Introduction to Uyuraqural^zrig
"Sibling Brothers"
by Nuratar, Andrew Noatak
by Robert Drozda, January 4, 2006

At the time this story was recorded in 1986 Nuratar (Andrew Noatak) was then the oldest resident of Nunivak Island . The story was tape recorded among a series of interviews conducted by Ken Pratt of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' ANCSA Office to gather information related to historical place and cemetery site investigations [ANCSA Section 14(h)(1)] on Nunivak Island. "Interview" is not quite the right term however, more accurately this particular recording purely captures Andrew doing what he loved to do, storytelling.

Pratt and Amos held Nuratar in the highest regard with an appreciation of his depth of knowledge and his skills as a raconteur. Prior to his death in 1990 at about 100 years old - his exact age was unknown and recorded birthdates range from 1889 to 1900 - roughly 30 hours of recordings with Andrew (21 sessions) resulted from the BIA site investigations. Today many of these tapes have not been fully or carefully translated. One reason for this is that Andrew's speech remains partly enigmatic for Yup'ik language scholars. Few individuals (Amos is one) possess the proficiency necessary to translate Nuratar's Cup'ig.

The evolving work on the translation of this story alone provides a good example of the difficulties involved. Our dear friend Irene Reed, along with Sophie Shield, first began translating Andrew's material in the late 1980s. Challenged by the differences of the Nunivak dialect from the more familiar General Central Yup'ik Irene admitted to sometimes being completely befuddled by some of Andrew's speech, and first postulated that he was speaking a subdialect of Cup'ig that had previously gone unrecognized. In 1994 she wrote, "his speech has some phonological idiosyncrasies that may reflect a sub-dialect which he alone maintained. In his recordings we find some unique lexicon. He also exhibits certain stylistic devices. which appear to be used especially in the presence of individuals with whom he had kinship ties (Drozda 1994)."

Reed enlisted the help of Cup'ig speaker Margie David of Anchorage and Mekoryuk who then re-dubbed this particular tape while interspersing it with English translation and editorial comment. Still the resulting translation lacked complete accuracy before Howard began to work with it. He commented, "Here is what I worked on. Retranslating what (they) translated. It appears to be better, because I understood Andrew more than the ladies."

Howard's comment is in no way a slight to those women; in fact, he and his wife Muriel, as well as a number of other Nuniwarmiut (particularly Dorothy Kiokun and Prudy Olrun) worked closely with Irene in the modification of the standard Central Alaskan Yup'ik orthography to better suit or reflect the unique Nunivak dialect. Steven Jacobson has continued that work and recently the ANLC has published the Cup'ig Eskimo Dictionary (Amos and Amos 2003). Those familiar with Yup'ik orthography will immediately see the difference in the presentation of the Cup'ig text.

Amos may be the one person best suited to translate Andrew's recordings since he was not only present during virtually all of the sessions, but also because most often Andrew, as in the tale recounted here, spoke directly to Howard. The kinship tie alluded to by Reed is present between Amos and Nuratar and we were informed by Andrew that his paternal great-grandfather's sister had a child named Nakaar whose name was given to Howard. He was not simply repeating the stories that he knew, he was instructing Howard and passing on his knowledge to him.

Andrew was born at Narulkirnarmiut, in the Tacirrlag area of south Nunivak where much of this tale takes place. He and his family, however, resided at Tacirrarmiut a remote settlement nestled among the high, rugged cliffs of western Nunivak . There he learned fully the skills of cliff hanging for bird netting and egg gathering from his uncles and relatives. There too he learned the traditional stories, history and geography of his people told in an older form of or now extinct dialect of Cup'ig.

There is much that remains to be understood about Cup'ig, particularly its relation to other Bering Sea Eskimo languages. One point that may require immediate clarification is the relationship between Nunivak Cup'ig and Chevak Cup'ik. It's true that while Cup'ig shares some lexicon with Cup'ik (as well as other Yupik languages) they are quite different. Actually, Cup'ik spoken in Chevak is closer to General Central Yupik than it is to Nunivak Cup'ig (Jacobson 2003), therefore they should not be equated.

Non-speakers such as me or strangers to Nunivak may miss obvious and subtle cultural understandings that are not or cannot be accurately translated to English. Although I have not made a thorough study of the Nuniwarmiut qulirat and qanengssit (univkangssit), it strikes me that the majority of the stories I have heard or read in translation are not only naturally enriched by knowledge of Nunivak geography, but have an actual physical component in the landscape. There are many, many examples of this narrative/landscape bond within the corpus of Nuniwarmiut traditional stories.

For instance, in the tale recounted here Andrew offers a liberal dose of place names that provide a geographic context to the story. This in and of itself is not unusual. But we also have physical objects, both man made and natural landforms, that have their locations as well as their origins explained to us. The final resting places of the story characters have been firmly and physically identified. Andrew makes this point too, that they were seen and known; the brothers, their sister and her dog are there on the land, or were there before succumbing to weathering, gravity, erosion and/or theft by outsiders.

Now that the physical remains have disappeared we are fortunate to have the story to recall the tradition. We are reminded that the physical world and humanity is transitory, impermanent and intricately bound in ways that may seem paradoxical to the Western trained mind, to the spiritual and animal consciousness. The storyteller also reminds us of those who passed on before, he provides his references at the very beginning of the tale by respecting and naming those who passed the story to him.

Likewise Andrew is no longer with us. When he spoke his words in front of the tape recorder he was keenly aware that his knowledge of the traditional stories, histories, genealogies, natural history, life ways and geography of his earlier years and those of his ancestors were being eroded by the Western world. He was continuing a tradition in a non traditional setting and lamenting as well as savoring the past. Although this and other traditional stories are now written we would do well to remember them and encourage their repetition as intended within the context of oral tradition as they may provide a welcome antidote to the insidious pervasiveness of American pop media culture.

Robert M. Drozda, Fairbanks, Alaska, January 4, 2006 (an edited version of this introduction occurs in the book Words of the Real People, Alaska Native Literature in Translation, edited by Ann Fienup-Riordan and Lawrence Kaplan and published in 2007 by the University of Alaska Press