In Yup'ik, they're called mingquetuli -- "skin sewer," one who makes clothing from animal pelts.
It's a skill passed in Native Alaskan families from mother to daughter, usually during childhood. For Anna Anvil, 76, of Anchorage, that moment didn't come until she herself was a mother.
Before then, "I didn't like to sit in the house," Anvil said of her girlhood in Nunapitchuk, a village 47 miles northwest of Bethel. "But I listened to my mother and she said, 'You must learn to make mukluks and parkas for your family.' "
Anvil's family swelled to six living children -- five sons and a daughter, Carrie Anvil-Kiana, who now works at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.
Keeping them all warm during long Bethel winters would have been difficult without Anvil's talent at turning skins of all types into clothing. Her mother, Lucy Beaver, taught her pattern-making, but Anvil could soon look at her child and know the right size.
Anvil's sons remain in Bethel, but many of the items she's made for them -- parkas, hats, mittens, mukluks -- are in her house, stuffed in closets, wrapped in plastic. They transform the living room into a furry still-life menagerie. Furs harvested in Alaska are joined by those from Outside, calfskin and the pelts of animals such as nutria, rabbit and squirrel.
Seam quality is the true measure of a mingquetuli, Anvil-Kiana said. She showed off the neat, fur-free seams on the back of one of Anvil's parkas. This is how both women inspect the work of others.
"If there's hair caught in these seams, we say she's a kelugpak," Anvil-Kiana said, meaning an inexpert skin sewer.
It used to be that people were known by their parkas. Anvil-Kiana said each region had a specific style or decoration no other family could copy. Customs aren't as strong now; people generally incorporate what they like in their parkas, although the colors of the tassels Anvil uses, green and red, are Yup'ik colors.
"Red for blood and green for life," Anvil said.
"But for kids, you can use whatever colors," Anvil-Kiana added.
Anvil-Kiana has a 4-year-old granddaughter, Shaelene, whom she's teaching how to bead. Teaching is a tradition for the Anvil women; Anvil and other women from her church lead a group of young women in beginning skin sewing, crafts and beading on a weekly basis.
If Shaelene takes after her great-grandmother, she'll resist sewing for a few years longer. Right now she gets beautiful parkas without lifting a finger of her own. But Anvil-Kiana will be patient, as Anvil was for her as Beaver was for Anvil.
"They start sewing when they show interest," Anvil said.
This story appeared in Friday's Mat-Su section of the Daily News, published for the Mat-Su region. Contact Melodie Wright at mwright@adn.com or 352-6721.
