Antler on the Sea: The Yup'Ik and Chukchi of the Russian Far East

by Anna M. Kerttula

Release Date: November, 2000

Edition: Paperback

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A glimpse of life in a Russian Arctic village

Anna Kerttula was the first American anthropologist to conduct long-term fieldwork in Chukotka, which is located in eastern Russia just across the Bering Strait from Alaska. She comes from a background that gives her a unique and very valuable perspective on Chukotka: she was raised in a rural Alaskan family, and visited many Alaskan Inuit and Yup'ik villages as a child. All that time, she was acutely aware of the presence of Chukotka and its Native villages just out of reach beyond what was dubbed the "ice curtain" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. She dreamed of going there, and was finally able to do so as a graduate student in anthropology. In the Soviet period, because Chukotka was so close to the United States, it was a carefully-guarded closed region -- even Russians had to have special permission to travel there. Kerttula began her fieldwork in the village of Sireniki on Chukotka's coast in 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, so she had the rare opportunity to experience life there before the drastic changes that came in the 1990s. She describes for us many different aspects of the lives of the Yup'iks, Chukchis, and Russian "Newcomers" who live in this village -- their occupations of reindeer herding and sea mammal hunting for the Soviet collective farm in the village; their ideas about social relationships, marriage and family, etc.; the symbolic importance of the tundra and the sea. It is a fascinating glimpse of daily life on the eve of the Soviet Union's demise. This is an excellent introduction for anyone interested in the Russian Arctic (a.k.a. Siberia)-- it is well-written, accessible, and full of fascintating profiles of the inhabitants of this small village. Lots of good black and white photos, too.