heaven. People say it was special becaue it provided them with a variety of of food, including greens, fish, birds, sea mammals and berries.”
An OSU story released last month provides more detail on the study:
“Like many other Alaska native communities, King Islanders possess deep and unique knowledge about the natural world upon which they have depended for centuries,” said Kingston, whose mother grew up on the island.
“They lived on the ice and the land for generations, but their culture is now threatened by a rapidly changing climate that is melting the ice and pushing walruses farther and farther offshore.”
The OSU anthropologist last visited Alaska in December 2006 to work on a map with Inupiaq elder Teddy Mayac and a group of others who grew up on King Island. Together, they have mapped almost all 150 place names so far.
Deanna Kingston“My team (including brother Scott Kingston and graduate research assistant Kai Henifin) made audiotapes of the elders pronouncing some of the names of all the places,” Kingston said, noting that only about 100 native speakers are living today. “We would like to keep some aspect of the language alive, so having the pronunciation recorded is very important.”
Kingston plans to release a DVD for King Island community members in late 2007 documenting the data and knowledge gathered by the team.
One of Kingston’s biggest rewards was bringing elder community members back to the island to assist with the research. King Island has not been inhabited since 1966.
“Other than the hunters who still go back regularly, many of the elders had not been there in many years,” she said. “People noticed birds on the island that were never there before, which could be a result of climate change.”
The key, says Kingston, is to document as much of the knowledge of the King Islanders as possible before it is lost.
