Wainwright, Alaska: the Making of Inupiaq Cultural Continuity in a Time of Change. (Volumes I and II) (Subsistence, Culture Change, Arctic).

Abstract

Wainwright, a predominantly Inupiaq settlement on Alaska's northern coast, has been indirectly affected by oil developments at Prudhoe Bay, particularly by oil revenues generated by the North Slope Borough. Using ethnographic fieldwork, protocol interviews, and archival and published literature, this dissertation describes Wainwright in the early 1980's, the period when oil revenue expenditures crested. Topics include: demography, household size and composition, kinship, governance, social institutions, economy, subsistence harvests, and the social organization of these harvests. This historical development of social institutions is traced, and the effect of windfall wealth on these institutions is investigated. Ecological positions which explain present-day Inupiaq society in terms of adjustments to a harsh environment are misguided in their romanticism. While Inupiaq society bears the stamp of its environment, it has been profoundly shaped by its adjustments to Western society. Wainwright's history is divided into three periods: aboriginal (precontact), traditional, and post-World War II. Wainwright became a stable community after western contact. Both the traditional and postwar periods are characterized by the community's integration into the national economy. During the traditional period, this integration centered on the harvests of wild resources (bowhead whales, caribou, and furbearers) and Inupiaq cultural expectations helped structure market production and the conditions of work. Thus, Inupiaq traditions dominated many social institutions even though the market helped shape settlement patterns, the economy, and the harvest of wild resources. During the postwar period, integration centered on wage work and government transfer payments. As Wainwright's harvest-based economy became more peripheral, Inupiaq cultural expectations no longer structured production or the conditions of work. Hence, the harvest of wild resources took on more the aspect of a cultural act or domestic consumption. However, the harvest and sharing of wild resources continued to support the viability of household economics, of significant kinship and friendship ties, and of a set of commonly held beliefs about social and natural relationships. Finally, this dissertation attempts to join Boasian methods of ethnographic-description-as-analysis to the modern world, including recent modes of ethnographic analysis.