Carving Traditions

Roy Rastopsoff creates a traditional dart set

Carving Traditions
Western conquest of the Alutiiq homeland led to massive cultural changes and the decline of many traditional artistic practices. Once a daily activity, carving was practiced by just a handful of Alutiiq artists by the late twentieth century. Through the Carving Traditions program, the Alutiiq Museum created traveling displays on carving to share with rural communities. In each community, the displays were paired with a week-long carving workshop to reawaken wood working skills and promote pride in Native ancestry.

Traveling Heritage

For the Carving Traditions Exhibit, the Alutiiq Museum assembled displays of raw materials, wood working tools and carved artifacts from its collections, and paired these will images of Alutiiq carving from museums around the world. The displays were designed to bring carving information to rural communities and provide artistic inspiration. Students learned about different woodworking styles, studied object composition, and examined finishing techniques. Carving projects have included studies of masks, hunting tools, hohold objects, and bentwood containers. An educational brochure and a CD with pictures of additional object pictures accompanied each exhibit.

	Flying into Larsen Bay
	The traveling exhibit arrives by plane in Akhiok.
	The traveling exhibit rides a pick-up truck to the Larsen Bay School.
	Akhiok students discuss carving with Elder Nick Alokli after viewing the exhibit in the school library.
	A mask carving display from the traveling exhibit
	A mask carving display from the traveling exhibit.

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Community Spirit

From Akhiok to Ouzinkie, the museum’s carving exhibits traveled to rural schools across the Kodiak archipelago. The exhibits were displayed during Alutiiq Week celebrations, community-wide explorations of Alutiiq heritage that bring Native traditions to the classroom each spring. Carving workshops followed careful studies of museum exhibits and were open to all community members. Young and old worked together to learn woodworking, share their ideas and foster stronger cross-generation ties. Around them, friends and family members practiced the Alutiiq language, prepared subsistence foods, worked on skin sewing project, listened to storytellers, played traditional games, and learned songs and dances.

	Carver Jim Dillard discusses woodworking principles at Ouzinkie School
	An Ouzinkie student designs a mask.
	An Ouzinkie student roughs out the shape of a mask.
	Ivan Lukin prepares to create the face of a mask.
	An Ouzinkie students carves facial features.
	An Old Harbor student carves a miniature mask.
	Alutiiq Week beading classes at Ouzinkie School.
	Alutiiq Week skin sewing classes at Akhiok School.
	Preparing octopus for the Alutiiq Week potlatch in Ouzinkie.
	Alutiiq dancers in Larsen Bay.

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Individual Expression

Carving sessions were led by carvers Sven Haakanson, Jr., the Alutiiq Museum Executive Director and Jim Dillard, a Kodiak schoolteacher. While workshop participants used traditional elements in their carvings, they were encouraged to express their own ideas. The goal of the workshop was not to replicate museum objects, but to use these objects as a starting point for creative exploration. The program reawakened carving skills while generating pride in individual artistic talent. Most participants were able to complete a carving in the week-long workshop. Artists took great pride in giving their finished pieces as gifts or in lending them to the Alutiiq Museum for display in Kodiak.

	Port Lions students working with carver Sven Haakanson, Jr.
	Ouzinkie students studying traditional masks
	An Akhiok student painting a mask
	An Akhiok student displaying his mask
	Mask carvings from Old Harbor

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Arts & Academics

Carving was also a way to promote Western academic lessons. In 2002, students researched the manufacture, style and functions of different Native Alaskan masks and used their knowledge to write persuasive essays on the cultural origins of unidentified pieces. In 2003, students calculated mathematical problems based on the trajectory of a spear lofted from the traditional throwing boards they created.

These educational units are being preserved on an interactive CD ROM for use in future classrooms. By uniting Alutiiq heritage with school curricula, students learn to recognize the value of traditional knowledge and learn from lessons that reflect and respect their unique cultural ancestry.

	Port Lions students give presentations on the characteristics of Alaskan masks.
	Akhiok students demonstrate throwing boards carved in the second year of the project.

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A New Generation of Artists

Heritage education around Kodiak is having a noticeable effect on the arts. Artists young and old are revitalizing and reinterpreting traditional crafts, combining old forms with new materials and their own insights to express Alutiiq identity in the twenty first century. This resurgence of artistic expression reflects a renewed pride in Native heritage, the public celebration of cultural traditions that were hidden for nearly a century.

Photos from the Carving Traditions project are displayed here to share this pride with the public, promote broad knowledge of Alutiiq crafts, and honor a talented new generation of woodworkers. The celebration of life through art continues among the Alutiiq people.