JOLLES, Carol Zane (with Elinor Mikaghaq Oozeva), 2002 Faith Food and Family in a Yupik Whaling Community, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 364 pages.

“At the end of 1879, St. Lawrence Island was devastated” (p. 310). So begins the concluding chapter of Carol Jolles’ insightful ethnography of a group of Yupik Eskimos who live on a stretch of volcanic peaks and plateaus rising out of the Bering Sea. Although an estimated 1,000 of 1,200 people died in that late 19^th century catastrophe caused by famine and disease, the Island has experienced a demographic and cultural resurgence. Its two settlements, Savoonga and Gambell, have a combined population of 1,301 according to the 2000 US Census, and part of Jolles’s objective is to explain how a group of people who suffered so much tragedy were able to thrive in such a remote place with such an inhospitable climate. Using data she collected during several years of fieldwork as well as information she has gleaned from extensive archival research, including the letters and journals of former missionaries, Jolles argues that faith, food, and family were (and continue to be) “the driving forces in the rebuilding of the St. Lawrence Island community” (p. 310). This ethnography is much more than a story about revival, however. It has much to offer a wide range of students and scholars. For the introductory level college student, Jolles provides a window into a wide range of cultural practices and social institutions. Her analysis of rituals and beliefs surrounding pregnancy, miscarriage, birth, and death provide excellent examples of how culture comes into play at crucial moments of the life course. Her analysis of traditional marriage customs and kinship dynamics, such as how marriages are arranged, preferred partners, the practice of “buying” the bride, and the institution of an obligatory groom service following marriage provide interesting composites of how cultural rules are interwoven into the fabric of everyday experience. Her description of whaling and the ways in which it contributes to individual and group identity provides a wonderful illustration of how a whale hunt creates all sorts of opportunities for the affirmation of individual prestige and family solidarity. To strike a whale is a source of great honour for the captain of the whaling boat, the striker and the crew. The transformation of a whale into widely distributed food gifts affirms the many social ties radiating from the individual to the ramka (clan), and beyond. Jolles’s text has much to offer advanced scholars of Inuit studies as well. Those concerned about the recent rise in suicide in the Arctic and who attribute its underlying causes to the perils of modernity might want to know that St. Lawrence Islanders sanctioned a type of suicide before they encountered Christianity. Elders remember a number of islanders who committed suicide to appease malevolent spirits, such as a parent who took his own life in order to save an afflicted child. The parent’s death, the community believed, might placate those spirits who were the source of sickness. Jolles also portrays with great care the faith life of contemporary St. Lawrence Islanders, including their many ceremonies, forms of prayer, and religious affiliations. This ethnography is one of only a handful about Native North Americans that focuses specifically on the place of Christianity in everyday life. Jolles’s careful weaving of contemporary accounts of faith with ethnohistorical documentation provides a nuanced view of the encounter between Christianity and a pre-Christian belief system. She argues that there exist as many points of continuity and convergence between the two systems as episodes of rupture and contradiction. A recurring theme in Jolles’s ethnography is that although all islanders have converted to Christianity, they continue to retain many pre-Christian beliefs and practices. Although contemporary islanders …