FIENUP-RIORDAN, Ann, 2007 Yuungnaqpiallerput. The Way We Genuinely Live. Masterworks of Yup’ik Science and Survival. University of Washington Press, with Anchorage Museum Association and Calista Elders Council, 360 pages.

Written after a decade of close collaboration with Yup’ik elders, Ann Fienup-Riordan’s The Way We Genuinely Live was created with a museum exhibition of the same name at the Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center and Museum in Bethel, Alaska (2007). The book and exhibition feature Yup’ik tools, techniques, and technical knowledge, in relation to what Fienup-Riordan calls “Yup’ik science”: the technological, personal, and spiritual relationship of the Yup’ik with their homeland. In this way, descriptions of technology and spirituality—or science and art—are reconciled and harmonised throughout the book and the exhibition. In her introduction, Fienup-Riordan explains the guiding principles of Yup’ik science through various anecdotes of her interactions with Yup’ik elders. One such anecdote appropriately sets the tone of the book. At an early stage of her work, Fienup-Riordan suggested “technology” as the focus of the exhibition. This, in contrast to that of a previous exhibition on Yup’ik masks (Agayuliyararput [Our Way of Making Prayer], 1996). She was “reminded politely but firmly that Yup’ik tools and technology were also ‘our way of making prayer’” (p. 6). The book follows this premise and presents clearly and cleverly the interwoven spiritual and technological aspects of Yup’ik tools. Fienup-Riordan’s introduction also provides a brief but important presentation of the Yup’ik cultural landscape through an overview of the museum collections (from 13 museums in the USA and Germany) described later in further detail. The book’s organisation, suggested by Yupiit elders, follows yet another guiding principle. Instead of a conventional presentation of artefact classes, Fienup-Riordan assigns Yupiit artefacts to seasonal-use categories. Each chapter is richly illustrated with photographs that show Yupiit engaged in various seasonal activities and that relate to the featured artefacts. Appropriately, Yup’ik vocabulary is used extensively in naming objects, parts of objects, and abstract concepts. Throughout the body of the text, insets provide Western scientific explanations of Yup’ik technology, emphasising the connections between Western and Yup’ik science, although Fienup-Riordan argues both traditions are inherently complementary. The first chapter, “The Moral Foundations of Yup’ik Science,” centres on the personal relationships Yupiit enjoy with animals, marked by reciprocity and compassion, and governed by various restraints. Fienup-Riordan describes the ethics of, and motivations behind, sharing within the Yup’ik community. She further examines how these principles contrast with Western views on hunter-prey relationships and how this can conflict with dominant paradigms of resource management. She then develops this theme through a reflection on the divergent, if complementary, natures of Yup’ik and Western sciences, the former being based on observation and experience, directed toward function and outcomes, the latter being theoretical, law-seeking, and focused on hypothesis and explanation. In another chapter, Fienup-Riordan describes a central actor in Yup’ik community life, and the place of the transmission of knowledge: the communal men’s house (qasgi). She examines how young boys were taught in the qasgi the “moral foundations of properly lived life” (p. 39), along with the technological rules of their future lives as craftsmen and as providers for their families. Young boys would observe elders manufacturing and repairing tools, or building kayaks and sleds, and would carefully listen to simultaneous oral instructions on morals. Fienup-Riordan is intently interested in how technology and moral codes are intertwined among the Yup’ik. The construction of the qasgi is also detailed, as are the associated utilitarian and symbolic artefacts. The remainder of the book follows much the same pattern, with detailed description of the Yup’ik spiritual and technological rules on manufacturing and using tools. Each stage of the Yup’ik seasonal cycle is described in terms of its key activities and associated artefacts. This includes the gathering of raw …