Looking Up North

Museum of International Folk Art receives $40,000 NEA grant to bring works of Alaska Natives to Santa Fe

The Museum of International Folk Art announced this week that a $40,000 award from the National Endowment for the Arts will go toward producing the 2022 exhibit, To Keep Them Warm: The Alaska Native Parka.

"It's always an honor to get a project recognized by the NEA as worthy of being funded," says Laura Addison, the museum's curator of North American & European folk art. "One of the ways we're thinking about this project is that our audience is not just within a brick and mortar anymore—part of the audience is the Alaska Native community itself."

Parka-making is a continuing tradition for Alaska Natives. A necessary tool for survival in their harsh climate, the craft has also emerged as an important symbol of cultural heritage. The MOIFA exhibit is the brainchild of Suzi Jones, PhD, former deputy director at the Anchorage Museum in Dghayitna' (Anchorage), Alaska.

Jones retired to Santa Fe in 2015, where she became enamored with the museum scene and eventually came out of retirement to become an associate researcher at MOIFA. Once onboard, Jones learned the museum already counts a half-dozen Alaska Native parkas among its collection, and set about curating an exhibit to introduce the pieces to the New Mexico public.

When most people think of parkas, they picture big, puffy coats—for the Alaska Natives, it's a little more complicated.

"Not many people coming might be aware that parkas are made out of sea mammal intestine," Jones tells SFR. "Traditional parkas are also made of bird pelts. Salmon skin, too, that's waterproof. And that can be very beautiful, arranged in a way to bring beauty out of the fish skin. I remember the first time I saw them, and I thought—why doesn't the rest of the world know about these?"

Before she came to Santa Fe, Jones spent roughly two decades visiting Indigenous villages across Alaska while working for the Anchorage Museum, seeing artisans perform their craft with the same tools and materials as their ancestors. Through those connections and others, MOIFA managed to build and borrow a still-growing parka collection for Santa Feans to experience when the exhibit opens in 2022. As it stands, they'll have at least 15 parkas, as well as tools needed to make them plus other pieces and ephemera from the Yup'ik, Unanga, Iñupiaq, Dena'ina Athabascan and the St. Lawrence Island Yupik cultures. All feature their own unique twist to parka making.

Still, Jones is aware it's important for Alaska Natives to tell their own stories. In that spirit, she was introduced to her now co-curator, Melissa Shaginoff (Athabascan/Paiute), an Alaska Native who attended both the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

"It's an important project. It's really kind of talking about the continuation of the parka making tradition," Shaginoff explains. "It's really about how people really keep making these, through care of family and each other. While it's a useful and practical object, it's also an incredible symbol of how people care for each other and the land and the animals. Every piece is a representation of the hunter's way of life. [Each] animal was gifted to them. One with many different furs represents the skill of that person, and also their blessings."

Plans extend beyond the physical exhibition as well, with a catalogue and a three-part lecture series from Museum of Indian Arts & Culture and the School for Advanced Research focused on climate change and its impacts on Indigenous arts, cultures and livelihoods. Climate change, for example, is reducing the number of walrus and other animals vital for food, clothing and other goods. Virtual workshops hosted from Alaska are also in the works.

"There haven't been a lot of exhibits like this. There's been some study of them, but not much," Jones says. "And it isn't just aesthetic qualities, but the very deep connections to the Native cultures. It's developing an understanding from a historical and modern perspective."

"This exhibit is being created from the perspective of Indigenous parka-makers and objects in collections are in continuation," Shagnioff adds. "We need to see them as a living breathing thing by lifting the current makers."

The Museum of International Folk Art is just one Santa Fe-based cultural organization to receive NEA funding in 2021. The Santa Fe Film Institute, which produces the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, received $20,000, as did YouthWorks. AMP Concerts received $10,000, the Santa Fe Opera received $70,000 and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival received $35,000. All told, 16  organizations across New Mexico were awarded NEA grants this year.

To Keep Them Warm is scheduled to open at the Museum of International Folk Art Sept. 25, 2022 and run through May 14, 2023.

Letters to the Editor

Mail letters to PO Box 4910 Santa Fe, NM 87502 or email them to editor[at]sfreporter.com. Letters (no more than 200 words) should refer to specific articles in the Reporter. Letters will be edited for space and clarity.

We also welcome you to follow SFR on social media (on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and comment there. You can also email specific staff members from our contact page.