zoom

nukalpiaq:

Yupik people live in these conditions without much complaint. If you think about how much our government has spend on the Lower 48’s transportation, water/sewer, and housing infrastructure over the years and compare it to what has been provided to the Alaska native tribes we have been short changed…

zoom

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Lawrence Beck Aklak, I wok Inua maho tov Toks (Walrus spirit with labrets) (artist’s translation from Yu’pik, circa early-90s). This is lots of fun. It is from the Arts From the Arctic exhibitions catalogue (specifically from the Alaskan one) my mother got me. The Arts from the Arctic project gathered and exhibited art from Alaska, the Eastern Canadian Arctic (now mostly Nunavut), Greenland, Sápmi, and Sakha and Chukotka in Russia, touring the exhibition to locations in five of these nations over two years. 

And a key theme is circumpolar artists’ opposition to Western distinctions between ‘art’ and ‘craft’. This is an excellent example. The object this derives from would have been a kind of totem in the past believed to have beneficial powers, so a utilitarian object which by Western standards would make it largely craft, opposed to fine art. Not to mention most art by indigenous people regardless of functionality is automatically defined as craft, and so somehow below ‘fine art’, either because it relies on the technical skill of the creator (which is very odd as so much of Western visual art, painting for example, up until the 20th century has been based solely on skill, and then the definition of painterly ‘skill’ has adapted to make it still mostly about ‘skill’) or just because it does not look ‘as neat’ or ‘polished’ as Western fine art. This is historically how the West interacted with almost any non-Western art, not just that made by indigenous folk.

But then this object appears to both call upon and reject notions of ‘traditional craft’. It is not mostly made of driftwood or ivory, as would have been the case historically, it uses found kitchen and bathroom parts, but then some slim bits of carved ivory on either side. So it does not really reject but challenge notions of ‘traditional’ and ‘craft’, by saying that modern media can be used in a ‘traditional’ way that recalls centuries of ‘craft.’ And that the ‘skill’ of the craftsman in making the original totems this object is inspired by is analogous to the ‘skill’ of the artist in her ability to transform raw material of all sorts into something with power - protective power, for example, or the power to make analogies between past and present to illustrate a side of indigenous life today: modern and traditional.

zoom

cingarkaq:

FOOD PREPARATION FOR AKULMIUT (Kasigluk) FISH

AKAKIIK/BROAD WHITE FISH

Boil/qallaulluki until the head portion is afloat

Oven fry/salkuyak

Half dried fish not smoked/ boil/egamaarrluk

Cooked over fire/maniaq

Fermented/qassayaaq

Cut and dried/ulliggluku

Raw/qassarluku

Soup/suupiluku

NEQYAALLER

Raw/qassarluku

Fermented a little/tepngayaaq

Cut and dried/ulliggluku

Half dried not smoked/boil/egamaarrluk

MANIGNAQ/LUSH

Boil/qallaulluku

Oven fry except head/salkuyak qamiqua pivkenaku

Cut and dried but not smoked/makengqulluk

Fermented a little frozen/tepngayaaq

Half dried not smoked/ boil/egamaarrluk

CAN’GIIQ/BLACK FISH

Boiled a little/ellma qallaulluki

Aged raw frozen/qassarluki [uksuartat]

Freeze them a little after boiling them/ qagret

‘LUQRUUYAK/PIKE

Boil/qallaulluki

Oven fry/salkuyak

Cook over fire/maniaq

Cut and dried not smoked/ulliggluku

Aged frozen raw/qassarluku

CINGIKEGGLIQ/LAKE WHITE FISH

AKAKIIGCETUN/ LIKE BROAD WHITE FISH

ELLUUR/KEPSAQLEK STAGES OF BROAD WHITE FISH

AKAKIIGCETUN/ LIKE BROAD WHITE FISH

CIIQ/SHEE FISH

Boil/qallaulluku

Cut and dried/ulliggluku

Half dried/boiled/egamaarrluk

Oven fried/ salkuyak

Cooked over fire/maniaq

Soup/suupaq

Once long, long ago your ancestors and ours shared a common parent. But in the course of our nomadic existence, we children who descended from them have spread out over the entire Arctic. We have lived isolated from each other for a very long time.

zoom

Hooper Bay, Alaska.