Further Reading
Myths
Lantis recorded over 50 myths and folktales, most in English via interpreters; although four were written phonetically in the language of the island—a dialect of Alaskan Yupik.
Most of these tales convey recurring themes of yearning, uneasiness, and fear. Lantis analyzed these stories for their portrayal of material aspects of life, culturally-idealized personality traits, and depictions of interpersonal relations.
Prominent conflict situations spanning the stories including poverty, dependence, and fatalism; as well as pressures toward high achievement and self-reliance, guilt regarding aggression, and struggles between unmarried males and females.
This featured myth segment of “the Hunter” is from Lantis’s 1946 publication, "The Social Culture of the Nunivak Eskimo.”
Socialization
Lantis’s interest in childrearing and socialization is evident in much of her research across cultural groups; but she dedicated an entire monograph to "Eskimo Childhood and Interpersonal Relationships" (1960).
During Lantis’s field work, she found Eskimo parents to be fairly permissive with young children. Parents instructed primarily by doing and by telling folktales that conveyed the successes that come from favorable behaviors and the failures that result from rash decisions and antisocial tendencies.
Lantis attributed the respect and indulgence with which children were treated to both genuine affection and the traditional belief that children were reincarnated recently deceased elders.
Acculturation
The airplane and short-wave battery radio penetrated the isolation of Nunivak’s inhabitants in the late 1950s. This heightened contact fueled rapid socioeconomic changes, and Lantis observed the shift from a hunting and fishing subsistence economy to a commercial/industrial mixed economy in just one generation.
Lantis portrays the material aspects of acculturation, including changes in clothing, tools, and housing, to have progressed more quickly than the non-material aspects. Fur parkas and mukluks were replaced by mail order catalogue goods, while the art of working skin and building kayaks lingered primarily in the older generation. Traditional hunting and fishing techniques were replaced by steel fishhooks, semiautomatic rifles, nylon fish nets, and outboard motors.
Her investigation into the impacts of some of these socioeconomic factors, as well as the initiation of a Village Council, the introduction of a Christian church, and the centralized education system that followed Alaska statehood in 1958 culminated in her 1972 publication, "Factionalism and Leadership: A Case Study of Nunivak Island."
In this publication, Margaret explores the shifting collective values on the island, particularly in response to the federal government’s transfer of the Nunivak reindeer operation to its people. As trend-setters in culture change vied over the control of community affairs, Lantis examined the discontinuity of leadership in this period of swift cultural, economic, and political change.
