Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Art - curiosities from Up North

I recently came into possession of these items and curious for any input from 24Hour folks Up North or otherwise. I did some Googling and wondering about insights beyond that. These were acquired by a couple that worked as teachers in Wainwright in the early 1990s. Considering these interesting pieces, not monetary. Cool stuff we just don't see down south and I think they're going on the wall...

First Up, three masks. Very finely crafted. Signed Justus Makiana? Face is formed from hide that's about 3/32" thick, with brown hair on the inside. Guessing caribou fur and the eye brows and lashes appear to be natural hair too but I am not certain, other than the fur is certainly fur and the hide is certainly hide.


Bowl woven from bowhead whale baleen. Paper with it says Gregg Tagarook Wainwright AK with walrus ivory he harvested. Three days to make. Dec 1994. Says Inupiat Eskimo. Handle has separated.


Baleen scrimshaw. Unsigned but reported to be from a 'known artist' from Wainwright. It has another partial scene on the back and may have been a reject or practice piece... It's cool. Looks like spring breakup.

Baleen baskets are very valuable these days. They were never made before white man got here and asked them to try making them. The baleen is very hard on fingers!

Too bad the tail broke, but that is because of the ivory core used. Superglued carefully it should be nearly invisible. If not done right away the edges of the surfaces will crumble off and will never go together properly.

Good ones, and that one looks pretty good, go for over a grand usually.

Dead on.

And the masks are caribou skin mostly probably. That's what's usually used anyway. The ruffs are wolf; caribou is coarse and stiff. Head and facial hair on the masks is caribou 'beard'. All good treasures , those. Very valuable monetarily.

(Make sure you guard those masks against vermin. Bugs can wreak havoc in short order if they're allowed to. I'm not big on 'fragrancing' the house with mothballs, but hanging a small baggy inside/behind those masks with a flake of moth crystal in it will deter bugs without stinking things up too much.)

At first I thought the masks might have been made by Larry Adams from Kivalina, they are very well made as his are. Simular style, too. Prices about 300 to 500.
Baleen basket is nice. You can reglue the tail back on. A dab of epoxy or super glue. Baskets go for a thousand or more. Tiny earring baskets go 100 or more.
We call it "etching" on baleen. Scrimshaw is done on tusks.
Nice collection.

And pet dogs. Don't ask.

Sitka Deer remains the biggest curiosity of the Art world up here.

but you've got some great stuff there as well

Klik, Holy smokes I can hear the chuckles all winter long about the guy Down South that thought the wolf fur was caribou! Been in the city wayyy too long. LOL

Rusty, I'd never heard scrimshaw referring to anything but that on ivory either, but that came up in the initial search. Good to know I have an etching and appreciate the correction.

Appreciate the input Sitka, Klik, R-G, IB.



The masks are signed, but a bit hard to read exactly at first. Elder Makiana passed away in February 2009.

"Justus Mekiana was a Nunamiut elder from Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska. Originally from the Killik River area, Justus was an expert in Nunamiut history and traditional culture, having grown up living a traditional subsistence lifestyle and moving from camp to camp following the seasons and the animals. He was present in 1949 when bands of nomadic Nunamiut living at Chandler Lake and the Killik River in the Brooks Range settled together in the newly established village of Ankatuvuk Pass. His grandfather was Maptigaq who died in 1957 when he was in his late '80s. Justus learned many traditional skills and stories from his grandfather and was committed to passing on this knowledge to future generations. He worked closely with anthropologists and researchers for many years, especially Grant Spearman, former curator of the Simon Paneak Memorial Museum in Anaktuvuk Pass, to document this knowledge and Nunamiut history. Justus is also remembered for his role in developing the style of fur-trimmed caribou skin mask that has become iconic of Anaktuvuk Pass."

Hey Rusty, haven't seen you around for two months of Sundays! Glad to see you back!

