The Living Tradition of Yup'ik Masks on Tribalarts.com

WINTER 1996

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	The
	Living Tradition
	of
	Yup'ik Masks:
1. Posed image of an angalkut	by Ann Fienup-Riordan

The name Yup’ik is the self designation of the Eskimos of Western Alaska and is derived from their word for "person" (yuk) plus the postbase -pik meaning "real" or "genuine." Like many indigenous people throughout the world, they consider themselves "real people" in contrast to presumably less-real outsiders. They are members of the larger family of Inuit cultures extending from Prince William Sound on the Pacific coast of Alaska to Bering Strait, and from there six-thousand miles north and east along Canada’s Arctic coast into Labrador and Greenland. Within that extended family, they are members of the Yup’ik-speaking, not Inuit/Iñupiaq-speaking, branch.

In 1992, the Yup’ik community in southwestern Alaska joined forces with anthropologists and the museum community to organize an exhibition of 19th and early 20th century Yup’ik masks. The Anchorage Museum and the Coastal Yukon Mayors' Association were particularly instrumental in making the planned exhibition a reality. Over the next two years, it will be on view at a number of venues in the United States.

A first encounter with Yup’ik masks may leave the viewer overwhelmed by their varied abundance and imaginative force. They differ in size as much as in shape, ranging from tiny forehead "maskettes" measuring three or four inches in diameter to monstrous twenty-pound constructions that no dancer could wear without external support. The Yupiit, who are known for their tolerance of multiple perspectives on the way the world works, were open to individual variation among maskmakers and the angalkut (shamans) who directed them.

2. Unique Kuskokwim animal mask.
Masks, in essence, were stage props, special but not sacred, and most were destroyed after use. Sometimes a group of masked dancers took the floor, but at other times a single performer focused attention. The masks’ appearance shifted as the dancers moved in the dimly lit space. Masked performers transcended themselves in the audiences eyes, but the mask also transformed the performer’s experience. Dancing behind the wooden barrier of the mask simultaneously restricted physical sight and enhanced spiritual vision. Some masks were believed to actually imbue the dancers with the spirits represented. The unsteady, changeable character of these past performances is hard to imagine in the quiet, carefully lit atmosphere of museum exhibit cases.

Masks presented a wide range of beings and experiences through performances and stories. One told of an angalkuq’s journey under the sea or into the skyland, and included appended parts representing the creatures he encountered. Others represented animal yuit (persons). Carvers made masks depicting insects, berries, wood, ice, and myriad creatures of everyday life.

The formal continuity of Yup’ik masks is also impressive. Carvers creatively appropriated and transformed a common set of design elements, including toothy mouths, thumbless hands, "goggled" eyes, and feather halos. Expert Yup’ik carvers, of whom there were hundreds during the last half of the 19th century, each had a recognizable vision and style.

Carvers strove to represent the helping spirits or animal yuit they, or the angalkut who directed them, encountered in vision, dream, or experience. Although some, such as angalkut, were recognized as having more direct contact with the spirit world than others, through masks and masked dancers everyone could vividly experience it.

CLASSIFYING YUP’IK MASKS

The dozen or so scholars who have seriously studied Yup’ik masks over the last hundred years have classified them in different ways. Edward Nelson (1899:394-95), the first and most perceptive Yup’ik ethnographer, distinguished shaman masks (representing either a "tunghak," inua, or yua) from masks representing "totemic animals" (animal helpers). In all cases, the wearer was infused with the spirit of the creature represented.

3. 1962 Photgraph of an exhibition case.
Older Yupiit speak of different kinds of masks observed in their youth. Kay Hendrickson (January 1, 1994), born on Nunivak Island in 1910 and a talented maskmaker, spoke at length about the masks he observed, including angalkut’s masks, animal masks, and contemporary masks made for sale. "The angalkut made many different kinds of masks. An angalkuq would make a mask depicting his tuunraq. A mask would depict an irciq [semihuman being]. . . . Some of them would make carvings of birds. . . . Some had human faces carved on them. They were all men’s faces."

Yup’ik men and women continue to make some of the same distinctions. Many speak about both angalkut masks, made to reveal extraordinary experiences, and animal masks, made to elicit the animal’s return in the future. Yet these "animal masks" were also often considered "of the angalkut." No hard-and-fast typology is possible because it is unlikely that Yup’ik maskmakers divided their creations into rigid types. We cannot read back from the unmarked masks in museum collections to general functional categories.

