How Will I Sew My Baskets? (PDF)

“How Will I Sew My Baskets?: Women Vendors, Market Art, and Incipient Political Activism in Anchorage Alaska” Summer Week 3 Article by Molly Lee Molly Lee She received a Master’s and PhD in Anthropology from the University in California, Berkeley. She received a Master’s in Art History from the Univ...

“How Will I Sew My Baskets?: Women Vendors, Market Art, and Incipient Political Activism in Anchorage Alaska” Summer Week 3 Article by Molly Lee Molly Lee She received a Master’s and PhD in Anthropology from the University in California, Berkeley. She received a Master’s in Art History from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She also holds a joint appointment as an Anthropology professor in the University of Alaska, Fairbanks & curator of the ethnology in the University of Alaska Museum. She has written quite a lot on Eskimo, Inuit Arts culture, on Museums and Anthropology of art and more. Alaska Federation of Natives craft fair Founded in 1966 From about 1966-1971 it’s main focus was to support the Natives’ land claim issues. They hold a 3 day annual convention each October Many different people go to make friends, participate in debates, do some Christmas shopping or just to escape for a few days from their small communities in where they live. Tlingit, Athabascan Indians, Inupiaq, Yup’ik, Siberian Yup’ik Eskimos, Aleut and Alutiiqs Cont…Alaska Federation of Natives craft fair The craft fair is by now such a good established institution that secures selling space at its tables is highly competitive. The organization began to help the people from the area but in 2003, it began to serve the growing number of Alaska native vendors who relocated to Anchorage mainly to take advantage of the economic opportunities. The AFN serves several purposes It’s a marketplace Social club There is cultural music and dancing Qaspeq Women Vendors wear the Qaspeq as an order from the craft fair organizer What is sold at AFN Cont… Anchorage’s Egan Conference Center Located in the floor below where the AFN takes place Began in the 1980s It helps generate the cash for the in town shopping Flora Flora is one of the 7,500 Alaska natives women who have left the rural villages and moved to Anchorage during the past decade In the early 1990s, flora’s three children grew up and entered high school She noticed that wage labor was declining in rural Alaska (where she lived) and subsistence salmon fishing curtailed by dwindling stocks. Her children would not have many opportunities there In 1994, she and her husband(who worked in construction) moved into the first efficiency apartments they had occupied in Anchorage. However, they kept their house in the village in which they return there several times a year for subsistence activities and to also continue to think of it as their home. She considers anchorage as her work site. Since she moved she has put her basket and doll making talents to great use. She sells them at the AFN and the small scheduled fairs in the area. The Rural In-Migration 1970- 7.7% of Alaska natives lived in anchorage 1980- the numbers doubled 1990- it risen 18% 2000- 34% of Alaska's native population lived in anchorage, in no time, it doubled once again This is a combination of natives living in Fairbanks and Juneau 64% of Alaska’s native people are now city dwellers With the calculations, it leaves Anchorage being the largest native American village in the world In 2000, there were a little over 7,000 native women eighteen years and above that were now residing in anchorage but only 5,500 men. The low number for men was because in Alaska native men are hunters and it is harder for them to adapt to the environment. After Alaska became a State Alaska became a state in 1959 With the North Slope boom fast becoming a reality, things became expedient for the federal and state governments to settle the aboriginal land claims of the native people in Alaska Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA)- 1971, was intended to resolve the long standing issue surrounding the land claims in Alaska Under the ANCSA, Alaska’s natives ceded their claims on public lands for a cash settlement and assurance that the secretary of the interior and the state would take necessary actions to protect the subsistence need of natives. 1978, Alaska's legislature passed the State Subsistence Law State Subsistence Law- identified subsistence as the highest priority use on public lands but failed to grant Alaska natives priority over these resources in times of shortage. Cont… 1980, congress passed the Alaska National Interest Conservation Act (ANILCA) Just like the Subsistence law, ANICLA begged the question of native priority but they did so by granting priority to all residents of rural Alaska regardless of the ethnic affiliations 1986, the state of Alaska amended its1978 subsistence law 1982, the law overturned on the grounds that violated the equal-protection clause of the constitution of Alaska. After that, all Alaskans, regardless of ethnicity or residents, have equal access to state lands for hunting, fishing, and gathering, and all rural resident have priority over federal lands for the same purpose. Urban Native Women and Political Activism 1998 AFN, using funding from Native American Rights, decided to take action. The spring of 1998, president Julie Kitka and the board of directions called for a public protest. Most Alaska natives prefer to avoid direct confrontation and rather settle dispute through negotiation. Native women are encouraged not to call attention to themselves With that being said, the number of women to be at the march would be low However, there were a good amount of women there Mothers with babies on their back Aunts Grandmothers in wheelchairs All their to exercise their citizens’ rights for the first time Cont… Many people had signs “Standing our Grounds” Some carried signs with their community name Like flora and many of her friends and co-vendors, came into the city because access to the world’s goods is limited in rural areas. The arts and crafts they sell still depend for their approval on exotic raw materials such as hide, walrus stomach, and basket grass, these are only obtainable in rural areas. Yup’ik Eskimo grass baskets are far the most popular art commodity sold at the fair, they appear in newspapers, on the covers of telephone books and on posters AFN vendors are no longer alone in their need to organize http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_ GPvr3IUL0