|
Shamanism Among Alaska Natives
Shamanism among Alaska Natives was particularly important as it served to construct their special connection to their land, and a kinship with the animals with whom they share that land. Before the introduction of western culture and the religions that are now practiced in Alaska, there was a common spiritual connection made with the people to the land they occupied. The most common name for this connection is shamanism. Shamanism differs in every culture where it is practiced, in Alaska it is centered in the animals that are common in the area. Through the use of many myths, stories, and ceremonies these animals are personified and their spirits made tangible and in turn are deeply woven within the Native Alaska people today. It was through the shaman that the spirit world was connected to the natural world. A shaman in Alaska Native culture was a mediator, healer and the spirit worlds’ mouthpiece. Although shamanism is no longer popularly practiced, it was and continues, to be th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alaska Natives
Alaska Natives (also known as Alaskan Natives, Native Alaskans, Indigenous Alaskans, Aboriginal Alaskans or First Alaskans) are the indigenous peoples of Alaska and include Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a number of Northern Athabaskan cultures. They are often defined by their language groups. Many Alaska Natives are enrolled in federally recognized Alaska Native tribal entities, who in turn belong to 13 Alaska Native Regional Corporations, who administer land and financial claims. Ancestors of Native Alaskans or Alaska Natives migrated into the area thousands of years ago, in at least two different waves. Some are descendants of the third wave of migration, in which people settled across the northern part of North America. They never migrated to southern areas. For this reason, genetic studies show they are not closely related to native peoples in South America. Alaska Natives came from Asia. Anthropologists have stated that their journey from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Koyukuk, Alaska
Koyukuk () (Koyukon: ) is a city in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 96, down from 101 in 2000. , Koyukuk is one of a number of Alaskan communities threatened by erosion. History The Koyukon Athabascans had seasonal camps and moved when the wild game migrated. There were 12 summer fish camps located on the Yukon River between the Koyukuk River and the Nowitna River. Trading between the Koyukon and Inupiat of the Kobuk River area has occurred before the arrival of Europeans. After the Alaska Purchase, a United States military telegraph line was constructed along the north side of the Yukon River and Koyukuk became the site of a telegraph station. A trading post opened around 1880, just before the gold rush of 1884–85. Steamboats on the Yukon, which supplied gold prospectors ran before and after 1900 with 46 boats in operation on the river in the peak year of 1900. A measles epidemic and food shortages during 1900 red ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Alaska Native Medicine
Traditional Alaska Native medicine is a cultural style of healing that has been passed down from one generation of Alaska Native peoples to the next and is based on success over time and oral tradition. In contrast to an allopathic or western view of medicine, traditional Alaska Native medicine believes that illness stems from an individual's disharmony with the environment and healing must therefore begin in the person's spirit. Food Seal Seal oil, whale oil, and the meats of these animals are the predominant healing substances used by members of the Inuit culture. These substances are believed to provide warmth which is a condition of health to this culture as warmth is the essence of well-being. Seal is used preventatively by hunters who eat the animal's meat before going on a hunt to increase endurance and ward off weakness, hypothermia, and frostbite. The oils and meat are also used to prevent depression and other diseases of the soul. Medicinally and as a remedy, seal i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inuit Religion
Inuit religion is the shared spiritual beliefs and practices of the Inuit, an Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous people from Alaska, northern Canada, parts of Siberia and Greenland. Their religion shares many similarities with some Alaska Native religions. Traditional Inuit religious practices include animism and shamanism, in which spiritual healers mediate with spirits. Today many Inuit follow Christianity, but traditional Inuit spirituality continues as part of a living, oral tradition and part of contemporary Inuit society. Inuit who balance indigenous and Christian theology practice religious syncretism. Inuit cosmology provides a narrative about the world and the place of people within it. Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley writes: Traditional stories, rituals, and taboos of the Inuit are often precautions against dangers posed by their harsh Arctic environment. Knud Rasmussen asked his guide and friend Aua (angakkuq), Aua, an ''angakkuq'' (spiritual healer), about Inuit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Angakkuq
The Inuit angakkuq (plural: ''angakkuit'', Inuktitut syllabics ᐊᖓᑦᑯᖅ or ᐊᖓᒃᑯᖅ; Inuvialuktun: '; kl, angakkoq, pl. ''angakkut'') is an intellectual and spiritual figure in Inuit culture who corresponds to a medicine man. Other cultures, including Alaska Natives, have traditionally had similar spiritual mediators, although the Alaska Native religion has many forms and variants. Role in Inuit society Both women, such as Uvavnuk, and men could become an angakkuq, although it was rarer for women to do so. The process for becoming an angakkuq varied widely. The son of a current angakkuq might be trained by his father to become one as well. A shaman might make a prophecy that a particular infant would become a prophet in adulthood. Alternatively, a young man or woman who exhibited a predilection or power that made them stand out might be trained by an experienced mentor. There are also instances of angakkuit claiming to have been called to the role through dreams o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alaska Native Religion
