Inquiry into Community Integration in an Aleutian Village

Abstract

Inquiry into Community Integration in an Aleutian Village l GERALD D. BERREMAN Officer Education Research Laboratory, Marwell Air Force Base studies, particularly of C OMMUNITY been primarily descriptive non-European communities, have traditionally with no consistent effort directed toward the development of a coherent body of theory about the community (Hollingshead 1948: 146). Description is essential to the derivation of theory, but only when it is organized relative to some general problem. This paper is based upon a community study which was undertaken with a view to obtain­ ing insight into the relatively neglected area of communhy integration and dis­ integration. The research constituted a field study of the small and isolated village of Nikolski, on Umnak Island in the Aleutian Islands, during the sum­ mer of 1952.2 The limitations of such a specific study have been kept in mind, and generalization is therefore minimized. However, certain lines of inquiry, their results, and their apparent significance are presented. Nikolski is the only surviving one of the twenty-two Aleut villages which occupied Umnak Island in 1759 when exploitation by Russian fur-seekers commenced, eighteen years after discovery of the island by the explorer, Chirikov. According to the archeological record, the site at Nikolski (Chaluka) has been occupied continuously for well over three thousa~d years (Laughlin and Marsh 1951:81). It was apparently inhabited first by a group of long­ 'headed Mongoloids of Eskimo stock, the Paleo-Aleuts, who left the mainland of Alaska over four thousand years ago and populated the entire Aleutian chain. A second wave of Eskimoid people, these broad-headed Neo-Aleuts, emigrated from the mainland of Alaska within the last thousand years and arrived in Nikolski relatively recently. The eastern diale<:.1:, possibly carried by them, never extended farther westward than the Fox Island group of which Umnak is a member. The arrival of the newcomers is inconspicuous in the ar­ cheological record, so apparently their culture was very similar to that of their Paleo-Aleut predecessors. Life in Nikolski throughout the pre-white-contact period was based upon the marine economy common to many Aleut-Eskimo groups. Sea lions, seals, d.nd salmon were primary food sources, although a variety of other products of the sea, as well as birds and land plants, were utilized. Community and small­ group co-operative effort, in addition to individual effort, in the gathering of food was accompanied by community-wide sharing of the economically most important animals. Emphasis upon self-sufficiency supplemented co-operation, reciprocal aid, and mutual responsibility, to provide a maximum of economic security. Social organization was informal, with structuring largely implicit and con­ trols internalized in individuals. This was made possible by carefully planned and executed childhood tutoring by elders.Pres tige 'was based upon individual