Speech

Informative Essay/ Speech Expository

Nunivak Island is one of the largest islands in the Bering Sea. It is covered in permafrost. It is a volcanic island lying about 30 miles offshore from the mainland. What I’m about to inform you is what was lost in the Cup’ig culture in the late 19th and the early 20th Century, when the first U.S. Census for Nunivak Island was taken by an American Ivan Petroff, the missionaries that came to Nunivak, and reviving the traditional dancing.

Nunivak’s first U.S. Census was in the year of 1891 by Ivan Petroff. He was dropped off at the southeastern coast of Cape Mendenhall. He was on the island for about sixteen days. He reported that he went all the way around the island and that there were fifteen settlements with a population of 745 people on the island. He was picked up just off shore of Mekoryuk. If he had traveled around the island he would have to have gone around one and a half times. Some researchers questioned the number. He was using a kayak to go around the island. People thought that he lied because it couldn’t have taken him sixteen days to go around the island. The researchers think that he only went on one side of the island and counted up 745 people. They think that there were more people than that because he didn’t navigate the whole island.
In the 40 years after Petroff visited 73% of the people died from diseases that were introduced to the islanders: measles, tuberculosis, and influenza. The diseases would go away and come back and more people would die. The diseases were brought and introduced to the Cup’ig Eskimo by Ivan Petroff and others like shipwrecked people or people that came here for protection. The elders and children were dying. The elders were the teachers and the supervisors in the Cup’ig culture. When they die some of our culture dies too. The Russians and Americans that came to Nunivak Island, like Ivan Petroff, had side effects on the Cup’ig people. The side effects were sicknesses that were deadly to the Native people of Nunivak Island.

Who came to Nunivak Island and told the Cup’ig people to stop practicing some of their culture? The missionaries came and settled on the island. In the 1930’s the missionaries weren’t white people they were Inupiaq Eskimos. The main missionary was Jacob Kenick from Shaktoolik. The missionaries had said that our traditional dancing was evil and that we need to stop practicing it. They also said that the Cup’ig people had to get their drums and hunting tools and throw them into the bay because it wasted their time from learning about God. Ever since that happened, there was no more traditional dancing and hunting with spears, harpoons, bows and arrows. They used guns instead.

60 years later we have revived the dancing, even though the elders and some adults were against it. The only people that weren’t against it were young people. The people that wanted the cultural dancing to be revived over ruled the adults that were against it. Howard Amos had video taped fifteen songs with three of them with motions that Kay Hendrickson sang and performed for him. There weren’t any cultural dancing for over sixty years. It was exciting to see that there was cultural dancing again. It was like finding some pieces that were missing in the culture, but there are more things that need to be found to repair the Cup’ig culture.


All this happened to the Cup’ig people. If there weren’t so many people that introduced sicknesses there would be more of us, the Cup’igs. There was a lot of grief and depression going on that time. Then the missionaries came and made it worse. They took away things the Cup’igs loved to do. Now that the Cup’ig’s traditional dancing is revived the children can learn what our ancestors loved to do. But our language is dying off and so are our elders. When our elders die some of our culture dies with them.