page_title: Yup'ik clothing
section_title: Headwear
hierarchical_section_title: Yup'ik clothing / Headwear
caption_attribution_description: English: Exhibit in the Arvid Adolf Etholén collection, Museum of Cultures, Helsinki, Finland. Photography was permitted in the museum without restriction.
context_page_description: Yup'ik clothing refers to the traditional Eskimo-style clothing worn by the Yupik people of southwestern Alaska. Also known as Cup'ik clothing for the Chevak Cup'ik-speaking people of Chevak and Cup'ig clothing for the Nunivak Cup'ig-speaking people of Nunivak Island.
  The traditional clothing system developed and used by the Yup’ik, Inuit and Nuniwarmiut peoples is the most effective cold weather clothing developed to date. Yup'ik women made clothes and footwear from animal skins, sewn together using needles made from animal bones, walrus ivory, and bird bones such as the front part of a crane's foot and threads made from other animal products, such as sinew. The multi-functional ulu is used to process and cut skins for clothing and footwear. Women made most clothing of caribou and sealskin. Yup’ik clothing tended to fit relatively loosely.
  Wastefulness being disrespectful, Yup'ik elders made use of every last scrap from hunts and harvests: seal guts, skins of salmon fish, dried grasses such as Leymus mollis. Traditionally, skins of birds, fish, and marine mammals such as seal and walrus, and land mammals were used to make clothing.
context_section_description: Hood or Parka hood (nacaq, uqurrsuk in Yup'ik, nacar in Cup'ig) is a common hat on the parka. The Greenlandic Inuit (Kalaallit, Tunumiit, and Inughuit), the Canadian Inuit, and the Alaskan Iñupiat and Yup’ik usually wear a parka style which has an attached hood with a fur ruff to protect the face. These hoods are usually trimmed with an Arctic fox tail, or a broad strip of wolf or wolverine fur. The tengqucuk is a tip of parka hood; the kak’acuk is a pompon on tip of parka hood or hat; the kakauyaq is a decoration at the crown of the hood of a young woman's traditional Yup’ik parka that consists of strands of red, black, and, white beads or strips of calfskin; the menglairun is a strip of fur between the ruff and hood of a parka. The formation of the Eskimo Nebula resembles a person's head surrounded by a parka hood. The emperor goose's Yup’ik name nacaullek literally means "one having a parka hood".
  Separate hood (yuraryaraq in Yup'ik) used with hoodless parka. They used them for traveling when they wore parkas without hoods. These hoods are made of squirrel-skin  or strips of dyed fish skin.
  Hood ruff (negiliq in Yup'ik and Cup'ik, negili in Cup'ig) is not similar neck ruff. Both men's and women's parka hoods were finished with a large hood cover, known as "sunshine ruff" or "sunburst ruff" made from strips of wolverine and fox. The sunshine ruff is made to resemble the rays of the sun beaming from one's face. The ruff on a fancy parka was constructed of not merely one or two layers of fur but of three or four of different tints and thicknesses. The yurturuaq ia a small dark piece of fur at the very top of light-colored garment hood ruff (said to represent a black bear sitting on a mountain of snow) or small light piece of fur on dark-colored garment hood ruff (said to represent a polar bear).
  Fancy hat (nacarpiaq in Yup'ik, literally "real hat", nacarpig'ar in Cup'ig) a Yup'ik men's ceremonial headdress (angutet nacait "men's hats") with strips of fur hanging on shoulders or a drummer's hood traditionally used for opening ceremonies and dances. The nacarpiaq is made from bird feet leather, glass and crystal beads, cultured pearls and the skins and furs of wild animals like the mink, land otter, wolf and wolverine. The Yup’ik use animal hide because they believe animals sacrifice themselves in order for the wearer of the garment to survive. Nunivaarmiut Cup'ig men wore caps with many strips of fur hanging from the bottom edge over the neck and shoulders. The main body of these caps, worn at dances, was usually made of squirrel skins with a crown and borders of white reindeer fawn skin. Sometimes a wolverine tail was fastened on the back, and the long bottom fringe might be of reindeer skin strips. Nunivaarmiut Cup'ig wolf head caps, which consisted of an entire head skin including ears and nose, were also worn at ceremonies. Edward S. Curtis (1930) mentions animal-head caps worn during the Messenger Feast.
  Circular cap or circular hat (uivqurraq or uivquq in Yup'ik) is cap of squirrel or other skin with wood knot-like (uivquq "knot in wood, a mark left in timber by the origin of branches") beaded decorative bands. People wore circular caps like this in regions south of the Yukon River, where parkas were made without hoods.
  Crown-like Dance headdress or dance hat (nasqurrun sg nasqurrutek dual nasqurrutet pl in Yup'ik and Cup'ik, nasqerrun in Cup'ig; which is derived from the nasquq "head; the person who starts the Kevgiq") a beaded and wolf, wolverine, weasel, otter, ermine fur-ruffed, also bear clawed or caribou-haired dance headdress used for Eskimo dancing. In coastal villages of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, men who led ceremonial "asking songs" during Kevgiq (Messenger Feast), wore caribou-hair headdresses like this one. They directed the drumming and singing with feathered enirarautet (pointing sticks or dance sticks). Women wore similar headdresses, which remain a part of modern Yup’ik dance regalia for both sexes. The nasqurrun used to be worn by men at some frequencies. But after Euro-American contact with Alaska
caption: Yup'ik semi-conical bentwood hunting visor (elqiaq) with walrus ivory and feather decoration. Exhibit in the Arvid Adolf Etholén collection, Museum of Cultures (Kulttuurien museo) of National Museum of Finland, Helsinki, Finland.
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