Nunakun-gguq Ciutengqertut/They Say They Have Ears Through the Ground
Animal Essays from Southwest Alaska
Snowy Owl Books
2022 Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries Annual Literature Award
“Here is one amazing book! Beautifully arranged and illustrated throughout. . . . A valuable record of Yup’ik traditional herbal experience and the role these plants still play in the modern world.”
—American Herb Association Quarterly
"From the beautiful photographs of plants and people on the front cover and throughout the book, to the exquisitely painted “plant portraits,” to the rich text featuring Yup’ikplant names, terms, and phrases, the book is exactly what a “peoples’ ethnobotany” should look like."
—Alaska Journal of Anthropology
In this book, close to one hundred men and women from all over southwest Alaska share knowledge of their homeland and the plants that grow there. They speak eloquently about time spent gathering and storing plants and plant material during snow-free months, including gathering greens during spring, picking berries each summer, harvesting tubers from the caches of tundra voles, and gathering a variety of medicinal plants. The book is intended as a guide to the identification and use of edible and medicinal plants in southwest Alaska, but also as an enduring record of what Yup’ik men and women know and value about plants and the roles plants continue to play in Yup’ik lives.
