Healing generations

I sew to breathe life into our traditions. I sew to show the world that my family is rich in their culture. I sew to keep my family wrapped in the manifestations of the love and responsibilities we carry for each other.

My family is from Anaktuvuk Pass, a village of four hundred people on a good day, nestled in the Brooks Range of Alaska and only accessible by bush plane. Where we live the mosquitoes will suck you dry in seconds and in the winter temps are regularly negative twenty degrees fahrenheit and lower. I currently live in Fairbanks and teach at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the Alaska Native Studies and Rural Development department. During the Pandemic we were cut off from the regular cycles of visiting our home, and seeing people as they came through Fairbanks for medical and shopping. I began to sew on my own, instead of with people with more skill and knowledge as I had done before. My aana, grandmother in our language, taught me to sew atiqluks, light summer parkas, and winter parkas. I always marveled at the way her creations would fit their recipient so perfectly even though she sews with no pattern, materials on hand, and from a distance. When you receive a garment from her hands it makes you feel seen and known. She is an Elder now and does not have the ability to sew anymore. It has been my honor to make her warm atiqluks and to show her that her skills and knowledge are carried on. I know now that to make it fit perfectly from a distance you can remember carefully of the last time you had your arms wrapped around a loved one.

I am lucky to live now, where I am invited into my children’s school to give Inupiaq cultural presentations, where my children are free to wear the warm parkas I have made them. I bring our beautiful clothing and food into these spaces to celebrate and share our stories and histories with my children’s classmates.

When my aana was young she was with the first group of children taken from our village to boarding school at the Wrangle institute. She was the oldest of the group. Her mother had just passed from what my aana remembers as the great death and her younger brother followed weeks after she failed to keep him alive with the milk from oats and rice. Her father sent her on the plane with precious native foods and in warm caribou skin clothing. The food was taken from her. The childrens’ clothes were burned on arrival. She was beaten for speaking her language and made to do manual labor to earn clothes for herself and siblings. She did not speak Inupiaq to her children, to protect them from what she went through, and in one generation much was lost. As the granddaughter and daughter of boarding school survivors it is now my privilege to bring our ways back into the light.

I am a teacher now and I strive to continue to grow and learn. I create videos for social media sharing subsistence and sewing knowledge. I teach Alaska Native cultures, history, and community healing at the University.

It is hard to balance my work with students, the needs of my community, and family responsibilities but making restores and heals me. I have yet to make a project where the seam ripper hasn’t been integral to success. Late at night I have sewn the front of a parka up like a sleeve and been confused by the misaligned seams. I have broken countless needles. But I am grateful that I had the luck and blessing to learn from my aana and I am proud to continue in her work and joy.