Western Alaska is the homeland of an Inuit (Eskimo) people who call themselves Yup’ik, a name meaning “real people” (from yuk meaning “person” and pik meaning “real”). Their homeland is a subarctic tundra where the land is flat, crossed by numerous streams and sloughs. The environment nurtures plants and animals which provide food for the people. Like many other hunting and gathering people throughout the world, Yup’ik spirituality was focused largely on the need to secure food. Their ceremonies honored and celebrated the spirits of plants and animals.
As with other animistic hunting peoples, animals were felt to have souls which would be reincarnated. Thus, rituals sought to appease the soul of the animal so that it would give itself to the Yup’ik hunters who needed its meat. In his entry on the Eskimo in the Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Charles Smythe writes:
“Animals were thought to resemble humans in having souls or spirits that could think, feel, and talk. Eskimos believed that animals would give themselves voluntarily to the hunter who acted properly toward them, and the purpose of many ritual practices was in fact to show respect for and give thanks to the spirits of animals taken for food.”
In her book The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks, Ann Fienup-Riordan reports:
“The Yupiit traditionally performed six major ceremonies, three of which focused on the creative reformation of the relationship between the human community and the spirit world on which they relied.”
Many of the Yup’ik ceremonies involved the use of masks. In an article in American Indian Art, museum curator Eva Fognell writes:
“The elaborate masking tradition of the Central Yup’ik of southwestern Alaska centers on the spiritual quest of the hunt.”
Eva Fognell goes on to write:
“Masks symbolize the transformation of animals into humans, as well as shamanic ties between humans and the spirits of nature that exercise control over animals.”
With regard to ceremonial masks, Theodore Brasser, in his book Native American Clothing: An Illustrated History, writes:
“They ranged from realistic to distorted faces, to totally abstract creations. Miniature versions of the masks danced by the men served the women as finger masks in their pantomime dances.”
Yup’ik Masks and Museums
By the late nineteenth century, many museums, both American and European, were acquiring collections of Native American artifacts. With regard to the collecting of American Indian artifacts for museums during the late nineteenth century, Pieter Hovens, in an article in American Indian Art, writes:
“Collecting what were viewed as the vestiges of traditional material culture was part of the ensuing enthnographic salvage effort undertaken by researchers and museums from North America and Western Europe.”
The collection frenzy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries resulted in a number of museum and private collections of Yup’ik masks. Ann Fienup-Riordan also reports:
“During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, museums built up large inventories of Yup’ik masks contributed by explorers, traders, missionaries, teachers, federal agents, and natural scientists.”
Ann Fienup-Riordan also reports:
“Turn-of-the-century Yup’ik masks have acquired long and convoluted histories and meant many things to many people—shaman’s visions, heathen idol, primitive art, priceless antique, and, most recently, symbol of original spirituality and distinct identity.”
By the end of the twentieth century, there were concerns about the museum collections of Native American objects. In some tribal traditions in which masks are used ceremonially, they are not to be sold or given away, but this is not the case with the Yup’ik. Ann Fienup-Riordan writes:
“Unlike Northwest Coast ceremonial regalia, Yup’ik masks were not family or clan property. The maker could dispose of a mask as he saw fit.”
Ann Fienup-Riordan also reports:
“Men made masks for use in specific ceremonies and normally destroyed them after use in the ritual cleansing that followed all masked performances.”
In the early twentieth century, thanks to the influence of artist Paul Cezanne, Native American artifacts began to be considered as works of art in many museums. In his chapter in Robes of Splendor: Native North American Painted Buffalo Hides Michel Waldberg writes about Indian art:
“It wasn’t until the aesthetic revolutions brought on by cubism, and especially surrealism, and the establishment of anthropology as a science, that objects previously limited to curiosity status legitimately attained the dignity of art.”
Because of the influence of Cezanne, by 1912, American art museums were beginning to exhibit Native American works as forms of art. Today, many museums consider Yup’ik masks to be works of art as well as ethnographic and historical artifacts. Shown below are some of the Yup’ik masks which have been displayed in the Portland Art Museum and in the Maryhill Museum of Art.
Portland Art Museum
Shown below are some of the Yup’ik masks which are on display in the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon.
Maryhill Museum of Art
Shown below are the Yup’ik masks which are on display in the Maryhill Museum of Art near Goldendale, Washington. The masks shown below were made in the 1970s.
Indians 101/201
Twice each week—on Tuesdays and Thursdays—this series presents American Indian topics. Indians 201 is an expansion/revision of an earlier essay. More about the Arctic Culture Area from this series:
Indians 101: The Arctic Culture Area
Indians 101: Inuit Daily Life (Art Diary)
Indians 101: Some Inuit Art (Photo Diary)
Indians 101: Some Inuit Carvings (Art Diary)
Indians 101: Some Inuit Animals (Art Diary)
Indians 101: Some Inuit Birds (Art Diary)
Indians 101: Shamans in the Arctic Culture Area
Indians 101: Some Arctic Artifacts (Photo Diary)