Culture
The art of Nunivak Island has its roots in the ancient past. The oldest known sculpture is thousands of years old.
In the ancient times masks were made to sell or trade for goods needed to survive. Later masks were intended for festivities, dances, and traditional healing.
This type of mask (there are many types of masks carved today) represents the life surrounding Nunivak Island. The walrus is what the loon depends on for survival. And, in turn, man depends on the loon and the walrus for survival. These are two of the traditional animals that were hunted by the men of the village in order to provide for their families.
The walrus is what the Nunivak peoples depended on to survive. It held much of the necessities of living in the Bering Sea. The skin of the walrus was used for waterproofing kayaks, the soles of mukluks (Cup'ig boots), and the intestine was used as waterproof rain gear that were of great necessity in earlier times. The bones were used as tools, the ivory for spear heads, and harpoon heads and carvings were made for trade. Also the loon pelts were transformed into beautiful winter coats that were also water proof.
Read more about this topic: Nunivak Island
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers—and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“I know that there are many persons to whom it seems derogatory to link a body of philosophic ideas to the social life and culture of their epoch. They seem to accept a dogma of immaculate conception of philosophical systems.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle- class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)