The Yup'ik or Yupiaq (sg & pl) and Yupiit or Yupiat (pl), also Central Alaskan Yup'ik, Central Yup'ik, Alaskan Yup'ik (own name Yup'ik sg Yupiik dual Yupiit pl; Russian: Юпики центральной Аляски), are an Indigenous people of western and southwestern Alaska ranging from southern Norton Sound southwards along the coast of the Bering Sea on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta (including living on Nelson and Nunivak Islands) and along the northern coast of Bristol Bay as far east as Nushagak Bay and the northern Alaska Peninsula at Naknek River and Egegik Bay. They are also known as Cup'ik by the Chevak Cup'ik dialect-speaking people of Chevak and Cup'ig for the Nunivak Cup'ig dialect-speaking people of Nunivak Island.
The Yupiit are the most numerous of the various Alaska Native groups and speak the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language, a member of the Eskimo–Aleut family of languages. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the Yupiit population in the United States numbered over 34,000 people, of whom over 22,000 lived in Alaska. The vast majority of these live in the seventy or so communities in the traditional Yup'ik territory of western and southwestern Alaska. About 10,000 speak the language. The Yup'ik had the greatest number of people who identified with one tribal grouping and no other race (29,000). In that census, nearly half of American Indians and Alaska Natives identified as being of mixed race.
Yup'ik, Cup'ik, and Cup'ig speakers can converse without difficulty, and the regional population is often described using the larger term of Yup'ik. They are one of the four Yupik peoples of Alaska and Siberia, closely related to the Sugpiaq ~ Alutiiq (Pacific Yupik) of south-central Alaska, the Siberian Yupik of St. Lawrence Island and Russian Far East, and the Naukan of Russian Far East.
The Yup'ik combine a contemporary and a traditional subsistence lifestyle in a blend unique to the Southwest Alaska. Today, the Yup'ik generally work and live in western style but still hunt and fish in traditional subsistence ways and gather traditional foods. Most Yup'ik people still speak the native language and bilingual education has been in force since the 1970s.
The neighbours of the Yup'ik are the Iñupiaq to the north, Aleutized Alutiiq ~ Sugpiaq to the south, and Alaskan Athabaskans, such as Yup'ikized Holikachuk and Deg Hit'an, non-Yup'ikized Koyukon and Dena'ina, to the east.
Naming
Originally, the singular form was used in the northern area (Norton Sound, Yukon, some Nelson Island) while the form was used in the southern area (Kuskokwim, Canineq [around Kwigillingok, Kipnuk, Kongiganak, and Chefornak], Bristol Bay). Certain places (Chevak, Nunivak, Egegik) have other forms: , , and .
The form is now used as a common term (though not replacing and ). comes from the Yup'ik word , meaning 'person', plus the postbase (or ), meaning 'real' or 'genuine'; thus, literally means 'real person'. The ethnographic literature sometimes refers to the Yup'ik people or their language as Yuk or Yuit. In the Hooper Bay-Chevak and Nunivak dialects of Yup'ik, both the language and the people are given the name .
The use of an apostrophe in the name , compared to Siberian , exemplifies Central Yup'ik's orthography: "The apostrophe represents gemination [or lengthening] of the 'p' sound."
The following are names given to them by their neighbors. Alutiiq ~ Sugpiaq: (Northern Kodiak), (Southern Kodiak) Deg Xinag Athabaskan: [lit. 'downriver people'], [lit. 'coast people'] Holikachuk Athabaskan: [lit. 'coast people'] Iñupiaq: Koyukon Athabaskan: [lit. 'coast people'] Dena'ina Athabaskan: , Upper Kuskokwim Athabaskan: sg. , pl.
History
Origins
The common ancestors of the Yupik and the Aleut (as well as various Paleo-Siberian groups) are believed by archaeologists to have their origin in eastern Siberia. Migrating east, they reached the Bering Sea area about 10,000 years ago. Research on blood types and linguistics suggests that the ancestors of American Indians reached North America in waves of migration before the ancestors of the Eskimo and Aleut; there were three major waves of migration from Siberia to the Americas by way of the Bering land bridge. This causeway became exposed between 20,000 and 8,000 years ago during periods of glaciation.
By about 3,000 years ago the progenitors of the Yupiit had settled along the coastal areas of what would become western Alaska, with migrations up the coastal rivers—notably the Yukon and Kuskokwim—around 1400 C.E., eventually reaching as far upriver as Paimiut on the Yukon and Crow Village (Tulukarugmiut) on the Kuskokwim.