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:
“Our culture is ill-equipped to assert the bourgeois values which would be the salvation of the under-class, because we have lost those values ourselves.”
—Norman Podhoretz (b. 1930)
“Culture is the suggestion, from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture redresses this imbalance, puts him among equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)