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2006 Student Paper Competition,
Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group

Student Paper Competition > 2006

Winner: Chie Sakakibara, MA Candidate, University of Oklahoma

Tikigaq Ghost Stories: Contemporary Iñupiat Identity and Place-Making in the Time of Climate Change

Abstract:

This paper explores how climate change affects the worldview of the Iñupiat people of Alaska, particularly their traditional associations with non-human beings and homeland. In 2005, the author conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Point Hope (Tikigaq), Alaska, to study how recent environmental changes associated with global warming are influencing the people's spiritual and physical interactions with the bowhead whale, the living manifestation of their identity. Point Hope is one of the longest continually inhabited settlements in North America, and its history reveals inseparable ties among the Iñupiat, the whale, and the land. According to an origin story, the Tikigaq peninsula was once a bowhead whale that was transformed into the Iñupiat homeland. Thus, the land serves as the foundation of the people's cultural identity by unifying the Iñupiat and the whale. The Iñupiat sense of place has been experiencing a major transition since the 1976 relocation from their original settlement following severe flooding and erosion. The villagers' attachment to their original home, however, is strongly revealed in their contemporary storytelling tradition, which involves ghosts, mysterious creatures, and ancestral spirits that strengthen the people's ties with the old home. This storytelling enhances a process of place-making that bridges the Iñupiat past and present, namely the memories of their former and current settlements. Elucidating the cultural landscapes as well as the recent development of supernatural stories in Point Hope, this paper examines how the people currently engage themselves with their homeland through emotional and sensory experiences in this time of radical environmental changes.

Keywords:
Iñupiat, Tikigaq-Point Hope, storytelling, place-making, climate change-erosion

General Information:

The Student Paper Award is given for a meritorious student paper which addresses geographic research, education, mapping, theory and/or applications by, for and/or about indigenous people(s).

Criteria: The award is based on evaluation of a written manuscript by the IPSG Chair and Board. Papers will be evaluated based on their overall contribution to new knowledge and understanding in the geographies of indigenous peoples. That contribution may be theoretical, empirical or methodological in nature.

Eligibility: To be eligible for this competition, papers must be presented at the AAG meeting, regional geography meetings or other professional conference, and the student must be the first or sole author of the paper. Student participants do not have to be members of the IPSG to enter the competition. The same individual may receive the award twice in different years for different papers.

Award Committee: The award committee shall consist of the IPSG Chair(s) and the Board of Directors. In the event that there are Co-Chairs, those Co-Chairs shall submit only one evaluation, for a total of four possible paper evaluations from the committee. Members of the award committee must recuse themselves from judging the papers of current or former students, but they may participate in discussions during which final selections are made.

Award. The Student Paper Award shall consist of $150 and a one-year honorary student membership in the IPSG. Whenever possible, the award recipient will also receive recognition in the AAG Newsletter.