About the Artists

John Pingayak, Chu'pik
from Chevak, Alaska

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John Pingayak is an educated, soft-spoken man with plenty of heart. He and his wife, Teresa, have seven children and four grandchildren. John has a degree in education and teaches culture at the school in Chevak. He is also an outdoorsman who enjoys his music, guitar, teaching the young ones and being close to nature. He offers special thanks to his grandfather, Joseph Friday, for teaching him to sing and drum. He would like people to know that “We are the only Chu’pik people in the world”.

The Chu’pik drums are wide, shallow rims of wood stretched with ripcord, the shiny fabric of parachutes. They beat them with a slim stick, and when four of the men drum together, it fills the room. The young people dance a stationary dance, feet planted but hands moving in a sweeping, beautiful motion. The girls hold dance fans edged with caribou beards. The boys sit on their knees and hold wooden circles that are adorned with the feathers of the snowy owl. They all wear chuspics, a smock-like garment that is the traditional garb of the Chu’piks. The girls wear crowns of seal fur.

Chevak is a small village just 20 miles from the Bering Sea on the Yukon Delta. The people of the village relied primarily on fishing for their food and hunted the seal, walrus and other marine animals. They also gathered shellfish and what edible vegetation the land offered in the way of greens, roots and berries.

In Chevak, the Neglikfak River offers easy access to the sea by canoe or kayak but is frozen during the winter months. According to John Pingayak, Chevak is the only village left of people who call themselves by the name of Chu’pik.

The history books trace them as relatives to the Yuit people, sometimes called the Southern Eskimos, who spoke the Yu’pik language. However, John tells us that the people never called themselves “Eskimo.” That was a name given to them by outsiders.