TOPIC: Analyze a case study to explore the structure of society
Respond to each question separately Make connections to concepts in the book, lecture, and/or film–include at least two
references to the book, lecture, and/or film in your discussion of each question.
Select the following articles to read and respond to the questions posed below.
NOTE: some of the articles are quite old and these societies may have changed since.
That is okay as it is important to just look at how things worked in the past as well!!!
Understanding Eskimo Science;
Article 13
Understanding
Eskimo Science
Traditional hunters’ insights into the natural world are worth rediscovering.
Richard Nelson
Just below the Arctic Circle in the boreal
forest of interior Alaska; an amber afternoon in mid-November; the temperature
-20°; the air adrift with frost crystals,
presaging the onset of deeper cold.
Five men—Koyukon Indians—lean
over the carcass of an exceptionally large
black bear. For two days they’ve traversed the Koyukuk River valley,
searching for bears that have recently entered hibernation dens. The animals are
in prime condition at this season but extremely hard to find. Den entrances, hidden beneath 18 inches of powdery snow,
are betrayed only by the subtlest of
clues—patches where no grass protrudes
from the surface because it’s been
clawed away for insulation, faint concavities hinting of footprint depressions
in the moss below.
Earlier this morning the hunters took
a yearling bear. In accordance with
Koyukon tradition, they followed elaborate rules for the proper treatment of
killed animals. For example, the bear’s
feet were removed first, to keep its spirit
from wandering. Also, certain parts were
to be eaten away from the village, at a
kind of funeral feast. All the rest would
be eaten either at home or at community
events, as people here have done for
countless generations.
Koyukon hunters know that an animal’s life ebbs slowly, that it remains
aware and sensitive to how people treat
its body. This is especially true for the
potent and demanding spirit of the bear.
The leader of the hunting group is
Moses Sam, a man in his 60s who has
trapped in this territory since childhood.
He is known for his detailed knowledge
of the land and for his extraordinary success as a bear hunter. “No one else has
that kind of luck with bears,” I’ve been
told. “Some people are born with it. He
always takes good care of his animals—
respects them. That’s how he keeps his
luck.”
Moses pulls a small knife from his
pocket, kneels beside the bear’s head,
and carefully slits the clear domes of its
eyes. “Now,” he explains softly, “the
bear won’t see if one of us makes a mistake or does something wrong.”
Contemporary Americans are likely
to find this story exotic, but over the
course of time episodes like this have
been utterly commonplace, the essence
of people’s relationship to the natural
world. After all, for 99 percent of human
history we lived exclusively as huntergatherers; by comparison, agriculture
has existed only for a moment and urban
societies scarcely more than a blink.
From this perspective, much of human experience over the past several
million years lies beyond our grasp.
Probably no society has been so deeply
alienated as ours from the community of
nature, has viewed the natural world
from a greater distance of mind, has
lapsed into a murkier comprehension of
its connections with the sustaining environment. Because of this, we have great
difficulty understanding our rootedness
to earth, our affinities with nonhuman
life.
I believe it’s essential that we learn
from traditional societies, especially
those whose livelihood depends on the
harvest of a wild environment—hunters,
fishers, trappers, and gatherers. These
people have accumulated bodies of
knowledge much like our own sciences.
And they can give us vital insights about
responsible membership in the community of life, insights founded on a wisdom we’d long forgotten and now are
beginning to rediscover.
Since the mid-1960s I have worked as
an ethnographer in Alaska, living intermittently in remote northern communities and recording native traditions
centered around the natural world. I
spent about two years in Koyukon Indian
villages and just over a year with Inupiaq
Eskimos on the Arctic coast—traveling
by dog team and snowmobile, recording
traditional knowledge, and learning the
hunter’s way.
Eskimos have long inhabited some of
the harshest environments on earth, and
they are among the most exquisitely
adapted of all human groups. Because
plant life is so scarce in their northern
terrain, Eskimos depend more than any
other people on hunting.
Eskimos are famous for the cleverness
of their technology—kayaks, harpoons,
skin clothing, snow houses, dog teams.
But I believe their greatest genius, and the
ANNUAL EDITIONS
2
basis of their success, lies in the less tangible realm of the intellect—the nexus of
mind and nature. For what repeatedly
struck me above all else was their profound knowledge of the environment.
Several times, when my Inupiaq hunting companion did something especially
clever, he’d point to his head and declare: “You see—Eskimo scientist!” At
first I took it as hyperbole, but as time
went by I realized he was speaking the
truth. Scientists had often come to his
village, and he saw in them a familiar
commitment to the empirical method.
Traditional Inupiaq hunters spend a
lifetime acquiring knowledge—from
others in the community and from their
own observations. If they are to survive,
they must have absolutely reliable information. When I first went to live with Inupiaq people, I doubted many things they
told me. But the longer I stayed, the more
I trusted their teachings.
