Sewing Hope: Embracing Traditional Knowledge and Crafts Through Gut Sewing

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Gut-sewing technology was utilized by Inuit communities until the early 20th century. Despite gut-sewing being a successful and advantageous technology for thousands of years, it is scarcely practiced today. This is in part due to the availability of synthetic materials but also because these kinds of traditional practices have been lost over generations due to the forced displacement of Indigenous people, Residential school systems, and federal laws restricting traditional hunting practices. In recent years, however, many Indigenous communities have attempt to re-establish and renew these kinds of cultural practices and traditional techniques, including gut sewing. This is typically done by bringing together Elders and knowledge holders with members of the community and the general public. For example, the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center in Alaska brought together three Indigenous artists in 2014: Mary Tunuchuk (Yup’ik), Elaine Kingeekuk (St. Lawrence Island Yupik) and Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq-Athabascan) to study historic gutskin objects and to teach community members this traditional skill. This presentation will outline my experience trying gut-sewing and will reflect on how community-based projects that teach these kinds of traditional skills can be valuable experiences for archaeologists to immerse themselves into the social aspects of the technological process alongside community members.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40403.0