Apparent types of masks overlap. In the few cases that stories are known, they teach caution in categorizing. It is risky at best at this distance in time to classify a mask as "yua" or "tunghak" based on appearance. The shape of the mask can be deceptive. The simplest, most "realistic" mask may be iconic of a complicated experience or spirit journey. Alternately, some scholars describe the typical yua mask as an animal face or body in which a human face (the face of the animal’s person) is embedded, either in its eye or on its back. This human face, however, may also represent the angalkuq and the animal, his or her helper. The only sure way to interpret a mask’s features is to know the story it was created to represent.

Although an external, formal mask typology is impossible, other ways of looking at masks shed light on their multiple meanings. One is to listen to Yup’ik elders who saw the last masked dances. This is not so much a solution to the issue of classification as a change in perspective. The focus shifts from the objects themselves to how people remember them. Just as there are limits in the classifications of nonnative experts (most of whom never saw the masks in use), there are limits to elders’ recollections. Many echo the late William Tyson (February 17, 1993), who said, "That was what I observed. Things I remember are from the recent time. I cannot imagine about things and speak, but I can talk about things I heard about." Any expert view—whether native or nonnative—is partial. What marks the real experts is recognition of the limits of their knowledge.

MASKS AS REVELATION, MASKED DANCING AS PRAYER

Today elders most often describe masks as vehicles for experiencing and, in some cases, influencing the beings they relied upon but did not normally encounter in day-to-day life. The masked performances both highlighted extraordinary past events and foreshadowed hopes for the future. Paul John (February 22, 1994), a Yup’ik elder, described the face masks he saw used on Nelson Island when he was young as "examples of what people can catch . . . representing what people might not have had":

4. Large flying swan mask.
I don’t know about the ones that belong to other people and what they stand for. I only saw some at my village representing different things. One would be a mask representing a fox, another would be a representation of an animal from the ocean, another one would be a representation of something else. Our ancestors decorated them with things that were desirable to acquire. . . .

Those masks are like examples [representations] of things they can catch. it is similar to the way white people use things as examples nowadays.

And then the ones that see that scene and see that example, if they know the meaning of it, they will suddenly remember and say, "So that’s what it is." . . .

They were meaningless masks, but they represented things they prayed for.

5. Pair of lower Kuskokwim dance fans.
They say our ancestors were not religious, and they say they didn’t know anything about God. But now that I am older, and I look back to how they lived and how they are today, I have come to understand that they were very religious. Not surrounded by different things from another culture, when they woke up and carried out the day according to the teachings, it was as if they were constantly praying.

But nowadays, when we get up, we don’t think much about anything because we see so many different things. We don’t pray to God.

Although among the most eloquent, Paul John is far from unique in his comparison between his forebears’ use of masks to ask for what they hoped to harvest and Christian prayer; other elders in southwestern Alaska increasingly express a similar attitude, emphasizing the common motive underlying masked dances and Christian prayer rather than their distinctive sources of power. In a planning meeting for the mask exhibit, Yup'ik members (April 15, 1994) gave an equally positive evaluation, describing the use of masks as a "petition to the animals to be available" to the people.

6. Finger masks in the shape of hands.
ANDY PAUKAN: When a shaman made a mask to be presented and composed a song about the mask, he would let the carver make a mask, telling him what to do. When the mask was done he would put the mask on and dance. . . . They would present the animal that the people used to survive and honor it, hoping that more of it came to the people. . . . They were praying. They were communing.

ELSIE MATHER: Down on the coast they would say they were pretending to be something when they danced, hoping it would become true. The lyrics of their songs would name the thing that was desired.

PAUL JOHN: During this time now people in aspiration use prayer. They would make a plea to God and pray very hard. That’s what it was. . . .

7. One of a pair of asymmetrical masks with beluga.
From a long time past they called a ceremonial mask an agayu. Before the priests introduced Christianity, when people told stories they would mention the agayuyaraq [the way or process of praying or requesting] that had been practiced by the people. . . from long, long ago. When they did a presentation with a mask they would say that they were praying, practicing the custom of agayuyaraq.

Paul John points out a critical etymology. In the past the verb base agayu- meant "to request" or "to participate in a ceremony." On Nunivak Island agayu translates simply as "mask." When Christian missionaries began arriving in the 1840s, the term agayu was applied to the newly introduced religious ceremonies and came to mean prayer, worship, and participation in the new religion. Today in southwestern Alaska, Agayun means God, agayulirta means "priest" or "minister," and agayu- translates both as "to pray" and "to cross oneself."