For example, hunters say that ringed
seals surfacing in open leads—wide
cracks in the sea ice—can reliably forecast the weather. Because an unexpected
gale might set people adrift on the pack
ice, accurate prediction is a matter of life
and death. When seals rise chest-high in
the water, snout pointed skyward, not
going anywhere in particular, it indicates
stable weather, the Inupiaq say. But if
they surface briefly, head low, snout parallel to the water, and show themselves
only once or twice, watch for a sudden
storm. And take special heed if you’ve
also noticed the sled dogs howling incessantly, stars twinkling erratically, or the
current running strong from the south.
As time passed, my own experiences
with seals and winter storms affirmed
what the Eskimos said.
Like a young Inupiaq in training, I
gradually grew less skeptical and started
to apply what I was told. For example,
had I ever been rushed by a polar bear, I
would have jumped away to the animal’s
right side. Inupiaq elders say polar bears
are left-handed, so you have a slightly
better chance to avoid their right paw,
which is slower and less accurate. I’m
pleased to say I never had the chance for
a field test. But in judging assertions like
this, remember that Eskimos have had
close contact with polar bears for several
thousand years.
The Inupiaq hunter
possesses as much
knowledge as a highly
trained scientist in our
own society
During winter, ringed and bearded
seals maintain tunnel-like breathing
holes in ice that is many feet thick. These
holes are often capped with an iglooshaped dome created by water sloshing
onto the surface when the animal enters
from below. Inupiaq elders told me that
polar bears are clever enough to excavate
around the base of this dome, leaving it
perfectly intact but weak enough that a
hard swat will shatter the ice and smash
the seal’s skull. I couldn’t help wondering if this were really true; but then a
younger man told me he’d recently followed the tracks of a bear that had excavated one seal hole after another, exactly
as the elders had described.
In the village where I lived, the most
respected hunter was Igruk, a man in his
70s. He had an extraordinary sense of animals—a gift for understanding and predicting their behavior. Although he was
no longer quick and strong, he joined a
crew hunting bowhead whales during the
spring migration, his main role being that
of adviser. Each time Igruk spotted a
whale coming from the south, he counted
the number of blows, timed how long it
stayed down, and noted the distance it
traveled along the open lead, until it vanished toward the north. This way he
learned to predict, with uncanny accuracy, where hunters could expect the
whale to resurface.
I believe the expert Inupiaq hunter possesses as much knowledge as a highly
trained scientist in our own society, although the information may be of a different sort. Volumes could be written on the
behavior, ecology, and utilization of Arctic animals—polar bear, walrus, bowhead
whale, beluga, bearded seal, ringed seal,
caribou, musk ox, and others—based entirely on Eskimo knowledge.
Comparable bodies of knowledge existed in every Native American culture
before the time of Columbus. Since then,
even in the far north, Western education
and cultural change have steadily eroded
these traditions. Reflecting on a time before Europeans arrived, we can imagine
the whole array of North American animal species—deer, elk, black bear, wolf,
mountain lion, beaver, coyote, Canada
goose, ruffed grouse, passenger pigeon,
northern pike—each known in hundreds
of different ways by tribal communities;
the entire continent, sheathed in intricate
webs of knowledge. Taken as a whole,
this composed a vast intellectual legacy,
born of intimacy with the natural world.
Sadly, not more than a hint of it has ever
been recorded.
Like other Native Americans, the Inupiaq acquired their knowledge through
gradual accretion of naturalistic observations—year after year, lifetime after lifetime, generation after generation,
century after century. Modern science
often relies on other techniques—specialized full-time observation, controlled
experiments, captive-animal studies,
technological devices like radio collars—which can provide similar information much more quickly.
Yet Eskimo people have learned not
only about animals but also from them.
Polar bears hunt seals not only by waiting at their winter breathing holes, but
also by stalking seals that crawl up on the
ice to bask in the spring warmth. Both
methods depend on being silent, staying
downwind, keeping out of sight, and
moving only when the seal is asleep or
distracted. According to the elders, a
stalking bear will even use one paw to
cover its conspicuous black nose.
Inupiaq methods for hunting seals,
both at breathing holes and atop the
spring ice, are nearly identical to those of
the polar bear. Is this a case of independent invention? Or did ancestral Eskimos learn the techniques by watching
polar bears, who had perfected an adaptation to the sea-ice-environment long
before humans arrived in the Arctic?
The hunter’s genius centers on knowing an animal’s behavior so well he can
turn it to his advantage. For instance, Igruk once saw a polar bear far off across
flat ice, where he couldn’t stalk it without being seen. But he knew an old technique of mimicking a seal. He lay down
Article 13. Understanding Eskimo Science
3
in plain sight, conspicuous in his dark
parka and pants, then lifted and dropped
his head like a seal, scratched the ice, and
imitated flippers with his hands. The
bear mistook his pursuer for prey. Each
time Igruk lifted his head the animal kept
still; whenever Igruk “slept” the bear
crept closer. When it came near enough,
a gunshot pierced the snowy silence.
That night, polar bear meat was shared
among the villagers.
A traditional hunter like Igruk plumbs
the depths of his intellect—his capacity
to manipulate complex knowledge. But
he also delves into his animal nature,
drawing from intuitions of sense and
body and heart: feeling the wind’s touch,
listening for the tick of moving ice, peering from crannies, hiding as if he himself
were the hunted. He moves in a world of
eyes, where everything watches—the
bear, the seal, the wind, the moon and
stars, the drifting ice, the silent waters
below. He is beholden to powers we
have long forgotten or ignored.
