If you're offering me diamonds and rust

The Present/Recent Past:

Ukiuvak is from an Earth where the Cold War's intensity led to more forced relocation of Native Americans/First Nations people into the furthest parts of the Arctic, in response to Russia venturing into and industrializing oil-rich parts of Siberia. This has led to both governments starting to realize that non-human, sentient life is in fact present on Earth, much to the horror of most non-humans. Further expansion into areas formerly only populated by non-humans has led to humans coming across more and more evidence of not being the only people on the planet; archaeologists can tell when found objects are not all that old, linguists can see when the writing found is wholly unrelated to any writing system in the area, and cameras can capture images of blurry Ieuqut figures in the distance in places normally thought to be uninhabited.

While the Cold War is the reason why more humans are in the north, obviously the north has always been inhabited. Ieuqut, Tornrait, and Qalupalik lived in the same areas as many Arctic dwelling humans for thousands of years, largely seperate from each other. Contact with humans was always limited, especially after humans began to blame non-humans for problems ranging from broken nets to murders in their villages, leading to superstition and wild speculation. Avoidance has always been the standard policy of the Ieuqut, particularly after an event a few hundred years ago where attempts by Qalupalik to negotiate peace and hunting rights led to the slaughter of nearly fifty Qalupalik people. While individual non-humans have interacted with humans without it leading to disaster, such interactions just as often went awry, historically speaking. It was simply easier to move into more and more remote places and build cities within hollowed-out mountains and hills, away from humans altogether.

Ukiuvak is distantly part human, but while intermarriage between Ieuqut and humans is not unknown historically, it's extremely rare in a historical context and unthinkable in the current era. Such marriages were rare even when they did occur generations ago; now, with human hostility at an all time high and paranoia towards them reaching peak levels among Ieuqut people, it is unheard of. Historically, intermarriages led to violence against said couples from the human side. The human partner would have to be relocated to an Ieuqut settlement in order to live in safety, or if they refused, any offspring would be taken and spirited away to an Ieuqut village or town, where they could live without fear of being killed for their powers.

The situation has always been tense. White people arriving did not singlehandedly create the paranoia that the Ieuqut communities have about being discovered and killed, they just accidentally made it worse via Arctic relocation programs and setting up research centers, as well as creating trading posts and later introducing air travel that brought more and more humans to the area. That said, they didn't improve anyone's perceptions of humankind via their fighting with and poor treatment of the local indigenous population over the years. The general impression such fighting and disputes left on the non-humans of the Arctic was that humans were at best prone to violence but loyal to their family and hard workers, and at worst violent sadists who would turn even on their own people without much warning. That's obviously not an accurate view of the human race, but a lack of real communication leads to some pretty intense misunderstandings over the centuries.

Unlike in our world, Arctic relocation and settlement by white people has been significantly more thorough, owing to a focus on obtaining the resources contained within the region. This shift in history was largely reactionary, caused by the United States reacting to Russia undertaking the same kind of operations. Currently, in Ukiuvak's world, it's 1968, and the relocation efforts have been going on and intensifying since the mid 50's, but have already long, long surpassed anything that occurred in our world in scope, effectiveness and duration. Oil rigs have been established with much greater frequency in the north, across Alaska and in Russia. Consequently, the human population is higher in Ukiuvak's world in such areas than it is in the United States - though, obviously, still low given it's the Arctic.

The Past:

How far back the Ieuqut have been in the Arctic is a subject of some debate historically. Traditional religious beliefs insist that they have simply always been there. Written records go back considerably, at least five thousand years, with many Ieuqut cities and towns having been carved into the hills and mountains so long ago that records of their founding no longer exist. The linguistic differences between groups of Ieuqut stretching from Alaska to Greenland indicates a prolonged occupation and time for isolationism and tribalism to set in, complete with differences in tradition and culture. Due to the lack of full answers for questions pertaining to the past, history is a field in which Ieuqut scholars are deeply invested even in the current day.

