The Iñupiat, numbering around 19,500 people (2000), have lived along the coast and in the mountains of northern Alaska between Norton Sound and the Mackenzie Delta for at least 1000 years. Their language, Iñupiaq, is related to the Inuit languages spoken in Arctic Canada and Greenland.

Most of the present-day communities are located on the shores of Bering Strait and the Beaufort Sea, while a few communities are located further inland in the major river valleys of the Brooks Range, and the Kobuk and Noatak drainages (see map). Today, many Iñupiat live further south as well, in the large cities of Fairbanks or Anchorage.

Nineteenth-century Iñupiaq life

Iñupiaq culture is based on the hunting of sea mammals and caribou, a subsistence pattern going back some 2000 years in the Bering Strait region. Traditionally, the Iñupiat lived from hunting and fishing, supplemented by collecting berries and plants. They followed a seasonal round of activities that varied regionally, depending on the availability of specific resources in a particular area.

In summer, many families moved out to their fish camps to catch and dry salmon (Fig. 1), or they combined fishing with trading at one of the large regional fairs. The fair at Sisualik, near the present-day community of Kotzebue, was one of the largest in Alaska, attracting hundreds of people from all over northwest Alaska, as well as from the Diomede Islands and Siberia. Trade goods included caribou skins, seal oil and skins, pottery, jade, and Russian tobacco. Here, Iñupiat Asatchaq Jimmie Killigivuk (1891-1980) of Point Hope talks about trading:

‘Aniŋatchaq took a wife, and together they became umialiks, skin boat owners. And next summer they took their skin boat and went north from Tikiġaq [Point Hope] to Utqiaġvik [modern Barrow]. They took seal oil and whale oil to exchange for skins from the north coast people.’

In winter, people hunted seals and, occasionally, polar bears. Ice-fishing provided additional food (Fig. 2). From the end of the nineteenth century, trapping of fur-bearing animals became important as well.