In Western society we rest comfortably on our own accepted truths about
the nature of nature. We treat the environment as if it were numb to our presence and blind to our behavior. Yet
despite our certainty on this matter, accounts of traditional people throughout
the world reveal that most of humankind
has concluded otherwise. Perhaps our
scientific method really does follow the
path to a single, absolute truth. But there
may be wisdom in accepting other possibilities and opening ourselves to different views of the world.
I remember asking a Koyukon man
about the behavior and temperament of the
Canada goose. He described it as a gentle
and good-natured animal, then added:
“Even if [a goose] had the power to knock
you over, I don’t think it would do it.”
For me, his words carried a deep metaphorical wisdom. They exemplified the
Koyukon people’s own restraint toward
the world around them. And they offered
a contrast to our culture, in which possessing the power to overwhelm the environment has long been sufficient
justification for its use.
“Each animal knows way
more than you do,” a
Koyukon Indian elder was
fond of telling me.
We often think of this continent as
having been a pristine wilderness when
the first Europeans arrived. Yet for at
least 12,000 years, and possibly twice
that long, Native American people had
inhabited and intensively utilized the
land; had gathered, hunted, fished, settled, and cultivated; had learned the terrain in all its details, infusing it with
meaning and memory; and had shaped
every aspect of their life around it. That
humans could sustain membership in a
natural community for such an enormous
span of time without profoundly degrading it fairly staggers the imagination.
And it gives strong testimony to the adaptation of mind—the braiding together
of knowledge and ideology—that linked
North America’s indigenous people with
their environment.
A Koyukon elder, who took it upon
himself to be my teacher, was fond of telling me: “Each animal knows way more
than you do.” He spoke as if it summarized all that he understood and believed.
This statement epitomizes relationships to the natural world among many
Native American people. And it goes far
in explaining the diversity and fecundity
of life on our continent when the first
sailing ship approached these shores.
There’s been much discussion in recent years about what biologist E. O.
Wilson has termed “biophilia”—a deep,
pervasive, ubiquitous, all-embracing affinity for nonhuman life. Evidence for
this “instinct” may be elusive in Western
cultures, but not among traditional societies. People like the Koyukon manifest
biophilia in virtually all dimensions of
their existence. Connectedness with nonhuman life infuses the whole spectrum of
their thought, behavior, and belief.
It’s often said that a fish might have
no concept of water, never having left it.
In the same way, traditional peoples
might never stand far enough outside
themselves to imagine a generalized
concept of biophilia. Perhaps it would be
impossible for people to intimately
bound with the natural world, people
who recognize that all nature is our own
embracing community. Perhaps, to bring
a word like biophilia into their language,
they would first need to separate themselves from nature.
In April 1971 I was in a whaling camp
several miles off the Arctic coast with a
group of Inupiaq hunters, including Igruk, who understood animals so well he
almost seemed to enter their minds.
Onshore winds had closed the lead
that migrating whales usually follow, but
one large opening remained, and here the
Inupiaq men placed their camp. For a
couple of days there had been no whales,
so everyone stayed inside the warm tent,
talking and relaxing. The old man rested
on a soft bed of caribou skins with his
eyes closed. Then, suddenly, he interrupted the conversation: “I think a whale
is coming, and perhaps it will surface
very close.…”
To my amazement everyone jumped
into action, although none had seen or
heard anything except Igruk’s words.
Only he stayed behind, while the others
rushed for the water’s edge. I was last to
leave the tent. Seconds after I stepped
outside, a broad, shining back cleaved
the still water near the opposite side of
the opening, accompanied by the burst of
a whale’s blow.
Later, when I asked how he’d known,
Igruk said, “There was a ringing inside
my ears.” I have no explanation other
than his; I can only report what I saw.
None of the Inupiaq crew members even
commented afterward, as if nothing out
of the ordinary had happened.
This article originally appeared in Audubon magazine, September/October 1993, pp. 102–109. Adapted from Biophilia by Richard Nelson, 1993.
Published by Island Press. © 1993 by Richard Nelson. Reprinted by permission of Susan Bergholz Literary Services, New York. All rights reserved.
Address these questions based on the article you read:
Be sure to include the name of the article at the top of your post.
DO NOT QUOTE–PARAPHRASE ONLY AND CITE PROPERLY
1. Describe the general nature of the society/subculture/or group in question as depicted in the article
(be sure to state what group is involved and where the study occurred).
2. Identify and explain three important cultural practices (i.e., belief, rituals, food ways, social organization, etc.)
depicted in the article. How do these components work together?
3. What does the case study tell us about the society in general?
Of course you will not have the total picture of any group in these articles but there is information about
certain practices as they relate to specific groups. So dive in and dig it out.
Did you know that effective analysis of concepts requires professionalism in handling academic research Papers? Do no compromise on your grade choose professional Research writers at elitetutorslab.com