Learning to Listen: Quinhagak Voices Teaching about Gender

Summary

This presentation describes how archaeologists are using the knowledge of community stakeholders from the Yup'ik village of Quinhagak, Alaska to analyze gender dynamics at Nunalleq (GDN-248), a pre-contact village site located on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. During the summer of 2015, Quinhagak residents were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews about gender roles and activities in Yup'ik society and about the relevance of gender to stakeholder questions about the past. Interview data suggest that gender in Quinhagak is defined by kinship and subsistence obligations, that people become gendered through processes of learning and teaching, and that values of community cohesion in many ways eclipse gender divisions. Quinhagak residents are interested in learning more about the gendered lives of their ancestors, with questions that both complement and differ from those of the archaeological research team. Archaeologists are now using the community-derived knowledge from this project to create a locally-relevant model for interpreting pre-contact gender dynamics at Nunalleq. Integrating Yup'ik perspectives into this gender analysis creates meaningful opportunities for community engagement with the Nunalleq site while also honoring the expertise of Indigenous stakeholders in interpreting their heritage.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Engendered Archaeologies: Intersubjectivity in Archaeological Heritage Practice and Interpretation

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