African-American Person — Alap’aaq, ARap’aaq Alap’aaq Nuniamen taillria. – An African-American person came to Old Harbor. African American people began living and working in Alaska in the late nineteenth century. Although their history in the Far North is poorly documented, they came to harvest natural resources and to work for government agencies like other colonists. […]
KODIAK, Alaska—The Alutiiq Museum has added 11 watercolor portraits of 19th-century Alutiiq/Sugpiaq people to its collections. Created by Sugpiaq artist Cheryl Lacy, the set reinterprets watercolor paintings made by Mikhail Tikhanov, a Russian artist from Saint Petersburg who visited Kodiak in 1818. It is titled Our Ancestors. Lacy’s paintings capture the faces and clothing of […]
Net — Kugyaq, Kugyasiq Kugyasiq aturtaaqa. – I use the net. Alutiiq people captured salmon with a variety of traditional tools. Streams were dammed with logs or stone weirs and the fish trapped behind them speared with special fish harpoons. Larger quantities of salmon, and perhaps herring and Dolly Varden, were captured with nets woven […]
TRuup’kaaq, Pa’ipaaq – Pipe Ata tRuup’kaaq. – Let’s see the pipe. Although tobacco was popular in the historic era, smoking tobacco was not. Historic sources indicate that Alutiiq people preferred to create snuff by adding tobacco to a mixture of wood ash, black tea, and dried crushed nettle leaves. This produced iqmik, a substance held in […]