Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family

Jean L. Briggs spent almost two years (between June of 1963 and March of 1965) as a daughter of an Utku family studying the lives and behaviors of the Utku society. In this paper, I will reflect on how sexes play a role both at the household and societal level, how the Utku control their emotions, and how the children were raised.

The lifestyle of the Utku is nomadic, seasonally moving from one place to another in search for food supply. Such movements are more frequent during the spring season as the melting ground could flood their homes. The number of people in the camp fluctuates according to seasons, and often times several igloos (mostly two) are joined together to create a larger one. I thought it was cool that Briggs was able to live among the Utku and do participant observation. From the description of the Utku lifestyle, I think this is a typical nomadic style and very similar to the other nomadic lifestyles I have read in the past.

The Utku are a patriarchal society with patrilineal descent, and most of the times prefer male children to female children. Instead of using names to describe one's relationship with another, the Utku address one another in kinship terms and everyone is related under this system. Despite not being used as often, names are significant in a way that a person picks up a name from someone else. In addition, The Utku believe that preferable traits such as "physical, mental, moral traits" and "skills and abilities" are passed on from one generation to the next (Briggs, 37). Upon reading how the descent and naming system works in the Utku, I was not surprised about patriarchal nature of the society. However, I found the use of only kinship terms to address one another quite interesting.

I was intrigued to learn that household roles in the Utku were similar to that of the American culture in the early 20th century. Women played a submissive role within the society and family and are often solely responsible with the housework, including providing clothing, cooking, making fish lines, and taking care of the children while men were gone hunting or fishing. When the men came back home, the women provided them with food and tea (Briggs, 78). I did not expect tea to play such a role in the life of a nomadic society, as I thought tea is consumed by a more modernized society. Expanding on the theme of tea, I found it interesting how visitors are often served tea at the request of the male, and that household woman had to replenish the teapot regularly.

While I expected to see women playing a submissive role within the Utku society, I was surprised to read that Briggs observed men and women eating separately from one another. Most cultures prevent male and women