Eskimo of North Alaska

This book provides an overview of the Eskimo culture of Northern Alaska that the author found while he was doing his fieldwork in the region from 1958-1962. Chance spent the majority of his study time in Barrow, Kaktovik, and Wainwright, Alaska. One of his main projects was to study the degree of contact the Eskimos had had with Western culture, and how this was affecting their emotional well-being. Due to the nature of this study, much of this ethnography centers on the comparison between customs in the past and customs in the present, and on identifying factors that might be responsible for change. The book includes material on the population and environment, child rearing, economic life in the past and in the present (1960s, that is), family and village structure, authority and politics, cultural values, and religious beliefs. Chance argues that, in the past, in order to survive, the Eskimos had to adapt their society and culture to fit the extreme conditions of the far North. Hunger was a powerful force, and fatalism a common response. One major aspect of change brought about by exposure to Western culture has been the possibility of working for wages. This has greatly reduced the role of hunger in society, but it has also required the people to remain in one location for great lengths of time. Wage labor has led to thousands of other consequences for the material culture as well as for the structure of society. At the end of the book are found a glossary of Eskimo vocabulary, a list of references cited, and an annotated list of recommended readings for further study. The book is illustrated with a few small black-and-white sketches. The prose is quite clear and accessible to general readers. Chance avoids making the book simply a dry presentation of facts by interspersing anecdotes or traditional Eskimo stories in the text where appropriate.