ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses human–fish relationships amongst Alaskan Bering Strait Eskimo people, and some ways those relationships have changed over time. There has been a shift in main, dominant, standard beliefs and discourse about fish over time amongst Indigenous People of this region from early contact period, if not prior, to present. These shifts have connections with broader cosmological shifts. The contemporary dominant or standard set of Christianity and other Western ideas can be outlined as: fish are not persons, fish are sentient but not very intelligent, fish have limited agency, fish do not have spiritual or other powers, fish must be treated with respect, and fish are an economic and cultural resource. Wage labor, commercial goods, commodification of animal and fish resources, and other introductions have had various impacts on region's indigenous residents. An example of a different type of hybridization and complex mixing of beliefs surrounding fish and human–fish relationships pertains to subsistence versus small-scale commercial fish harvests.
