Tulukaruk

Tulukaruk, the Raven, is the great transformer of Yup'ik oral tradition, a benevolent culture-hero who shapes the land, releases the animals and orders the conditions of human life, yet who is at the same time an incorrigible trickster whose greed and rash schemes turn against him. Edward Nelson recorded an extensive Raven cycle among the Bering Sea peoples in the late nineteenth century, and the figure remains central to Yup'ik storytelling. Among the beings Raven is said to have created is the fearsome Palraiyuk of the marshes. His double nature, world-maker and buffoon, is characteristic of the Raven tricksters of the wider North Pacific and Arctic, though Yup'ik tellings give him their own distinctive episodes.

Children

• Palraiyuk

Domains

• creation transformation
• trickery mischief
• culture hero

Powers

• transform and shape the world for people
• bring monsters and creatures into being
• trick others and stumble into folly

Epithets

• Tulukaruk — the RavenEdward W. Nelson, The Eskimo about Bering Strait (1899) (primary)

Relations

• child: PalraiyukRaven fashioned the monster Palraiyuk.A Book of Creatures, 'Păl-raí-yûk' (2015), citing Nelson (1899): 'one of Raven's many creations' (secondary)

Sources

• Tulukaruk (Raven) is the Yup'ik culture-hero, transformer and trickster who shapes the world and its creatures while his own appetites lead him into mischief.: Edward W. Nelson, The Eskimo about Bering Strait, 18th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1899) (primary); native-languages.org, 'Yupik Legends' (secondary)
• Raven is credited in Yup'ik tradition with creating the marsh monster Palraiyuk.: A Book of Creatures, 'Păl-raí-yûk' (2015) (secondary)