Project: Material Traditions: Gut, Ivory and Cedar
Grantee: Anchorage Museum Association
Organized by the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center at the Anchorage Museum and held at the Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center in Bethel
Written by: Hillary Vild, participant
No, I am not performing surgeries at the hospital and stitching up guts. I am embracing this wonderful place I am living and experiencing some of their traditional crafts.
The Yup’ik museum holds some classes to teach crafts and continue traditions. This weekend, they held a gut skin sewing class. Usually it is with seal gut, but due to the federal Marine Mammal Act, only Alaska Natives can handle seal gut intestines. For us non-natives, we used hog intestines.
