Youth and Courtship
Given this insecurity about themselves and their place in the world, Inupiat teenagers derived their strongest emotional ties from one another, and in many respects formed a closed social group. Spending almost all of their time together, they wore western clothes, used western slang expressions and emulated mannerisms largely western in origin. The only Inupiat clothing regularly worn were fur parkas, and less often, kamiks [boots]. Boys wore slacks of denim or wool, sport shirts and sweaters, shoepacks and rubber boots, and even black leather jackets with names emblazoned on the back. Girls liked slacks or wool skirts, slips, brassieres, sweaters, and wool jackets or coats. For parties they enjoyed wearing nylon stockings, dresses, and high-heeled shoes. Jewelry and cosmetics, and sometimes even a home permanent, completed the picture.
Another major influence was the anti-tuberculosis campaign of the 1950s which sent many young North Slope Inupiat to sanitariums in Alaska and as far away as the state of Washington. This experience added greatly to their knowledge of popular American culture. By 1960, twelve of the fifty-odd adolescents in the northeastern North Slope village of Kaktovik had spent between nine months and two years in these sanitariums. Other North Slope villages had similar temporary emigrations. Although the effect of hospital life depended largely on the age of the patient, the severity of the illness, and the length of stay, all I?upiat returned with a greater awareness of the outside world, which was then passed on to others. Some Inuipat children who had spent several years in hospital returned no longer able to speak 1nupiaq. Others no longer cared.
In addition to school and hospital experiences, travel encouraged the spread of the new culture. Each year, youths took trips from their villages to Fairbanks, Anchorage, and farther south to visit friends and relatives who had migrated to these urban centers. When they came home, their less experienced peers served as avid audiences for stories of their travels. Barrow itself was an important center of American culture and influence, due particularly to the extensive medical, educational, church, military, and other governmental facilities present in the area. Barrow also had become large enough to have its own movie theatre which showed commercial films several times a week. Wainwright and other smaller villages were similarly affected. Newspapers, mail-order catalogs, teenage magazines, religous tracts, comics, radios, records, tape recordings, and even an occasional True Confessions or T.V. Guide found their way into Inupiat homes in North Slope villages and were thoroughly absorbed by the young
By the mid-1960s, strong emotional bonds between teenagers, enhanced by their common school experiences, stays in hospitals, and sharing of popular culture generated by the mass media, had seriously affected their ability and that of their parents to maintain effective channels of communication with one another. Seldom did Inupiat youths voluntarily engage in activities other than those associated with household chores or hunting, with their parents and older relatives. Adolescent participation in Sunday school and similar church activities dropped off significantly. By fourteen, they had considerable freedom in making their own decisions even though the rest of the household might suffer some hardship resulting from it. Those wishing to attend private schools such as Sheldon Jackson Junior College in Sitka, Alaska, were indulged, even when the family’s income could hardly cover the five hundred dollar tuition.
Because most Inupiat adolescents identified more with American ideas and concepts generated in the south than with local ones, they frequently found themselves with little to do, and as a result became bored. This restlessness was expressed in phrases such as “There is nothing to do,” or “The day goes so slowly at home.” Of course, definitions of boredom differed among individuals and locales. Adolescents living in more isolated villages like Anaktuvuk Pass wished for the more active life of Barrow. Barrow youths were restless because they didn’t have sufficient access to new movies, dancing, parties, and similar activities found in Fairbanks and Anchorage. Dissatisfied youths from isolated villages like Kaktovik were heard to comment: “I think I will go to Barrow. There, they have movies all the time and the streets are full of people.”
Still others were discontented with the seeming isolation of village life for quite a different reason. They felt left behind in the sweep of new trends. These youths were older, had limited schooling, and never lived or visited outside the village. Sitting on the sidelines at parties, they would say wistfully, “Gee. I feel lonely,” or “I wish they would play games I know how to play.” Though less identified with the outside world, neither were they committed to earlier Inupiat ways. Trying to bridge the gap, they too found few friends outside their own group.
When not occupied with home or school responsibilities, most teenagers at mid-century spent their time together playing cards, singing, or going for walks. Group singing, often with guitar accompanyment, was especially popular. Following an evening church service, eight or ten young people would get together to sing hymns and popular songs. Then they would go for a walk or join others at a local coffee shop.