The area in which Ukiuvak lives, the High North, has been inhabited for around four thousand years, with the area closest to the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean being the most heavily inhabited. In all Ieuqut tribes save for the Aqiavasra, settlements are above the Arctic tree line, adjacent to an ocean, or both. Unlike the Qalupalik, another group of non-humans of the Arctic, the Ieuqut do not live on islands out in the ocean itself and do not inhabit any part of the Aleutian Islands. While Qalupalik history is oral rather than recorded via writing, their own version of history recounts the Ieuqut having been in the Arctic before they were. The Tornrait, the most technologically advanced and isolationist of the Arctic species, maintain they were in Greenland and the central Arctic prior to the Ieuqut.

Ultimately, the salient point is not who got there first. It is that over the course of thousands of years, permanent settlements by the Ieuqut have been carved into the earth and maintained for far long than anything humans have built, humans in the area largely being migratory and nomadic. Prior to the shift in human settlements, this migratory pattern kept humans' risk of interacting with Ieuqut civilization on a large scale low, as humans were often not in the same area as their non-human counterparts. This makes the problem of prolonged fear of interaction with humans a relatively new one, both historically and sociologically speaking; Ukiuvak's parents were the first generation to truly live in fear of humans discovering and attacking them, and his generation is the first to be on active patrols to maintain boundaries and secrecy.

This is why human-Ieuqut marriages were possible six generations ago, when Ukiuvak's last fully-human ancestor entered the bloodline. When humans were still nomadic, it was possible for a single human to go missing and for the humans of the region to blame bad spirits without having the resources, willpower or time to launch an investigation. That is simply not possible at this point, and as such, intermarriage has been made illegal recently for the first time in Ieuqut history. Trade between Ieuqut and humans, even disguised Ieuqut in remote locations, has been illegal for forty years. Restrictions and fear have been slowly but steadily implemented into the fabric of Ieuqut society, and the crux of the social, psychological basis for it is that the Ieuqut are the ones who made something of the land. They are the ones who tamed it, the inside of it, forging homes out of the hills.

And if that sounds incredibly dismissive towards the native humans and highly self-serving: it is. Historical revisionism is not a uniquely human trait.

Ukiuvak is the middle of five children, raised in a somewhat traditionalist family in what the Ieuqut people refer to as the High North. Living above the treeline, he grew up primarily in the town of Sammairuq, one of the many Ieuqut settlements carved into the hills long ago. He grew up in relative safety, as humans were oblivious to the towns under the ground and within the hills and mountains, but was raised in a state of increasing paranoia as he got older and human settlements and explorers moved further and further north. As the human governments of Canada and the United States set up research stations and new settlements in order to claim more remote, resource (read: oil) rich territory and secure Arctic sovereignty, staying hidden from humans became a daily concern. In this way, Cold War era paranoia reached the Ieuqut, albeit not in the way it would have manifested in humans. Fear of humans is a standard fact of life, and although Ukiuvak has faint human ancestry of his own, he views that as a remnant from a gentler time, and not as an indicator modern humans can be expected to learn to coexist with other species.

It's not just a general disdain for humans, however, that motivates him to personally dislike them. Ukiuvak is the most serious one of his siblings to start, but has only been the most anti-human since his oldest brother, Kuyakka, was killed by a human he had stopped to help when he was traveling. Any Ieuqun could take an individual human in a fight; it took deception, trust gained and senseless betrayal on the part of the human to kill Kuyakka. The shock of this death rippled through their close-knit community as well as their family, and is something Ukiuvak has never really come to terms with. He signed up to be part of the Aqiavaat Guard, patrolling border areas near both human and Ieuqut territory to try to prevent human detection and discourage settlements of humans in the area. Ukiuvak isn't good at processing his deeper emotions or expressing his pain regarding this loss, so he's picked a job that will hopefully keep this tragedy from happening to others. He's dwelling on the past as he contemplates the future. In his own way, this is him being proactive, and being proactive is the only way to feel like he isn't wasting his life. Kuyakka was the scholar, the religious one, the kindly gentleman of their family. Ukiuvak admired him greatly. Deep down, he knows that if someone in the family should have died, it wasn't his older brother, and that's haunting.

