HUNTERS IN THE GARDEN: YUPIK SUBSISTENCE AND THE AGRICULTURAL MYTHS OF EDEN

by Kuntz, Benjamin

Yupik writers and Yupik subsistence offer valuable challenges, parallels, and alternative models to mainstream nature writings discourse surrounding human relationships to the land, a discourse that carries an inherent agricultural bias. An introduction to western Alaskas Nunivak Island provides context for Chapter 1, which demonstrates the fluidity of cultural, geographical, and historical margins through discussion of the works of Yupik journalist John Active and historian and ethnographer James Clifford. Chapter 2 provides an overview of Yupik subsistence centered around the community of Bethel, Alaska, then subjects mainstream nature writing, represented mostly by Wendell Berry, to critiques supplied by Canadian anthropologist Hugh Brody, who asserts that Western discourse carries traces of the myths of Eden and the curses of the book of Genesis. Chapter 3 returns to the geography and stories of Nunivak Island before detailing the contributions that Yupik writers like Oscar Kawagley and John Active have to offer back to the prevailing discourse, contributions that stress the importance of sharing and kinship and stress the dangers of commodification.