Calista Education and Culture, or CEC, a nonprofit organization, is working to collect traditional names and stories of places in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and share that knowledge with the region. To do that they’re creating an interactive, online map of the Delta in Yup’ik and English, called the Yup’ik Atlas. This week, CEC is hosting a workshop in Bethel, teaching community members how to add their traditional knowledge to the online tool.
“It started out with place names, and it now has a number of Yup’ik stories. And it has not only mapping, but it has audio, video, documents, and all of it relates to Yup’ik history, Yup’ik culture and the Yup’ik worldview," said Peter Pulsifer, a Geographer and Investigator for ELOKA, the Exchange for Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic.
The organization is helping CEC create the Atlas, which already has more than 3,000 Yup’ik place names of camp and settlement sites, rivers, sloughs, rocks, ponds, sandbars, and underwater channels. CEC worked with Elders for a decade to collect the names.
Eva Malvich, Director of the Yupiit Piciryarait Museum, is attending the workshop with a vision for what the atlas might mean for future generations.
“It’s not just talking about a place name. It’s what people did in that area," said Malvich. "Because we are not out hunting and fishing quite as much as we used to be, we are losing that information, and it should be retained so that if my great-great grandchildren decide that they want to go out and explore the area where I was raised, they will be able to go to this website and find the fish camp that I grew up in.”
The three-day workshop is being held at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Kuskokwim Campus and will run through Friday. Calista Education and Culture plans to hold more workshops so others can learn how to use and add to the Yup’ik Atlas.
Visit the Yup'ik Atlas at www.eloka-arctic.org/communities/yupik/atlas
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