Bill Coperthwaite: Yurt Builder Extraordinaire

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

What depressed me, though, was the fact that many Eskimo kids were growing up without pride in their origin or respect for their own culture. They're victims of a kind of cultural oppression that's not planned or organized, but inevitably occurs when two ways of life collide and one dominates the other . . . as Western culture dominates the Eskimos and Indians in the North.

As always happens when I've lived with another people for a while, I wished there was some way I could repay the Eskimos for what they'd been teaching me . . . and my regret over their cultural oppression gave me an idea for doing so. It struck me that these people's art and artifacts had been stolen from them for centuries and put in museums. Because I had connections with museums and libraries and universities that the Eskimos lacked, I thought I might be able to get some of these objects back for them to see. The Eskimos I spoke with were interested, and so were Alaskan educators, anthropologists and friends.

As it turned out, I was able to create the project as I'd planned . . . and to use it as the basis for a doctoral program at Harvard as well. I'm hoping that the project report will be published . . . it's of special value because of Doug Porter's beautiful color pictures of Eskimo artifacts.

PLOWBOY: Have you ever run into the criticism that your work with the Eskimos was just "using them" for your own purposes?

COPERTHWAITE: Very seldom. True, I used the Eskimos by learning from them . . . but just as it's important for me to learn, it's important for them to know that they have something worth teaching. In return for learning from them, I gave respect.

PLOWBOY: You're saying that gaining from the Eskimos was a type of giving?

COPERTHWAITE: Yes. "Learning by doing" is an exciting concept . . . but I've been reversing the phrase lately and talking about "doing by learning" I've come to realize that — because I raised their self-esteem — I did more for the Eskimos by going to learn from them than I could have done in any other way.

PLOWBOY: During your stay with the Eskimos you worked with your hands a great deal, and I know you spend a lot of time on crafts both here and in other countries. Why do you emphasize handcrafts so strongly?

COPERTHWAITE: Crafts are important in this society because many people grow up lacking self-confidence, and the development of hand skills is a good way to promote a feeling of self-worth. Traditionally, though, we think of crafts as belonging to the specialists and their apprentices. An advantage of working with handcrafts of different cultures is that I'm stimulated to design techniques that enable more people to participate in these skills.

I've also found that — when I'm among people like the Eskimos to whom manual stills are common — crafts become an important means of communication. The fact that I've developed the ability to create with my hands not only establishes that I'm sincere in wanting to learn from people of another background, but drastically reduces the time it normally takes to overcome stereotypes and barriers . . . the language barrier, for one.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print