Best,

Mark

Thanks Mark. Made the journey back safely.
~~~Suluuq

Am envious of those, and absolutely no help. With those names though, I'd think eventually some data might surface.

Picked up a fine whale bone musk ox carving on my last visit, and sadly the shop owner had no info whatsoever on it's source.

Good luck.

I saw this web page regarding some archaeological work being done in the Brooks Range. The rock art is very primitive bit it's the real thing and hard to say how old it is.
Rock Art & Lakeside Villages in the Brooks Range

KC

As an aside, the person I got these from has informed me that the "teacher couple" whom acquired the items are Scott and Tiffany Haugen. I personally don't know anything of them but figure some folks might - so there it is - Mtn Boomer is dropping names. LOL


https://www.google.com/webhp?source...&ie=UTF-8#q=Scott+and+Tiffany+Haugen

Friends of Sitka deer. Scott is a well known outdoor writer.

Scott taught at Pt Hope, if I remember correctly, some years ago. (Maybe Pt Lay?) He "got famous" after he wrote about a polar bear attack there.

It was Pt Lay where the polar bear attack/killing happened and Scott killed the bear after the attack. After a few years at Pt Lay they moved to Anaktuvik Pass for a bit longer. He wrote a book, published by Safari Press, about their time up here.

Yup.

To me, Pt Lay sounds more fun than Anaktuvuk (place of caribou droppings)...


Here's a Seattle Times (AP) blurb on the polar bear incident.
-------------

Alaska Polar Bear Hunted Down Following Deadly Attack -- Animal Had Dragged Away Villager
AP

Scott Haugen learned to hunt elk, cougar and black bear just beyond his hometown of Walterville, Ore., but nothing he has experienced compared with the situation he faced last weekend, when he shot a polar bear after it had dragged a man away and eaten part of him.

Haugen, a 1988 University of Oregon graduate, found the body of a man killed by a polar bear in Point Lay, a small whaling village in northern Alaska.

Minutes later, he dropped the bear with one shot through the heart.

``It was a tough situation,'' Haugen, 26, said Monday in a phone interview with The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore. ``I'm still shaken up by the whole thing.''

Although polar bears are protected under federal law, ``You can shoot one in self-defense,'' he said.

Haugen said he has been deluged with telephone calls from the media and from wildlife biologists from all over the country. He has been told that this is the first recorded U.S. case of a polar bear killing a human being. Scientists speculated that the bear killed because it was hungry.

When he pulled the trigger on his 30.06 rifle, Haugen was standing near the body of a man who was ``three-fourths eaten.'' It was dark and 42 degrees below zero, and the polar bear was less than 100 yards away, moving slowly toward him.

Polar bears can outrun a man and they can give a snowmobile a good chase.

The dead man, identified as Carl Stalker, 28, had been walking with his girlfriend when they were chased into the village of 150 by the bear. The friend escaped into a house. Stalker was killed ``literally right in the middle of the town,'' Haugen said.

Haugen, who moved to Point Lay this fall with his wife, Tiffany, is the town's sole high-school teacher and is known for his outdoors abilities. At 5 a.m. Saturday, a call went out over the radio that the only police officer in town needed help to find a bear that had dragged away a villager.

All that remained in the road where the attack took place were blood and bits of human hair, Haugen said. While villagers on snowmobiles began searching a wide area, Haugen was told by the officer to take his rifle and follow the blood trail.

He tracked the bear's progress about 100 yards down an embankment toward the lagoon. ``I shined a light down there and I could see the snow was just saturated with blood.'' A snowmobiler drove up, and in the headlights Haugen discovered what was left of Stalker.

He couldn't see the bear, however.

Then, as the lights of another snowmobile reflected off the lake, Haugen saw the hunkered form of the polar bear.

``When they hunt, they hunch over and slide along the ice'' to hide the black area of their eyes and snout, Haugen said.

``It wasn't being aggressive toward us, but I wasn't going to wait,'' he said. ``I ended up shooting it right there.''

Haugen said the incident has given him a new appreciation for the dangers of the Alaska territory. His change in attitude was confirmed by his parents, Jean and Jerry Haugen, who live in Walterville, just east of Springfield.

``That was one scared boy who called Saturday,'' Jean Haugen said.

I have spent a lot of time afield with Scott doing a lot of different things from hunting to fishing... and he is the real deal, IMO. He did the right things young and finds himself in an enviable position as a result of an incredible work ethic.

He did not like Point Lay nearly as much as Anaktuvuk Pass. There was a lot more hunting and trapping to be done at Anaktuvuk and the topography was better.

His father Jerry is as tough as they come. On the first sheep hunt we went on he was 55 and carried a 55# pack for 8 hours on the way out (with parts of his sheep in it) and never complained even once.

At the bottom of the mountain after the pack-out was done he said he had to take his boots off... he had toenails pulled out and severe blisters in those blood-filled boots. He did not want to say anything because he did not want to complain and did not think I had anything to fix up his feet. I had a very complete foot care kit with me...