AGAYUYARAQ: "OF THE ANGALKUT"

8. Complementary masks collected at Cape Vancouver.
Along with their emphasis on continuity between the masked dances of the past and contemporary Christian prayer, most elders today emphasize the role of the angalkuq in the creation and performance of masked dances, primarily during the midwinter dance ceremony Agayuyaraq. People performed Agayuyaraq to interact with and influence the spirits of animals and other entities of the natural world to elicit successful hunting in the year to come.

In most places, Agayuyaraq was the final feast of the winter ceremonial season and was an intervillage event that rotated among related communities. This complex ritual involved singing songs of supplication to the spirits and yuit of the animals, accompanied by the performance of masked dances under the direction of the angalkuq.

9. Complementary masks collected at Cape Vancouver .
Like the Bladder Festival and the Feast for the Dead, Agayuyaraq was a legend as well as a rite. Nelson (1899:494-97) recorded the lower Yukon story of an angalkuq who journeyed up through the star holes to visit the "inuas" (persons or yuit) of the skyland in their heavenly qasgiq. From its roof hung wooden hoops decorated to represent the levels of the universe. Beside each person, the angalkuq saw a small wooden image representing a different mammal, bird or fish. The occupants of the skyhouse were the beings controlling the fish, birds, and land mammals.

The angalkuq later returned to earth, falling head first through the exit hole in the heavenly floor. When he awoke, he told the people to hold a festival during which they should decorate their qasgiq like the skyhouse he had visited. The people offered food to the persons of the skyland and sang songs in their honor to ensure the return of the animals. If satisfied with these offerings, the sky people would cause the images beside them to grow, endow them with life, and send them down to earth to replenish the supply.

MASKED DANCES

In preparation for Agayuyaraq the angalkuq directed the construction of the elaborate masks, through which the spirits revealed themselves as simultaneously dangerous and potentially benevolent. On Nunivak these masks were known as agayut (from agayu-, "to participate in a ceremony") and on the lower Yukon as avangcat (sing. avangcaq) or kegginaqut (lit. "things that are like a face," from kegginaq, "face, blade of a knife," plus -quq, "one that is like"). These powerful masks were dangerous and had to be carefully handled at all times. Women, especially when menstruating, were forbidden to touch them.

Prior to the performance, the masks were hidden under the benches of the qasgiq wrapped in grass mats, protected from human gaze, lest the animals be offended (Ray 1966:84). Masks were watched carefully when brought out for a performance and were never left alone: "They would care for the masks and hang them. Whenever they hung them they would never leave the qasgiq totally empty. They say that when they were left alone some of the masks would go outside. And they would rub against the other masks that were hanging" (Jasper Louis, February 25, 1994). Even when they let people see the faces of the masks, they always hid their backs. Some of the larger masks were hung from the ceiling with cords during performances, while others were held up to the dancer’s face with wooden mouthgrips which the audience never saw, as they were the agalkuq’s secret (Ray 1967:20).

The masks, which were concealed both before and after Agayuyaraq, were believed to endow the performer with supernatural vision during the performance. According to Nelson (1899:395), "When [masks are] worn in any ceremonial, . . . the wearer is believed to become mysteriously and unconsciously imbued with the spirit of the being which his mask represents, just as the namesakes are entered into and possessed by the shades at certain parts of the Festival of the Dead." The use of masks during Agayuyaraq provides a concrete image of the contrast between restricted vision and powerful supernatural sight. Masks simultaneously function as eyes into a world beyond the mundane and the visible sign of the agalkuq’s experience. Jasper Louis (May 28, 1993) reiterated this point:

They wore masks and would cry out sounds of the animals they have carved into masks. . .

They would make a mask depicting something. The songs of the angalkut, the composition would illustrate the thing they were depicting. We ordinary people can’t truly understand the essence of the mask the way an angalkuq did.

Did the masks belong to only the angalkut back then? They would carve the likeness of what they had seen. They would reveal the image. They have said they were the revelations of what they had experienced and seen.

Agayuliyararput, Our Way of Making Prayer: The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks

National Museum for the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, New York, NY, March 2 - August 24, 1997

National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. October 10 - December 31, 1997

Seattle Art Museum
February 12 - May 17, 1997

Portions of this text are excerpted from The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks by Ann Feinup-Riordan, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1996.

CITED REFERENCES

Nelson, Edward William. "The Eskimo about Bering Strait." Bureau of American Ethnology Annual Report for 1896-1897, vol 18, pt. 1, 1899. Reprint, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983.

Ray, Dorothy Jean. "The Eskimo of St. Michael and Vicinity, as Related by H. M. W. Edmonds." Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska 13(2), 1966. ———. Eskimo Masks: Art and Ceremony. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967.