[1] As early as in 1895, Imtuk was already a settlement with mixed population of Sirenik Eskimos and Ungazigmit[3] (the latter belonging to Siberian Yupik).
[5] These differences amounted to mutual unintelligibility with Siberian Yupik and Sirenik Eskimo's nearest language relatives.
Language differences (even from its neighboring Eskimo relatives) meant Sirenik Eskimos had to speak either Siberian Yupik or Chukchi, an unrelated language, to communicate with the neighboring (linguistically related) Siberian Yupik.
[11][12] The last native speaker of Sirenink Eskimo, Vyie (Valentina Wye) (Russian: Выйе) died in January 1997.
[6] There are evidences that this small language had at least two territorial dialects in the past, although the number of its speakers was very few even at the end of the nineteenth century.
[18] At one time, traditional spiritual practices were prohibited by authorities, still, some knowledge about these ways survived.
[21] A folklore tale text mentions a feast that could possibly include shamanic features.
As for malevolent powers, devils (/tunʁaki/) belong to such dangers, they can feature in the shape of human, animal or fantastic beings.
Sirenik Eskimos have such a tale as well: the protagonist, returning home after a long travel, must face with the fact that his son has become an old man (while he himself remained young).
[28] More familiar examples of folklore from the world presenting such kind of temporal dilation motifs: Urashima Taro and (without remaining young) Rip Van Winkle.
[33] Furthermore, several peoples living in more or less isolated groups (including many Eskimo ones) understand natural phenomena on a personal level: there are imagined beings resembling to human but differing as well.
[34] As for Sirenik Eskimos, in one of their tales, we find the motif of the effective calling of natural phenomena for help in danger: an eagle is pursuing people on the ice, and a woman begins to talk about calling wind and frost, then at once the river freezes in, and the eagle freezes onto the ice.
Quotation marks refer not to literate citation, they just separate remarks from tale summaries.
An animal tale, taking place on a cliff near the so-called fast-ice edge,[36] narrating a conflict between a cormorant and a raven family.
The boy followed the council, but his father denied the past, claiming that they have never had any domestic animal and they have always lived from wild deer.
Soon, the boy, while hunting, met a diver waiting especially for him, and the bird gave him the same council as the wolf, but the father denied the truth again.
Both animals revealed the boy the truth and promised him that they help him to retrieve the reindeer herd.
The diver made rain with its cryⓘ, and the wolf called the reindeer together, the boy managed to speak to Yari, and all they began to return home, together with the herd.
Besides that, in the Chukchi tale, the girl, just after having been abandoned by her parents, begins to accuse the skull and push it with her feet rudely.
At the end of the tale, the girl shows no sign of revenge, and it is the boy who initiates something that petrifies the parents (literally).
[44]The same or similar motifs can be found also among Ungazigmit, moreover, an Ungazigmi tale extends the story with the further life of the girl after having been pulled up to the sky by the benevolent spider.
While the men hunt, a malevolent being [the beetle, as mentioned above] deceits her and eats her brain.
The man, using the advice of the old woman, finds the herd, and, by cutting up the female deer, the girl steps out of the body in her former human form.
[46]Like several other Eskimo groups, the inhabitants of Sirenik had beliefs prohibiting certain activities, that were thought to be disadvantageous in a magical way.
A great deal of the taboos (like several other beliefs) were thought to serve chances of survival and sustenance, securing abundance of game.