Alaska News

Photos: Gut sewing workshop in Bethel

BETHEL – The guts of a bearded seal can be transformed into rain parkas and mittens, bags and drum heads, translucent skylights and Alaska Native art through ancient techniques passed on at a recent Smithsonian-backed community workshop here.

About a dozen adults worked with dried seal and hog intestines to create their own egaleq, or window – in this case mini egalengqetuameng, Yup'ik for windows of gut skin.

They were practicing an ancestral craft and learning something deeper too. Cut open a hunted seal and everything is revealed, a connection to the essence of life, instructor Mary Tunuchuk of Chefornak, a Western Alaska village on the Kinia River near the Bering Sea, told the class.

"Elders used to say the seal represents everything that we are, that humans are," Tunuchuk, 71, said.

For two days, she led the workshop "Material Traditions: Sewing Gut," organized by the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center and the Anchorage Museum and held at the Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center in Bethel. It's part of a series the Smithsonian center has developed to give Alaskans a chance to explore the old ways, raw materials and artifacts.

Read more: Art of seal gut: Bethel workshop teaches tradition

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