Traditional Alaskan Native religion involves mediation between people and spirits, souls, and other immortal beings. Such beliefs and practices were once widespread among Inuit (including Iñupiat), Yupik, Aleut, and Northwest Coastal Indian cultures, but today are less common. Merkur 1985: 4 They were already in decline among many groups when the first major ethnological research was done. For example, at the end of the 19th century, Sagdloq, the last medicine man among what were then called in English, "Polar Eskimos", died; he was believed to be able to travel to the sky and under the sea, and was also known for using ventriloquism and sleight-of-hand. Merkur 1985:134 The term "Eskimo" has fallen out of favour in Canada and Greenland, where it is considered pejorative and "Inuit" is used instead. However, "Eskimo" is still considered acceptable among some Alaska Natives of Yupik and Inupiaq (Inuit) heritage and is at times preferred over "Inuit" as a collective reference. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Culture Of The Tlingit
The culture of the Tlingit people, Tlingit, an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people from Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon, is multifaceted, a characteristic of Northwest Coast peoples with access to easily exploited rich resources. In Tlingit culture a heavy emphasis is placed upon family and kinship, and on a rich tradition of oratory. Wealth and economic power are important indicators of status, but so is generosity and proper behavior, all signs of "good breeding" and ties to aristocracy. Art and spirituality are incorporated in nearly all areas of Tlingit culture, with even everyday objects such as spoons and storage boxes decorated and imbued with spiritual power and historical associations. Kinship The Tlingit kinship system, like most Northwest Coast societies, is based on a matrilineal structure, and describes a family roughly according to Morgan's Crow kinship, Crow system of kinship. The society is wholly divided into two distinct K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kitch Kawk In Dancing Costume
Kitsch ( ; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as naïve imitation, overly-eccentric, gratuitous, or of banal taste. The avant-garde opposed kitsch as melodramatic and superficial affiliation with the human condition and its natural standards of beauty. In the first half of the 20th century, kitsch referred to products of pop culture that lacked the depth of fine art. However, since the emergence of Pop Art in the 1950s, kitsch is sometimes re-appreciated in knowingly ironic, humorous or earnest fashion. To brand visual art as "kitsch" is often still pejorative, though not exclusively. Art deemed kitsch may be enjoyed in an entirely positive and sincere manner. For example, it carries the ability to be quaint or "quirky" without being offensive on the surface, as in the ''Dogs Playing Poker'' paintings. Kitsch can refer to music, literature, or any work, and relates to camp, as they both incorporate irony and extravagance. His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tlingit
The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ),"Lingít Yoo X'atángi: The Tlingit Language." ''Sealaska Heritage Institute.'' (retrieved 3 December 2009) in which the name means 'People of the Tides'.Pritzker, 208 The Russian name ' (, from a Sugpiaq-Alutiiq term ' for the worn by women) or the related German name ' may be encountered referring to the people in older historical literature, such as |
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous ( Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. Many significant coal deposits are younger than this and originate from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. Coal is used primarily as a fuel. While coal has been known and used for thousands of years, its usage was limited until the Industrial Revolution. With the invention of the steam engine, coal consumption increased. In 2020, coal supplied about a quarter of the world's primary energy and over a third of its electricity. Some iron ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Devil's Club
Devil's club or devil's walking stick (''Oplopanax horridus'', Araliaceae; syn. ''Echinopanax horridus'', ''Fatsia horrida'') is a large understory shrub native to the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, but also disjunct on islands in Lake Superior. It is noted for its large palmate leaves and erect, woody stems covered in noxious and irritating spines. It is also known as Alaskan ginseng and similar names, although it is not a true ginseng. Description Devil's club generally grows to tall. Some stands located in rainforest gullies or moist, undisturbed areas can reach heights of or more. The spines are found along the upper and lower surfaces of veins of its leaves as well as the stems. The leaves are spirally arranged on the stems, simple, palmately lobed with 5–13 lobes, across. The flowers are produced in dense umbels diameter, each flower small, with five greenish-white petals. The fruit is a small red drupe diameter. The plant is covered with brittle yellow s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Totem Pole
Totem poles ( hai, gyáaʼaang) are monumental carvings found in western Canada and the northwestern United States. They are a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are usually made from large trees, mostly western red cedar, by First Nations and Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast including northern Northwest Coast Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian communities in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities in southern British Columbia, and the Coast Salish communities in Washington and British Columbia. The word ''totem'' derives from the Algonquian word '' odoodem'' [] meaning "(his) kinship group". The carvings may symbolize or commemorate ancestors, cultural beliefs that recount familiar legends, clan lineages, or notable events. The poles may also serve as functional architectural features, welcome signs for village visitors, mortuary vessels for the remain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.png "Click for more on -> Alaska Natives")
_01.jpg "Click for more on -> Culture Of The Tlingit")
