Oscar Kawagley

Who was Oscar Kawagley?

Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, best known as Oscar Kawagley, was a Yupik anthropologist, teacher and actor from Alaska. He was an associate professor of education at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks until his 2011 death at the age of 76. The Anchorage Daily News described him as "one of most influential teachers and thinkers."

He was born in Bethel, Alaska. He was raised by his grandmother in traditional tribal ways, and as a child he spoke only Yupik. He was reportedly the first Yupik native to graduate from high school in Bethel. He received a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in 1958. He received a PhD in social and educational studies from at the University of British Columbia. "Over the course of a prolific career, he explored how the Yup'ik concepts he learned as a boy on the tundra could work in concert with western education and he became a pioneer in the field of indigenous knowledge, not just in Alaska but in the academic world at large."

His 1995 book, A Yupiaq Worldview: a Pathway to Ecology and Spirit, was an attempt to reconcile indigenous and Western worldviews from an indigenous perspective and was an important contribution to the field of ethnoecology. In the book he developed the concept of "indigenous methodology", explaining how western science can benefit from native ways of understanding and vice versa.