Influenza and the Death of the Spirit World
Let me be clear. This is not my story. Although the story of my ancestors, my maternal grandmother in particular, who came to Ellis Island at about the same time as this story begins has threads of similarity. If this was a time of potato famine, I might tell that story. But this is a time of pandemic and so I will tell this one. I know of this story because Harold Napoleon, a Yup’ik Eskimo from Hooper Bay Alaska, researched the Great Death (Yuut tuqurpallratni) and wrote elegantly about how death on a massive scale destroyed the cultural underpinnings of his society and left scars that continues to affect Alaska Natives today. (Yuuyaraq-The Way of the Human Being, Harold Napoleon)
Before the Russians came to the homeland of the Yup’ik people, the Bering Sea coast and riverbanks of western Alaska, the Yupiit fished and hunted with great reverence for iinruq-the spirit that infused every aspect of their lives. They would show proper respect for the animal spirits that fed their people lest the animals not return to feed them later. Yuuyaraq, “the way of the human being”, guided every aspect of their lives.
The Yupiit believed illnesses were due to ingesting poison, trauma, or evil spirits. The angalkut were the medicine men and women who served as the village historians, physicians, and intermediaries with the spirit world.
Although there were a number of contagious illnesses that the Alaska Native people had no immunity to and that took many lives including small pox, diphtheria, measles, and others, the influenza outbreak of 1900 that began in Nome was the cause of Yuut tuqurpallratni, “when a great many people died,” also known as the Great Death. Estimates are that 60% of Eskimo, Athabascan, and Aleut died from influenza. The anagalkut died in despair along with their people and with them, the ancient spirit world of the Eskimo also died.
Ethnographer Richard K Nelson wrote in his book, Make Prayers to the Raven, based on spending a year studying the culture of the Koyukon Natives in northwestern interior Alaska, of the loss of the spirit world at about the same time but for a different reason. The Koyukon language is Athabaskan and they are ethnically distinct from Eskimos and Aleuts, though they live in close proximity.
“An old shaman, now dead, once said that “all of the medicine people in Alaska worked their power together in the First World War, trying to help the United State toward victory, in so doing they shifted their source of power-the sinh taala’ from the earth itself-far away from their homelands and into the battlefields. But they lacked the power to bring it all back and it became somewhat diffused. After that the shamans’ powers began to wane”.
The two narratives also speak about the presence of Christian missionaries among Native populations. Nelson paraphrases a Jesuit priest, Julian Jette’, throughout his book. Jette’ spent 30 years among the Koyukon people from the early 1900′s and wrote numerous articles and a Koyukon dictionary.
Napoleon speaks of Christian missionary presence less benignly than does Nelson. In his book Napoleon reports that priests and missionaries insisted that the spirit world was evil. The were told that anagalkut were agents of the devil.
Among the Alaska Natives that survived the influenza epidemic of the 1900′s, the shock was unbearable for the women and men who were orphaned by the sudden traumatic loss of the culture that had give them birth. It was decided, without ever really discussing it, to pretend it never happened. To this day, elders who are told about disturbing events in Native villages will often say to young people, “nalluqguak,” pretend it didn’t happen.
“They had a lot to pretend not to know. After all, it was not only that their loved ones had died, they had also seen their world collapse.” -Napoleon
The knowledge of their culture and of the Great Death was suppressed effectively. In the 1950′s Native children received their education in boarding schools that would routinely wash their mouths out with soap if they spoke in their mother tongue. Generations of suppressed emotion, confusion and shame now permeate even the very young. It has led to post traumatic stress disorder on a massive scale, Native people have high rates of incarceration, alcoholism, domestic violence, and suicide. Natives also have high rates of severe illness and death from Covid-19.
The old shaman that Nelson talked to is not around to ask if the diffusion of sinh taala’ is the reason for the loss of shamanic power or a reason for it. Apparently, something happened in the first years of the 20th century that resulted in the diminished role of the spirit world in the lives of Alaska Natives. These explanations are not mutually exclusive.
I do take heart in the resurgence of Alaskan Native culture that is seen in Talking Circles, the reemergence of Native languages, dance, and the subsistence lifestyle as well as the incorporation of tribal doctors in the Indian Health Service. However long it takes, reversing these devastating cultural losses will be well worth it.