Yupik peoples

The Yupik peoples are a family of closely related Indigenous nations of western and south-western Alaska and the Russian Far East, kin to the Inuit and Iñupiat further north and east. The largest group, the Central Alaskan Yup'ik of the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta and Bristol Bay, is the most numerous of all Alaska Native peoples, and Yup'ik is still the most widely spoken Native language in the state.

Three main branches are usually distinguished: the Alutiiq or Sugpiaq of the Alaska Peninsula, Kodiak and the south-central coast; the Central Alaskan Yup'ik; and the Siberian Yupik of St. Lawrence Island and Chukotka, including the Naukan. The name comes from yuk, "person", with an ending meaning "real", so it means "the real people". In the Hooper Bay–Chevak and Nunivak dialects the same word is Cup'ik or Cup'ig, which is why our maps label the territory "Yup'ik & Cup'ik". The apostrophe in Yup'ik marks a lengthened p sound.

Archaeologists trace the shared ancestors of the Yupik and Aleut to eastern Siberia, reaching the Bering Sea region roughly 10,000 years ago. By about 3,000 years ago the forebears of the Yup'ik were living along the coast of western Alaska, and around 1400 CE groups moved up the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers. The Siberian Yupik may descend from a migration back across the strait from Alaska. Oral tradition remembers the Bow and Arrow Wars, long conflicts between Yup'ik groups whose start is placed anywhere from about 300 to 1,000 years ago; the excavated village of Nunalleq was burned in the seventeenth century. The wars ended in the 1830s and 1840s as Russian colonial influence spread.

Families traditionally spent spring and summer at fishing camps and gathered in villages for winter. Salmon and seals remain staples. Each village had a men's communal house, the qasgiq, where ceremonies, dances and storytelling took place and boys learned to hunt and to build kayaks, while women taught girls to sew, tan hides and prepare food in the women's house, the ena. The way of life called yuuyaraq set out respectful conduct towards people and towards the animals, believed to understand human speech. Shamans led religious life and directed the carving of striking wooden masks for winter ceremonies such as the Bladder Festival and the Messenger Feast. Dancers move their arms and upper bodies, holding fans to emphasise each gesture. A newborn traditionally receives the name of whoever in the community died most recently.

Russian Orthodox missionaries reached the Yukon in the 1840s, and after the United States bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, Moravian missions (from 1885) and Jesuit missions (from 1888) were founded along the Kuskokwim and lower Yukon. Mission schools forbade Native languages, and masked dancing and the qasgiq faded under missionary pressure. The influenza pandemic of 1918–19, remembered as the Great Death, wiped out whole villages. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 created the regional corporations that shape Native economies today.

The 2010 United States census counted over 34,000 Yup'ik, more than 22,000 of them in Alaska, mostly in some seventy communities in their homeland, and about 1,700 Yupik live in Russia. About 10,000 people speak Central Alaskan Yup'ik, second only to Navajo among Indigenous languages of the United States, and bilingual schooling has existed since the 1970s. Dance festivals, drumming and masks are again part of community life. Mary Peltola, a Yup'ik woman, represented Alaska in the United States Congress from 2022 to 2025.

Our maps from 1530 to 1800 draw an approximate Yup'ik and Cup'ik territory in south-western Alaska. To the north are the Iñupiat; across the Bering Strait lie the Chukchi, neighbours of the Siberian Yupik. Their distant ancestors appear as Thule on earlier maps.