Translating For Our Elder

Nan is our elder from Miqsarmiut, an old abandoned village where she was born and raised. After her mothers death her father took her to Ellikarmiut, which is now called Nash Harbor. When Nanfirst came to Nash Harbor, her son in-law told her that I can understand Cup’ig. She then spoke to me in Cup’ig asking me where I was from. After I introduced myself, some people asked me to ask her some questions. One of the questions I had asked for someone was, “Qangvaq yuurtellrusit?,” which means, “When were you born?” She was born on the 13th of August, 1913. She will be 94 this coming fall.

Since I was the only one who was able to understand Nan, I became the translator. She started telling stories of her father and parts of her childhood. We asked her how the houses looked when she was a little girl. She described how they looked the same way our Nunivak Island books described the sod houses back in the early 1900’s. Then another day, Nan took us up the hill to show us some plants that the people of Elliikarmiut gathered. She pointed out where they’d pick their greens, and how they would eat them.

One day some of the campers and I were hanging out in the cook tent where we were telling funny stories. Some one then asked me to ask Nan if she had any funny stories to tell. She began telling the story of a polar bear that came into her village when she was a little girl. The story of the polar bear goes like this…

One day the chief of the village went hunting at kavirlirpak (place of red rocks) where he set seal nets during the fall time. After catching a couple of seals, he brought his catch home to his wife to butcher. Before butchering the seals, she went to get water from the water hole which never freezes, to feed them. It was their custom to pay respect to the animals that provide them food and clothing. After doing so, she cut up the seals, made seal oil, and stored them in the underground cache.

The chief and his wife had a dog that always got into things. One night when everyone was asleep, the chief’s wife heard something outside. She crawled out of her igloo to check on what was causing the noise. When she walked to the storage cache, she saw cold breath coming from the cache. She was upset and started yelling at the dog saying, “The stupid mutt has gotten into our food!” As she walked to the cache to scold the dog, a polar bear jumped up from the cache and started roaring in her face, causing her to fall back. As fast as she could she got up and ran to the qasgiq (men’s house) telling them that there was a polar bear in the food cache eating all their food.

All the men went charging out of the qasgiq with their spears and sticks to kill the polar bear. They beat the bear till it was dead. When attempting to carry the bear out of the cache, it was impossible since its belly was filled with fresh seal.

After that, Nan’s mother, and other parents of the village would have their children walk out of their igloo to look towards the food cache and sing a song about the polar bear, how it died, and that it ate all the food. And once the song was sung by the children, including Nan, they than would crawl back into their home. Nan gave us all a laugh with her story.

By translating for Nan, I learned some Cup’ig words such as a seal, which in my Yup’ik lanuage we call issuuriq. Nan calls it a taquukaq. There were a couple of other words I learned, although I’m not quite sure how to pronounce them. Translating for Nan has been a tremendously great experience.  –Yvonne

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Summer Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.