Qatŋut: The Iñupiaq Trade Fair of Sisualik, Revived in 1996 and Held in Kotzebue

Qatŋut is a cultural celebration held every other summer in Kotzebue, Alaska, and it descends from one of the oldest and largest gatherings in Iñupiaq country, the Sisualik Trade Fair. The authors of a 2021 National Park Service study, drawing on archaeology, written accounts, oral history and interviews, say that every generation of Iñupiat has celebrated it, even when dancing was suppressed in the 20th century.

A fair older than the colonial period

Sisualik (also spelled Sheshalik, Sesolik and Sesualik) is a fishing camp and traditional settlement on the northern shore of Kotzebue Sound, where the Noatak, Kobuk and Selawik Rivers meet. Since the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980 it has lain inside Cape Krusenstern National Monument. The fair was held there every year until the late 1800s. Archaeology shows trade networks linking the ancestors of the Iñupiat to distant parts of Alaska, Siberia, Europe and Asia for well over two thousand years, and a field survey at Sisualik found evidence of the fair from the late Thule period (1400-1750 CE).

In the 18th century the 15 Iñupiaq nations of northwest Alaska and the Seward Peninsula built the fair into their seasonal rounds of hunting and gathering. It drew Chukchi and Siberian Yupik people from across the Bering Strait, the Iñupiat of the North Slope, Koyukon Athabascans and Yup’ik traders from the south. In some years as many as 22 nations came, bringing up to 2,000 people. The fair usually ran from late June to August, depending on when river and ocean ice broke up.

Change and suppression

In the 19th century, Russia and the United States expanded the fur trade across the Bering Strait while scarcity and famine disrupted the old routes, and trade shifted toward outside merchants. In 1884 the fair was held on the shore of Baldwin Peninsula, where Kotzebue would grow, so that large foreign trade ships could take part. Christian missionaries also used the fair to preach to a large audience. Quaker missionaries, who would build the church in Kotzebue, arrived in July 1897 to find people gathered from as far south as what is now Nome, north to Point Hope, west to Siberia and east to Koyukuk. The missionaries were welcomed, but they responded harshly to practices such as dancing, linking it to devil worship and banning it from the church community.

Because the suppression affected many families, the oral history of the fair in the 20th century is unclear. The record suggests it continued in Kotzebue in some form: respondents as old as 80 remember continued celebration, and Kotzebue Sound Iñupiat kept gathering in July when the ice cleared, perhaps because a link to a uniquely Iñupiaq Fourth of July celebration was beneficial.

The revival

Today’s Qatŋut is the result of a cultural revitalization effort in 1996, led by Iñupiaq leaders, which set out to improve current life and wellbeing by relearning Native traditions in response to the social ills of ongoing colonization. Local organizations brought dance groups from the tribes traditionally associated with the fair to Kotzebue. Organizers first called the event Kattivik, then settled on Qatŋut, which means a gathering of people from different nations. Since then, rekindling ties with relatives in Chukotka has been a highlight: the Cold War had cut off most contact between Russian and Alaskan Natives, and it did not resume until after the fall of the Soviet Union. A dance group from Uelen takes part whenever travel is possible, by boat or chartered plane.

In 2019 the Park Service joined Tribal leaders of the northwest Arctic in planning and running the event, while researching its history and adding to its oral history record. The theme was Celebrating Through Changes. Dancers came from Noatak, Nome, Wainwright, Utqiaġvik and Kotzebue, artists sold crafts, people competed for best hand-sewn parka and fastest fish fillet and in World Eskimo Indian Olympic events, and a potluck of foods from all the communities closed it.

Trade

Before contact, trade around Kotzebue Sound was mostly in non-local goods: raw materials, finished items, furs and subsistence foods. The networks also brought Asian and European goods. Archaeological sites show some of what moved:

In the 19th century, European goods traded at Sisualik and Kotzebue included glass beads, metal pots and kettles, tobacco, coffee, alcohol, flour, sugar, guns and knives, and Europeans wanted whalebone, ivory and furs. Between coast and inland, marine mammal products were essential, among them seal oil and seal skins for mukluks; caribou hides were perhaps the most common inland item, along with dried fish, birch bark baskets, Dall sheep horns and chert for stone tools.

Today craft and traditional food competitions keep the old skills in view, and vendors from across the region sell handmade art, jewelry and food. The potluck is a chance to exchange foods not usually available to everyone, such as maktak (bowhead whale) from Utqiaġvik or akutuq made with blackberries and muskox fat from a family hunting camp inside the monument, and buckets of seal oil made in Kotzebue are set out for soups and meats.

Dance

Dance is an integral part of Iñupiaq cultural life. Each community has its own dances; many tell stories and others welcome guests. In the fair’s earlier days people danced to greet every new boat. The authors say the importance of dancing suggests the Christian ban on it in the 20th century would have affected the fair greatly, and four of the seven people interviewed in 2019 spoke of dancing being suppressed by the Quaker church and revived in recent years.

Dance was never fully wiped out in Kotzebue, because people kept exchanging with other communities under different Christian missions, which had not suffered the same cultural losses. People from Point Hope and Kivalina who moved to Kotzebue or worked there seasonally taught and performed Native dance, and in the 1990s Kotzebue residents formed the Qikiqtaġruk Northern Lights Dancers, who still attend Qatŋut. Dancing now runs on all three days, so visiting groups perform more than once, and Chukchi groups attending since the 1990s bring dances that Kotzebue Sound Iñupiat had forgotten. Reclaiming dance has become one of the central parts of the wider Iñupiaq cultural revival.

Connection

Connections between peoples at Qatŋut have adapted and endured: interviewees in 2019 told of seeing relatives there and hosting attendees in their homes. Goods were exchanged between individuals, not nations, so partnerships, known long ago as niiviq, were central. They were often formed between people in different ecological zones, such as coast and inland, and let participants obtain scarce or regionally unavailable materials.

Before the 1800s, trade routes were part of a yearly subsistence cycle. On one route, members of two groups, the Napaaqtaġmiut and Qikiqtaġruŋmiut, travelled down the coast from their sealing camps at Rabbit Creek, collecting people from other nations at settlements along what is now Cape Krusenstern National Monument, until a large flotilla of umiat (skin boats) reached Sisualik.

What is still missing

The authors’ analysis of the 2019 interviews, with earlier oral history, ethnographic and archaeological work, suggests that Qatŋut has been taking place continually for at least 2,000 years, and that its trade, dance and connection have changed significantly but remain its motivation. Their research covered only organizers and participants from the host community of Kotzebue. They say the record could be extended by interviewing dancers and crafters from other communities, recommend partnering with Russian researchers, and note that the 20th-century celebration is still a gap in the record. The future of the event, they write, will be decided by the contributing organizations led by the Iñupiat, with Park Service support through travel grants, logistics, housing and further research.

Sources

• Hannah Atkinson (National Park Service), Alisa Chen (Student Conservation Association), Caelie Butler (Portland State University) and Justin Junge (National Park Service), Qatŋut: Celebrating the Legacy of Trade, Dance, and Connection at Sisualik, Alaska Park Science 20(2), 2021 (Beringia: A Shared Heritage), supported in part by the Shared Beringian Heritage Program; the interviewees’ names, the photographs and the maps (adapted from published books) are left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.