Still, these new activities did not diminish interest in some of the more traditional pastimes such as hunting, fishing, camping, and boating. Groups of boys and girls often went on all-day outings. If they learned that a young married couple was camping along the coast, arrangements were made to visit them over night or for a weekend. Other young people staying at summer fish camps could also count in regular visits from these teenagers. Finally, there was the simple activity of “staying up all night.” Adolescent youths considered such an event as an entertainment in itself. When deciding how to spend an evening, the suggestion might be made, “Let’s stay up,” in the same manner as the proposal, “Let’s make a tape,” or “Let’s go for a walk.”
Boys and girls in their early teens rarely paired off, most social contacts being sought with the group rather than a given individual. Youths might tease each other with the comment, “You interested in him, right?” but it was not until the age of fifteen or sixteen that Inupiat young people developed a strong interest in members of the opposite sex. At this time, boys began to seek out a particular girl, pay special attention to her, talk with her more than with others, sit beside her in church, and in other ways let her know of his interest. However, except in the most sophisticated segment of the Barrow teenage world, physical demonstrativeness in front of others was deemed improper. And even in Barrow, putting an arm around a girl’s shoulder or giving her a squeeze was done in a joking manner – for any open evidence of affection would embarass both the girl and her friends.
Boys rarely visited girls in their homes unless older family members were there; and it was even less common for a girl to visit a boy’s home. But as male youths became older, they attempted to arrange clandestine meetings by passing notes at school suggesting a time and place. By the middle teens, girls were very much aware of boys’ attentions. Their conversations centered around boys and their activities; they dressed for them, giggled about them, and showed each other secret pictures of their favorite boy friends. The late teens brought more sexual experimentation. Girls did not regularly solicit such involvement, but once initiated, frequently continued. Finding a secluded meeting place presented problems, particularly in winter. Homes of young married couples were often available, although privacy was limited. Parents sometimes expressed concern over this kind of activity, but seldom voiced such opinions openly or directly. Religious precepts did not condone premarital sex, but this seemed to have little effect on the youth’s behavior. In earlier times, no clearly defined restrictions were imposed. At infancy, children soon became aware of others sexual activity. By puberty, young men and women occasionally traveled together away from the village, at which time they might contract a quasi-married relationship. Trial marriages were also common – although unbridled promiscuity was viewed with disapproval.
In summary, the youth of the early 1960s faced a difficult future for which they had few skills. On the surface they exhibited a markedly middle class American veneer. Underneath, they were unsure of themselves and what they wanted to become. Few planned realistically for the future. Some spoke of going away to school to become trained in professional or semi-professional work related to education, bookkeeping, cooking, and science. The desire to make money was a common goal of many regardless of the kind of position it entailed And there was a rather unrealistic assumption that jobs would be available when needed. Significantly, most young people wanted to remain permanently in Arctic Alaska. Even those who planned on going away to school, planned to return.
Marriage and Family
The bilateral extended family has always been the basic unit of Inupiat social structure. Recognition of kin through at least three generations on both the mother and father’s side of the family provided an interwoven pattern of kinship linking together family units. By means of economic partnerships, quasi-kin groups effectively extended cooperative ties to non-kin as well. Under this arrangement, all Inupiat who called each other by real or fictive kinship terms assumed a relation of sharing and cooperation; and were seen by outsiders as being responsible for the actions of the entire kin group.
By the 1960s, these extended family and economic partnerships had begun to decline in importance. Economic interdependence also lessened as opportunities for individual wage labor increased. As the desire for economic gain drew Inupiat away from their earlier settlements to more urbanized towns and cities, migrants felt less obligation to pass on the benefits of their newly obtained income to more distant relatives beyond the immediate kin network. However, cooperative kin ties were maintained in local secondary economic activities such as baby-tending, butchering meat, setting and checking of fish nets, loading and unloading boats, constructing ice cellars, painting houses, and sharing common household items. In each of these instances cooperation was not only expected, but if a request went unheeded, the individual quickly became an object of gossip.
Choice of marriage partner also changed. In smaller villages like Kaktovik, prior to World War II, marriage between cousins was fairly common. At Barrow, it was far less so. After the War, young people paid little attention to these earlier preference patterns. While possible deleterious effects of cousin marriage on future children were occasionally raised, such marriages were not considered immoral and in small villages with a limited number of eligible spouses, they were almost necessary.
