Can’giiq (JUHN-gheek) is Blackfish in Yugtun
Storyknife, November/December 2025 edition
Calista Education & Culture (CEC) presents the Yup’ik Teaching Moment in our Storyknife newsletter. CEC is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization with the mission to serve the people of the Calista Region by preserving culture, empowering education and facilitating Yuuyaraq, our traditional Way of Being, to ensure a vibrant and sustainable future. This Yup’ik Teaching Moment is provided by Alice Cucuaq Rearden. Rearden is a transcriber and translator for Calista Education and Culture and helps produce publications. She grew up in Napakiak and lives and works in Anchorage as Cultural Engagement Manager at CEC.
Can’giiq (JUHN-gheek) is Blackfish in Yugtun. Can’giiq is a good source of food in fall and winter as it can survive in freezing temperatures in waters with little oxygen.
After freeze up, people start setting their traps in lakes and rivers all over the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in places where there is an availability of blackfish. Traditionally, they made wooden conical traps called taluyat (dah-LUU-yut) to catch them. The traps were made of small wooden slabs that were lashed together with tree roots and tapered toward the back end. Along the opening was a funnel where blackfish swim into the hole and get caught. Today, taluyat are made of chicken wire and other store-bought materials.
There are customary places where people set their traps that were passed down from generation to generation. The late John Phillip of Kongiganak was brought to his grandfather’s blackfish trap site which was just a hole in the ice when he was little. He was told that it would be his spot when he got older. He later told his children and grandchildren the same thing when he brought them there.
Can’giiq is a good source of food in fall and winter as it can survive in freezing temperatures in waters with little oxygen.
People are eager to have a taste of blackfish when they start running and there are many ways to prepare them. The main way is plain boiling and eating them with seal oil. They also eat the leftovers the next day once the broth has gelled in a delicacy called qagret. They also dried them and age them. Sometimes a school of blackfish gather and melt the ice along a lake or river and break through to the surface. They call those blackfish aninit and when that happens, people usually share the abundant catch with the community.
