Alaska Native Contemporary Art

Beaver and Lynx hat, "malagg'ay" in Yugtun

Pronunciation here

Sewn by Temple Dillard, in Fairbanks, circa 2020

        My own bewilderment at how Alaska Native art isn't considered American therefore isn't considered Western aside, I feel I would be remiss in my own...endeavor to perpetuate that part of my culture upon which I do have a grasp if I didn't toot my own horn here.  I've thus far failed to perpetuate the language and dance, and am struggling to teach my children about subsistence.  I have been...Westernized in many aspects.  Saying it turns to ash in my mouth but despite the invaluability of that half of my heritage I have placed value on certain aspects of it, and the effort I place into those aspects is reflective of their value to me and the value placed by my family on my ability to practice those aspects as I was growing up.  It wasn't very important to my Yup'ik speaking family that I speak it, so they didn't bother to make sure I spoke Yugtun growing up.  What was valuable of me to them was carrying the gut bucket from where they were cutting fish to the river, and such direction could be given in English.  It was valuable to them that I bring meat home.  It wasn't valuable to them I learn to hang or mend net, though when they needed me to pull the net into the boat full of fish I had value.  So I struggle internally with that which I am capable of and that which I am willing to perpetuate.  

Seal and sea otter hat sewn again by Yours Truly, circa 2016 in Fairbanks.  Since I live in Fairbanks now I am no longer considered a coastal Native and therefore am unable to harvest them myself under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.  As a non-coastal Native I am able to purchase and barter for them for crafting.  The colors here are the colors the critters were blessed with by nature; the mottled seal camouflaged against sharks and orcas, the otter's hide golden with age towards it's muzzle which are the tufts at the end of the ties.  You can't see the simple stitches that bind these pieces of skin because they are sewn together in such a way as to to hide the thread, though you can see where the seams may be.  This pattern is still in progress, I'm working on making it lay better around the head of the wearer.  It's a work in progress, patterns are some of the closest guarded family secrets.
 

    I don't have anybody in my immediate circle with whom to converse in Yugtun, and so have let whatever I knew of the language stagnate.  My family already has a full schedule; my spouse and I have full time jobs, with three children each going to school with their respective and expanding after school and summer time extra curricular activities.  They do after all live in a predominantly Western world and as their parents it is our responsibility to them to make sure that they can function in it.  It's difficult to find time to join a Native dance group, and difficult to see the utility in it.  I say that not just as someone who is greatly assimilated, though I am, but as someone aware of the evolved times in which we live.      

      There was a time when Yup'iks lived by their hands.  They caught, and built, and sewed everything they had.  If they needed it, they made it, or traded something they caught or made for it.  This meant that every moment of the land's productivity had to be utilized, and if the land was not producing you were processing that which you had already caught, or you were passing the time with your community between frenzied foraging and harvests.  Fish were harvested while available, caribou and moose harvested when available, water fowl, berries, herring roe, clams, all harvested while available, and when the weather should allow for storage.  That takes us from the end of winter to the beginning of winter, what about the dead deep dark part of winter?  That was passed by carving and sewing by lamp light, skinning fur critters trapped in their prime during the heart of winter.  But Jack does not live by work alone.  That's where Native Dance, Yuraq, came in.  Families and communities would come together and share their dances and be proud in their practice!  And today just thinking about it I can imagine the cultural fulfillment that those few still practicing it must feel.  But it doesn't fill my freezer, or my wallet, so it's difficult to place a utilitarian value on it.  And utilitarian value, that even Native peoples of a hundred years ago used as a measuring stick evidenced by the fact that they transitioned to steel tools from stone and bone, snow machines from dogs, outboards from kayak paddles, is something that we've always had.  Poor justification for not practicing Yuraq?  Yes, and I will likely try to get my kids and I into a dance group, all it will take is time management right?    

     Pictured to the right is a walrus ivory fox pendant I carved around 2008 in a Native Art class here at UAF.  I tried to make it a full body fox, but botched the transition between head and shoulders so I cut the head off and restarted after tying this around my neck.  That piece still lies in a drawer somewhere, waiting for me to put a Dremel to it.  The pendant had black dots painted in the eye holes, but being worn for 15 years takes a toll.  The triangular snout juts proudly from the face, giving the fox a long and highly effective nasal cavity and a fine point to drive through the crust of snow after the targeted vole.  It's difficult to see in this picture, but the triangular ears are satellites that direct sound down the ear hole, so he can target the vole under the crust by sound.  This piece is now devoid of any color that isn't that of worn ivory, and is back on my neck failing to imbue much patience, but maybe succeeding with some. 

