Food Knowledge and Place Name Documentation on the Kuskokwim River

This research documents traditional Yup’ik ecological knowledge pertaining to the harvest, processing, sharing, and use of foods along the middle Kuskokwim River, Alaska. This knowledge contributes to food security through fishing, hunting, and gathering activities. Employing a participatory framework, this project will produce an ethnographic account of food-related knowledge rooted in the local geography of the Kuskokwim River.

The PI team will accompany participants on a field survey to identify harvesting locations, archaeological sites, and other culturally significant places. Place names and sites will be contextualized through Yup’ik elders’ oral histories. This research will advance understanding of the local context of food security and of how geography and traditional ecological knowledge intersect.

The project will also contribute high-resolution data to the ethnogeography of one of Alaska’s greatest watersheds.

This project responds to local research priorities and employs mixed methods, including participatory gatherings, site visits by researchers and Alaska Native elders, and concurrent archaeological survey along the middle Kuskokwim River. In the first year of the project, participating elders will gather for conversation on five food-related topics, to be determined through consultation.

Possible topics include salmon fishing, food preservation and storage, food sharing, and starvation strategies. Field survey will follow, involving visits to sites along the Kuskokwim identified as significant by elders. Sites will be documented through discussion with elders and though audio-visual recordings.

Archaeological survey will relocate known sites and document those previously unrecorded. Broader impacts include an online relational map with Yup’ik place name pronunciations and narrative context for each site.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.