By nature, he isn't a talkative person, and when he does talk, he tends to focus on other people. Raised to be polite and respectful, he keeps most of his worries to himself, which can result in a solemn, sort of grim countenance that's as unintentional as it is frequent. Ukiuvak has become more religious in the wake of his brother Kuyakka's death, straining his relationship with his other older brother, Isruma, who responded to the loss by becoming more thoroughly disillusioned with the concept of the divine. Perpetually bad at confrontation, Ukiuvak has let the distance grow rather than try to argue with Isruma, and often simply lets people walk away from him without pursuing reconciliation or resolution. His default state of being is to keep to himself, which definitely didn't help him recover from the loss of his brother any or help him reach out to his surviving brother. That said, Ukiuvak isn't antisocial. He has friends, he enjoys spending time with others, and he attends festivals and family gatherings willingly, but as he's gotten older his enthusiasm for social interaction has faded. Ukiuvak has a hard time knowing what to do with himself around people. Charm is not an area he excels in.

Although distant, his faint human heritage is noticeable among his people, resulting in some awkwardness, offhand cruelty, snide remarks and discomfort on the part of his people. With that hanging over his head along with a growing sense of paranoia and disquiet among Ieuqut society, he's found it causes less altercations and stress to just avoid crowds when possible. Crowds, not people in general - he likes spending one on one time with his friends, letting them vent about their problems and helping them through it as best he can. He's developed a bit of a I-need-to-be-there complex regarding his friends and siblings since his brother's death. Ukiuvak is far from flawless, however, and his obsessive need to feel he's protecting and helping people is cutting into the time and energy he might normally spend being with others or letting himself relax with friends and family.

He's a caring person, having spent several years helping to raise his younger sisters at his parent's behest. He's surprisingly good with children, and an expert storyteller. Ukiuvak reads a lot, spends time studying history, and can generally be quite content with both fact and fiction to look into. Although Ukiuvak keeps his faith and his religious observance mostly to himself for the most part, he's more well-versed in his people's religion than most due to his fondness for reading, and takes the history and study thereof very seriously. The one way to get him to start talking is to bring up history, religion, or traditional stories. Through sheer geekery, he can make these into less controversial, more dorky topics of discussion. Despite all his seriousness, it's clear when he gets going that he's not a pessimist, he's just uncertain about the future and takes comfort in the past. He tries to be reassuring to others when the subject of human encroachment comes up. He supports his siblings' careers and decisions, offering encouragement and withholding judgment on their more unorthodox life choices because he just wants them to be happy. Ideally, he wants everyone to be happy, safe and hidden away from the violence of humanity. A lot of his life choices are based around trying to avoid more trauma and chasing the dream of a safer future.

As with most Ieuqut, he has a skewed and unfavorable view of humanity. To him, humans are a source of a lot of violence in history, both their own and other people's, and while his wariness doesn't translate to hate, it would be hard for him to trust a human even on an individual level. He certainly wouldn't kill one except in self defense, nor would he seek out violence needlessly, but he wouldn't risk his people's safety to save one. His safety, certainly, if only because he's the kind of person who remembers all his mistakes and is still kicking himself over all of them years and years later. But if he had any inkling a human posed a real threat to his people, he'd justify any actions he felt necessary after that as self-defense on behalf of his people. He will always perceive humans as a threat. He knows what they do to each other, let alone what they might do to him. (And if sometimes his reading and his own family history makes him view humans in a softer, less hostile light, well, it's a temporary moment of weakness that no one needs to know about.)

A lifelong momma's boy, Ukiuvak is eternally hounded by his mother to pick a less lonely profession, settle down and try to find a happiness that's less unstable. She knows being on high alert all the time isn't good for his mood, something his father also owns up to. The difference is that his father understands completely why his son is silent on the matter of marriage, as, being the one Ukiuvak gets his faint human heritage from, he knows how hard it can be to never be viewed as an option by most people. To try to keep his mother happy, Ukiuvak sometimes attempts to find romance, each time ending in various degrees of disaster. Ukiuvak is not smooth, charming or particularly sexy among his people. His dry, sarcastic and sometimes hyperbolic humor has also failed to endear him to anyone on a romantic level, though his friends at least think he's funny...