In this volume Nelson Island elders describe hundreds of traditionally
important places in the landscape, from camp and village sites to tiny
sloughs and deep ocean channels, contextualizing them through stories of
how people interacted with them in the past and continue to know them
today. The stories both provide a rich, descriptive historical record
and detail the ways in which land use has changed over time.
Nelson Islanders maintained a strongly Yup'ik worldview and subsistence
lifestyle through the 1940s, living in small settlements and moving with
the seasonal cycle of plant and animal abundances. The last sixty years
have brought dramatic changes, including the concentration of people
into five permanent, year-round villages. The elders have mapped
significant places to help perpetuate an active relationship between the
land and their people, who, despite the immobility of their villages,
continue to rely on the fluctuating bounty of the Bering Sea coastal
environment.