Spouse exchange, on the other hand, which had earlier established long distance reciprocity and gave spouse-like recognition between two couples, had not been practiced for years. Female partners in spouse exchange called each other aipariik, “the second.” The four partners were collectively referred to as nuliaqatigiik, and their children used the reciprocal term qatangutigiik, for eachother. Significantly, those individuals who were qatang, had definite obligations toward one another similar to those between brothers and sisters. But by the early 1960s, those Inupiat using these terms were well into their forties or older.
Although formalized spouse-exchange disappeared, sexual mores of the time remained relatively free. As viewed by local missionaries, Inupiat attitudes were “halfway between the old and the new.” Although more conservative elders and other leaders of local churches in North Slope villages encouraged their young people to marry before they became sexually involved, the advice was largely disregarded and many young couples did not marry until they had a child. This pattern was closely linked to two factors: first, economic responsibilities of marriage as defined within the revised gender division of labor made demands which young Inupiat men found difficult to meet. And second, young men and women did not feel they needed a marriage bond to fulfil their sexual interests.
When a couple decided to marry, they made arrangements with the local missionary to hold the ceremony in the village church. Even in remote inland villages most couples were joined in marriage by a minister or priest. In North Alaska, the older custom where a young man and woman regularly moved into the household of one of their parents for some time before becoming legally married had largely disappeared by the late 1950s. Even older couples whose common-law arrangement was accepted by the missionaries and other Whites in the community, were encouraged to go through the legal process to ensure the inheritance rights of their children.
Changes in courtship and marriage patterns were closely related to opportunities for wage employment and the greater mobility of young people. In this rapidly changing economic environment, prestige and eligibility as a suitor were measured more by the young man’s wage-earning abilties than by his skill as a hunter. Thus, some young men left their communities for jobs in Barrow, Fairbanks, or Anchorage in order to enhance their suitability as potential spouses. Needless to say, this mobility seriously disturbed the sex ratio of smaller villages.
Following marriage, young couples often moved in with the family of the bride or groom. This arrangement eased the economic responsibilities of the new married pair and also helped them learn the techniques and skills necessary in supporting and maintaining a family. It was at this time that young couples came to appreciate the need to become competent in subsistence skills associated with hunting, fishing, and the butchering of meat.
In keeping with the new responsibilities of maintaining larger households, women spent much of their day-to-day lives tending babies, washing dishes and clothes, cleaning, cooking, getting water, chopping wood, and burning trash. In some of these tasks like obtaining wood and water, male household members also helped. In addition, men assisted in the heavy work of setting up tents and building drying racks, making windbreaks for butchering meat, filling fuel tanks, and starting recalcitrant washing machines. Women, however, spent far less time in skin sewing efforts; and given the reduced hunting activity of their employed spouses, in butchering and distributing meat as well. Still, the cultural expectations associated with the older Inupiat gender division of labor could be recognized in the comments of an elderly male from Barrow:
Women are supposed to take care of the house. A man does the hunting; a woman takes care of the kids and the food. She should know how much they got left, how much food there is for the kids. They always check the food. The man is always asking his wife “how much have you got left?” And the woman says, “we have so much to last us for so many days or weeks.” The woman always takes care of the food, and sews or patches clothes for the husband and the kids. She also scrapes all the caribou skin, seal, or what ever the skin is. But the man must help too once in a while. When we are a little short of food, the man spends most of his time hunting. The man never cooks or feeds the children because he hunts every day. Although the women are supposed to take care of the house and kids, they sometimes help the men too. Women go upriver to hunt the ptarmigan while the men are hunting the caribou. My wife was always known as a good shooter. She killed lots of patarmigan and even went seal hunting with me sometimes. Once in a while when women do not have a lot of children to take care of, they may even go out by themselves and hunt the caribou in summertime. In winter, when the children are inside, women don’t do much hunting.
Although economic considerations played a major role in consolidating the marriage relationship, the bond between spouses was not entirely limited to this sphere. In many instances, couples enjoyed one another’s companionship and held each other in mutual affection and respect. They also instructed one another in various activities. Young men taught their wives to how to shoot or flense a caribou while a wife might offer pointers on how to improve the butchering of a seal or ugruk. This cooperative teaching was found in all North Slope Inupiat villages irrespective of the degree of family acculturation.