Yuungnaqpiallerput, The Way We Genuinely Live: Masterworks of Yup'ik Science and Survival, by Ann Fienup-Riordan

Honorable mention for the Victor Turner Award for Ethnographic Writing from the Society for Humanistic AnthropologyHonorable mention for the 2008 William Mills Prize for Non-Fiction Polar Books Survival in the harsh subarctic environment requires great resourcefulness and ingenuity. The Yup'ik people of southwest Alaska meet the challenge by using traditional technology and by following a philosophy that recognizes the person-hood of all living things and the environment. Their use of nature's resources is a testament to the mutual respect and generosity that exists between humans and the animals, plants, land, and sea that sustain them.Wastefulness being disrespectful, Yup'ik elders made use of every last scrap from hunts and harvests: seal guts became warm, waterproof, and breathable parkas; the skins of fish were fashioned into waterproof mittens, while their heads and entrails were stored in naturally refrigerated pits as insurance against future famine. Dried grasses became anythi