"Technology casts such a long shadow over all we do that we cannot begin to imagine living without its products." So said Wendell H. Oswalt, Gloria Mann and Leonn Satterthwait in their preface in An Anthropological Analysis of Food-Getting Technology (1976). This insight came out of Oswalt's long-term studies among the North American Inuit (formerly called "Eskimos") for over 20 years. Oswalt's academic interests include ethnology, technology, and Alaska.
Oswalt attended the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and received his undergraduate degree there. Later he would go on to get his doctorate at the University of Arizona in 1959. He taught at the University of California, Los Angeles for thirty-two years, where he is currently a professor emeritus. Oswalt is the foremost authority on the Yupik-speaking Inuit of southwest Alaska, and particularly studied the Kuskokwim River Inuit. His painstaking historical research has supported meaningful analysis of contemporary Inuit lifeways.
A sampling of Oswalt's bibliography includes:Mission of Change in Alaska (1963)
Napaskiak: An Alaskan Eskimo Community (1963)
Alaskan Eskimos (1967)
Understanding Our Culture (1970)
Other Peoples, Other Customs: World Ethnography and Its History (1972)
Habitat and Technology: The Evolution of Hunting (1973)
An Anthropological Analysis of Food-Getting Technology (with Gloria Mann and Leonn Satterthwait)(1976)
Eskimos and Explorers (1979)
Kolmakovskiy Redoubt: The Ethnoarchaeology of a Russian Fort in Alaska (1980)
Life Cycles and Lifeways: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (1986)
Bashful No Longer: An Alaskan Eskimo Ethnohistory, 1788-1988 (1990)
Fair, Susan W. "Book Review: Bashful No Longer: An Alaskan Eskimo Ethnohistory, 1788-1988." The Journal of American Folklore 105(418): 493-496. 1992.
Oswalt, Wendell H. An Anthropological Analysis of Food-Getting Technology. John Wiley and Sons. Canada, 1976.
Oswalt, Wendell H. This Land was Theirs. Mayfield Publishing Company. California, 1988.
Written by: John A. Gebhardt
Edited by: Emily Hildebrant, 2007