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Brothers Troy and Ethan Wilkinson, students at the University of Alaska Anchorage, are the latest generation in a dynasty of kayak makers stretching back for centuries.
The classic Yup'ik kayak (qayaq) is no cookie-cutter boat. No two authentic models are identical because each is built specifically to the anatomic measurements of the person who will be using it. On the treeless Western Alaska tundra, the craft's skeletal structure must be made from driftwood, tediously gathered along river banks and ocean shores. The tough part is finding wood with the right grain, said Troy. Getting it to bend without breaking the wood is frightening. "If you break a gunnel, you want to cry," he said. The hardest wood to find is a large enough and correctly curved spruce stump leg. Its natural bend gives shape and strength to the five deck beams, two bow pieces, and two stern parts. There's a lot of competition for those pieces because "They're attached to prime maqivik wood" for burning in sweat baths, Ethan noted. The frame is held together by spruce, ivory pegs or bone pegs and lashed with seal skin and white spruce root. The whole frame is colored with red ocher and otherwise decorated. While the brothers may be said to have been born to the art, it wasn't entirely an accident of birth. Their father, Bill, came to Alaska in 1977 from California after graduating from Chico State University and bicycling across the U.S. He taught in Kongiganak, Tuntutuliak and finally -- after marrying Mary Ann Andrew, whom he met while taking summer classes at Oregon State University -- in Kwigillingok, her hometown. Living on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, the former California surfer became fascinated by Yup'ik kayaks. The craft, once common in Alaska, had not been made since outboard motors came to the Bush 50 years earlier. Talking with elders, he picked up scattered information and tried to puzzle out the construction on his own. After moving to Kwigillingok, he showed his father-in-law, the late Frank Andrew Sr., some of what he was doing. The brothers tell the family story with glee. "Grandpa chuckled when he saw it. The pieces weren't proportional at all. Dad didn't know that our grandfather knew all about kayaks. He'd lived traditionally, in a sod house, for the first 23 years of his life. He was like a Yup'ik encyclopedia." Under Andrew's instruction for 10 years, the older Wilkinson learned to construct practical and authentic kayaks as close as possible to how they were designed in traditional mud houses. In 1999 the Wilkinsons decided to build a place where Andrew could share what he knew. Qayanek, -- "of and about kayaks" -- was born. Reviving the craft of kayaks proved catalytic for modest, reticent Andrew, rekindling memories and stimulating him to pass on a trove of traditional learning. Before his death in 2006 much of his knowledge was collected in scholarly works, including his own book, "Paitarkiutenka: My Legacy to You," posthumously published by the University of Washington in 2008. Today Bill Wilkinson's passion has became an enterprise. Qayanek makes custom order full-size and model kayaks in Kwigillingok. It's an extended family manufacturing business, including Andrew's son Noah and other relatives and neighbors. A properly scaled and constructed kayak is both river-ready and seaworthy, remarkably stable and easy to maneuver, light enough for one man to carry, but big enough to hold a month's worth of camping supplies. In an emergency it works as shelter. Using the kayak sled, it functions like an amphibious ATV to cross over ice flows and summer tundra. Most of the traditional Qayanek boats wind up as museum pieces. So for "everyday use" the company also makes contemporary versions that substitute modern materials for things like seal skin, which is hard to get and needs to be treated with great attention to stay intact. Qayanek now operates from a building paid for by the Wilkinsons and erected, in part, with a grant to cover the cost of labor by the Rasmuson Foundation. "The center has never made a profit, but has made a lot of dreams come true," said Bill Wilkinson. The boats come together on the main floor. The walls hold traditional hunting tools -- also made by the brothers and their co-workers -- that would have been used as part of the old time kayaker's outfit: Harpoons, harpoon tips, bows and arrows, atlatls and paddles. They also make precisely detailed scale models of kayaks, like those seen at the Imaginarium science center in Anchorage. The expertise at Qayanek is acknowledged by the academic community as well as by lovers of kayaking. Wilkinson senior, for instance, has coordinated the building of a frame destined for the Smithsonian Institution. Ethan handled one of the model skeletons, admiring the symmetry and balance of the graceful, efficient design that, literally, kept his ancestors afloat for generations. "It's a very well-engineered boat," he said. Qayanek hopes to make a splash by building 10 kayaks to paddle up the Kuskokwim River to Bethel, perhaps next summer, in a regatta tentatively dubbed "the Saayuq 100." It's an ambitious proposal, Bill Wilkinson admitted. "So many things seem impossible in the Bush, because of the lack of resources and space," he said. "But dreams aren't and that is what Qayanek is all about." Both sons were quick to give credit for the dream's realization thus far to their dad. "He would never, ever say this of himself," Troy said. "But if he hadn't done what he did, we would not have known how to do this," that is, build a kayak. "We would have heard the stories, but we wouldn't have had the details." "And," Ethan added, "we wouldn't have known our grandfather as well as we did."