    I don't intend to make Yup'iks sound ultra utilitarian.  They were, I just don't mean to sound like that.  But we're human, and time can pass slowly in a hut or igloo, especially during the deepest darkest winter.  Tools can be made beautifully, and jewelry has its place; trade items, signs of status, favors, what have you.  It was at one time considered a high status symbol to have a husband that could hunt and carve, and a wife that could pick berries, cut meat, and sew, while carrying the babies on her back.  When I was a child it took both hands to count the active ivory carvers where I grew up, but every man could carve, even if it was only on special occasions.  Now I know of only two still carving, though I'm certain that many people still could if they thought they could make money on it.  Every woman could sew fur when I was a child, there were always projects on their tables.  It's much rarer now, but still more prominent than ivory given the stigma surrounding poached African ivory that taints even legal Native Alaskan harvested and carved ivory.  

    But the stigma around fur has grown.  Looking the way I do I've only had one bad encounter in person when I was selling fur stuffs at bazaars in Fairbanks where a lady, with tears in her eyes, demanded I use faux fur.  I explained to her that faux fur is derived from petroleum, a finite product, that doesn't stand up to use very well, insulates a fraction as well as fur, and when you throw it away it's not biodegradable.  On the other hand, real fur is a renewable product, more of it is born every year, it's durable, retains it's insulation and beauty much longer than faux fur, and when it's done keeping you warm it's biodegradable and won't sit in a landfill for 500 years.  She bought a pair of seal skin earrings, though my wife was kicking me under the table the whole time I was explaining all this to my new customer.   But I've had a neighbor at many of these bazaars who quite selling fur stuffs regularly, because she was so frequently accosted for selling fur.  I reckon it's easier to approach her than me for some reason. 

    It really is no wonder so many indigenous art forms are dying, they derive from consumption of animals, as either the by products of said consumption like ivory earrings or sealskin hats, or like an ivory harpoon they're made with the intent of furthering consumption, and consumption is heavily denigrated in the wider "Western culture."  Think of every hunter you see on TV or in movies.  They're always villains or buffoons.  Mcleach the Poacher in The Rescuers Down Under, the "reformed" hunter turned live trapper for biologists in any number of wild cat shows, the drunken idiot hunters Wolverine slaughtered in his Origin movie.  Have you seen "Togo?"  Every piece of fur that movie, about Alaskan dog mushers relaying the serum to Nome, was faux fur.  It's a movie...about dog mushers...in Alaska...many of whom were trappers...but the movie used all faux fur.  I can think of no deeper insult to the generations of Alaska Natives who have thrived in a land many perceived as a desert, than to depict them wearing faux fur.  There are countless examples such denigration of hunters and trappers in pop culture. Countless.

     My oldest child liked the show Wild Kratts.  I didn't mind it, it wasn't really trash and was fairly educational.  But one day he asked me if we were villains because we eat animals.  I took a closer look at the show; the villains are a dweeb that builds machines that build buildings, a skank that wears animals, and a fat southern chef that eats animals.  So I had to explain to him some finer points that weren't explicitly clear in the show; the skank wants to wear endangered species, the chef wants to eat endangered species, and the dweeb...I guess wants to build things where maybe he should have left it jungle.  We eat sustainable resources, if there aren't enough caribou, bear, moose to sustain what we eat we don't hunt them.  We wear sustainable resources, if there aren't enough beaver, lynx, marten, to sustain harvest we don't target them.  And the concrete jungle shouldn't expand everywhere, but carefully curated industry is how we continue to have the world we do today, though if it was completely curtailed or even completely unrestrained we may have the dystopia so often featured in blockbusters today.

    Grass baskets are another example of art driven by utility.  Before pottery, and when we couldn't collect suitable wood from which to carve a bowl, we still needed containers for doodads.  And that particular type of grass grows all along the coast and a ways inland.  But it's a fine, fine art, and it takes a dedicated and steady hand to pick, dry, and carefully rewet and sew them.  I watched my mother do this as a child, and even tried my clumsy hand at it.  Pictured below are some examples of her work that I have failed to sell at bazaars.  I was asking a pittance on her behalf, considering the amount of labor that goes into them.  And these are small examples, the large containers displayed in various museums and airports could take months to build.  My mother even has one on display at Kanakanak Hospital, where my sibling and I were born.  If you can zoom in, you'll see the growing spiral that brings it from a small knot to a a flat plate, then the next ring is brought upwards to begin cupping, and later spirals are brought inwards to close the container.  It's a bundle of grass, that is wrapped tightly with a single strand of grass on a needle, occasionally going around the previous ring to anchor the following bundle.  Strands of grass are added as necessary to maintain the desired thickness of that spiraling bundle.  If desired dyed pieces can be woven into the wrap to accent the natural color of the grass.  It's painstaking work that is now too often left unrewarded.

