Fending Off the Shades

Every member of our species naturally fears death, given that we can never satisfactorily answer the question of what comes next. And so we've invented a zillion different ways of coping with that anxiety, many of which involve rituals that confirm a belief in the spirit's indestructibility. Few of these rituals, however, are quite as involved as those once practiced by the Yupik residents of St. Lawrence Island, a blip in the Bering Sea. Electing to participate in a pal's funeral there used ...