Telling Our Selves Ethnicity and Discourse in Southestern Alaska [Paperback]

In this book, Chase Hensel examines how Yup'ik Eskimos and non-natives construct and maintain gender and ethnic identities through strategic talk about hunting, fishing, and processing. Although ethnicity is overtly constructed in terms of either/or categories, the discourse of Bethel residents suggests that their actual concern is less with whether one is native or non-native, than with how native one is in a given context. In the interweaving of subsistence practices and subsistence discourse, ethnicity is constantly recreated.

A unique, sparkling piece of work that should attract wide attention. --Anthony Woodbury,University of Texas, Austin

Hensel is a superb linguistic anthropologist....It's definitely a significant contribution to the field. --William J. de Reuse,University of Arizona