Grass baskets and fan bases sewn by 

Diane Dillard, circa 2015

Twin Hills, Alaska

Now in my suitcase, awaiting sale.
          

      Museums and airports don't call many people for grass baskets.  When I was a kid all the old ladies and aunties could make grass baskets.  I don't hear of any of my contemporaries that sew grass actively.  Every now and then I see a cousin post on social media when they try, but almost nobody does this regularly.  Why should they?  Tupperware is easily ordered on Amazon, and people aren't paying enough for the labor that goes into this art.  This craft wanes because there is no utility in it today; people won't buy it, museums and other prominent displayers are saturated, and it's purpose has been filled by other easier to find vessels.     

    T'linget halibut hooks are another tool that have found themselves waning to just art, being mostly replaced by the stainless steel circle hook.  

 This artful utility was collected in 1882 from the village of Angoon, Alaska, by John Maclean.  It now resides at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.  The photo is by Jonathan Malindine.  It brought it's owner an unknown number of halibut before being "collected."  This old, and likely well used utility, is devoid of any color that isn't that of which it is made; the drab brown of likely cedar, pacific yew, spruce root, and perhaps a nail to make the barb as this was post European contact.  It may have been adorned with dye at it's creation, but if so it's been rubbed off by use.  There is purpose in it's geometry though; it's designed to catch and hold onto a hungry halibuts lip, and not let go.  Properly proportioned, it can be sized to target the average fish, leaving the small ones to get big and the bigger ones to breed, sustaining the yield for generations.  The carving of a person eating a halibut, representing their spiritual connection, is to entice the fish into blessing the fisherman with catching himself on the hook, in addition to any bait that would have been fixed to it.  

    There are such hooks being carved today, the vast majority of which are meant to be hung on the wall instead of hung from a line in the ocean.  But there is a small resurgence in their actual use in Southeast Alaska.  There is fulfillment in catching your own food, and more so when you use your own hands to craft that which catches it.  

    There is fulfillment in being warm in weather that keeps most people, even hardened Fairbanksans, in their homes near their wood stoves.  There is even more fulfillment when your warm because you sewed your gear from fur you caught yourself.  And there is even more fulfillment in seeing my children run around in the snow wearing the hat I made, from fur I caught, in a coat that was passed down from a family friend, with a ruff she made from fur they caught.  The sad part is that most of America, and the rest of the Western World, sees no utility in it.  They view trapping as barbaric, hunting as stupid.  There's no way to not be wrong in those eyes.  If we hunt with a rifle to be close to our ancestors we should hunt with a bow.  If we hunt with a bow we're inhumane because it doesn't kill as efficiently as a rifle.  If we trap we're torturing animals, and "how stupid are trappers anyway because all you have to do is put a trap out there!"  I've invited such people trapping to help clear trail so I can show them how lazy I am, but no one has accepted the invitation.  

 

    These things are waning for a litany of reasons, the wrongest of which is intolerance.  Intolerance for people that trap, sew, and wear fur, intolerance for people that hunt their own food, intolerance for the redneck hillbilly that knows how to do those same things as my Yup'ik grandparents but in the deep south. One need only look at social media to see it.  The sad thing is, whenever I look at the the profiles of the loudest voices decrying this lifestyle they're the ones that scream the loudest for tolerance and acceptance.  I guess they're screaming for tolerance and acceptance only for that which they already find acceptable and already tolerate.  It's a damn shame really.   

 

 

 

Dillard, Temple. “Temple’s Longtails and Fur.” Facebook, www.facebook.com/templeslongtailsandfur. Accessed 7 Aug. 2023. 

Delisle, Raina. “The Halibut Hook Revival.” Hakai Magazine, 23 Oct. 2018, hakaimagazine.com/features/the-halibut-hook-revival/. 

Butoy, Hendel and Mike Gabriel, directors. The Rescuers: Down Under. Disney, 1990. 

          Shuler-Donner, Lauren, et al. X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Volmers, E. (n.d.). Togo’s costume designer met challenge of creating 1925-era fur parkas ... Calgary Herald. https://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/television/togos-costume-designer-met-challenge-of-creating-1925-era-fur-parkas-without-fur/