Shop Keeps on Giving

Respect to artists, offers of scholarships are business as usual

by Cinthia Richie

It was a Monday morning in early November and the Alaska Native Medical Center Auxiliary Gift Shop was bustling with customers. Buyers lined up across the front counter examined ivory figurines, beaded jewelry and dolls fitted with clever seal gut raingear. Closer to the cash register, sellers unloaded crafts from worn boxes, Tupperware containers and plastic shopping bags.

Larry Mayac, who was born in Nome and currently lives in Anchorage, carefully set five intricately detailed ivory loons across the counter. He's been carving for over 30 years and selling to the gift shop for over 20, and brings work in every couple of months. The shop, he says, offers a fair price, much better than many tourist-related stores in downtown Anchorage.

But it's the professionalism that keeps him coming back, and the knowledge that his carvings are treated as works of art, not pretty trinkets designed to bring in tourism dollars.

"It's nice to walk in and hear them call me by name," he says.

The shop represents more than 900 artists and buys and sells only handmade, authentic Native crafts. Founded in 1975, it was the brainchild of Agnes Coyle, Jeanne Dougherty and Karin Vogeler, who sought a way of providing a steady outlet for Native artists.

"People arrived (to the hospital) from villages and tried to sell their crafts to cover expenses," Dougherty says. "We saw this and decided to help out and provide a market."

The concept began with a small table in the old Alaska Native Medical Center lobby in downtown Anchorage. When the new center opened in 1997, it included a small craft shop named Tausigniaviat, which translates to "the people's shopping place."

The shop provides hundreds of thousands of dollars of income to approximately 1,000 Native artisans each year, according to Roberta Webb-Miljure, ANMC auxiliary patient services coordinator.

Ivory and artifacts

Leona Silook of Gamble arrived with a box of ivory figurines and artifacts her sister-in-law's brother found while digging through the old village site: whale harpoons worn smooth, small spears, fishhooks and curved pieces of old wood she says were once used for scraping intestines.

According to Silook, the artifacts are hundreds, perhaps thousands of years old. She laid out pieces, pointing to the faint designs etched along the edges, all the while talking of her own grandmother and the scraper she kept with her all these years.

"She can't let go," she says quietly.

Eric Tetpon III hurried in with a large plastic container filled with soapstone sculptures. Tetpon III takes his work around to various shops but feels he gets a better deal at the ANMC shop.

"Probably about 30 percent more," he says, shuffling the soapstone bears closer together and then back apart again.

The shop's standards are high. They don't accept non-Native work or pieces that might incorporate commercial materials "or things you might find in Wal-Mart," Webb-Miljure says wryly.

It's also one of the few places that allows artists to both set prices and receive full payment amount of their price. Pieces are kept a maximum of two years and slow-selling items aren't reduced without artist permission.

"We don't dicker over the price," Webb-Miljure says. "We try and respect what each piece is worth."

The auxiliary adds a 10 percent to 20 percent charge to each piece to cover operational costs and support patient services such as cancer comfort bags, shampoo and personal items and to fund high-end medical equipment. This year, the auxiliary funded the purchase of 17 new beds for the mother/baby unit, a ventilator and four IV pumps, according to Webb-Miljure.

Gift shop sales also fund the Auxiliary Scholarship Program. Founded in 1984, it has helped 265 Native American students attend college and supplied approximately $1 million to help Native students better meet educational goals.

Weaving her way home

Sharon Acillaaq Merritt, 17, is one of this year's ANMC Auxiliary Gift Shop scholarship recipients. Merritt, who grew up in Goodnews Bay, is a first-year student at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Merritt planned on attending college from a young age, and graduated a year early at age 16.

"My teachers always asked me, ‘Are you going to college?' and I always said, ‘Well, yes, of course.'"

Transitioning from a town of approximately 240 to a city of a quarter of a million, however, wasn't easy.

"The beginning of the semester was very, very difficult," Merritt says. "It was a really drastic change. I had never lived anywhere else."

She struggled with homesickness and felt increasingly disconnected. Back in the village, she spent most of her time outside, picking fiddlehead ferns with her sisters and fishing in the bay. Suddenly, she was spending the majority of the day inside concrete buildings.

"My mother sent me dried fish and that helped. It reminded me of home and going out in the bay and fishing with nets," she says.

Merritt is currently majoring in biology but hopes to switch to Yup'ik and later return to the village to teach. While most of the people in her village are Yup'ik, very few speak the language.

"Everything, all of our traditions, have a Yup'ik name. Some of them don't have an English name. We lose a lot when we lose our language," she says.

When she was growing up, Merritt spent much of her time with aunt and master weaver Anna Beaver, who taught her the art at the age of 2. She made her first mat when she was 4, and it's currently displayed in ANMC's Heritage Collection, tucked alongside baskets by Beaver and her mother, Melania Merritt. The Heritage Collection, which took over 11 years to assemble, spans five floors and includes museum-quality work representing various facets of Native life: Moose heart and bladder Athabascan bags hang as if suspended in the air, grass-weaved mukluks appear to be waiting for feet and a seal gut parka positioned on a handmade kayak looks ready to take off for the hunt.

Merritt, who hopes to follow the tradition as her aunt and great-aunt, brought her grass and seal gut supplies to school and continues to weave in her spare time. She recently sold the first basket she's made away from home to the auxiliary gift shop.

Weaving, she says, is relaxing, and the grass reminds her of home and her Aunt Beaver.

"When I was young I used to work at her house. I used to see her all the time, and now I can't," she says.

So she weaves, and when her sister came up to Anchorage for the Alaska Federation of Natives convention, she brought Merritt more grass and dyed seal gut.

Merritt plans on weaving throughout her life.

"I like to take my time and do my best with every stitch," she says. "And when I'm finished and holding it, I feel proud. I feel as if I'm holding all the hours and hours that I've lived and worked."

Cinthia Richie can be reached at 907-348-2428 or 800-770-9830

First Alaskans magazine is published by Alaska Newspapers Inc. Submissions welcome. Copyright 2010. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without the express permission of the publisher. First Alaskans magazine is not affiliated with First Alaskans Institute.