Our language had no word for science, yet our tools were so well designed that they allowed us to live in a land no one else would inhabit, a land we still call home.

--Elsie Mather, Bethel, November 2003

When I was in school I hated science. I couldn't understand it. Not only was it in another language [English], but all the examples were foreign. If we begin to speak of 'Yup'ik science,' we will give our children something they can understand.

--Agatha John-Shields, Bethel, March 2004

Although there is no word for science in the Yup'ik language, it is the very essence of their lives.