Looking Both Ways

Happy and Sad, Looking Both Ways Amulet Bag. A good name for this two-faced bag that I have completed.

This bag has four colors in it, the galvanized gold, opaque rainbow matte, a glossy gunmetal or hematite, and the face was beaded with galvanized tarnished silver. I used gold plated bicones, faceted transparent amethyst and jet ab 6 mm and 7 mm beads in the fringe and the very long two-stranded necklace.

The book pictured here "Looking Two Ways, Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People" is a project by two organizations, The Smithsonian Institute and The Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository. Aron L. Crowell, Amy F. Steffian, and Gordon L. Pullar are the editors. The cover photograph is the village Old Harbor, where I was born.

This is a great book with a lot of information about the Sugpiat from Kodiak Island. So much of the traditions and heritage of our People has been forgotten or lost due to explorers and even newly introduced diseases when those explorers came to the Island. The culture was nearly lost, if it had not been for those that saw the importance of saving what the remaining Elders remembered and worked to renew an interest in the younger people to learn their almost extinct language and previous way of life.

This book has much information in it. "Diversity is one of the signal points of the text: no one voice could tell the whole story, and no single approach defines what it truly means to be Alutiiq." (Quote from the back page.)

I am proud to be the Alutiiq owner of this book and all the information I have found so interesting about the lifestyles of my ancestors; nearly lost and still today are struggling to remain intact.

Looking Both Ways - Smithsonian and Alutiiq Heritage