Content note: This article contains a word used historically to refer to Inuit that may be considered derogatory today.
Emily Naŋinaaq Caldwell is an Iñupiaq master seamstress. Emily is my cousin, and we are family. Her late Aaka, Elizabeth Frantz, is my Aana; she is the sister of my late Aaka, Mildred Rexford. Today, the word "aaka" translates as grandmother, but traditionally, it meant mother. Aana translates to "great-aunt," but traditionally, aana meant "grandmother," and all the sisters of my grandmother would be considered my grandmothers.
Emily is a wife and a mother of four. She sews practical parkas for her kids, wolf-head mittens, she can crimp soles for mukluks and more. She can accommodate any body size/type with her sewing and has a talent for custom-made work. For her wedding, she sewed a parka made of mostly white rabbit skins with a colourful, geometric kupaq (trim). During our visit, we laughed and shared stories about her Aaka and how she would tell everyone about Emily's sewing accomplishments. It was fun to hear how Emily’s training started. "I was nine years old. We were visiting my Aaka in Fairbanks during the summer, and she would always be sewing: Eskimo yo-yos, mittens, jackets, just everything for her WEIO (World Eskimo Indian Olympics) table. She gave me calfskin and leather with her own yo-yo pattern so I could draw and cut it out myself. She also taught me how to braid artificial sinew and showed me her stitches."
Emily surprised me throughout our visit, as she generously shared traditional knowledge like Aana Liz had often shared with me. When I was in my mid-twenties and had already learned to machine sew, but needed a good pattern, and my Aaka had already passed away. I went to my Aana Liz's house, and she patiently watched me create a pattern using a roll of butcher block paper I had brought with me for the task. With love and humour, she supervised the process of me making a paper pattern from an atikłuk (snow-shirt dress made from cloth) that fit my body. After Aana Liz had passed on, one of her daughters gave me an atikłuk that fit a much smaller body than mine so that I could use it to make patterns. The gift of the pattern upon Aana Liz’s passing touched my heart because I was able to take apart the garment and learn from her construction techniques while creating the new pattern. Emily holds the familial patterns for many items. From an atikłuk to mukluks, gloves, mittens, yo-yos, parkas and more. She has worked with many different seamstresses and was initially astonished by the differences in patterns and techniques, as they can vary widely from family to family.
"I have a deeper appreciation of our family identity as I get older. When it came to parka-making, all the basics were taught to me there, at my Aaka's home. The bones of family patterns remained–from the cut of the material to the sewing steps to the distinctive style of cuffs and hood–sometimes you can tell just by looking at stitching and hood patterns which family it came from."
One garment that I am really interested in making as an Iñupiaq woman’s rite-of-passage is a squirrel-skin fancy parka with a sunshine ruff. During one of our conversations, Emily told me that “fancy parkas were made for festivals and showing off your sewing skills. I think Inupiaq women have a lot of pride, and it shows in their skills as skin-sewers.” I inherited my mom's squirrel-skin parka when she passed in 2020, and it was sewn by my Aaka. I crafted a modern version of this parka in 2017 as part of an artistic residency at Djerassi Resident Artists Program in northern California, with the technical help of another artist-in-residence. Our version had zip-ties, the sunshine ruff, and fake fur at parts where the real fur would be. I have a distinct memory of my mom wearing her sunshine ruff fancy parka to an annual parka contest when I was about five years old in Fairbanks. I held onto the trophy tightly, convinced that my kids' parka had won the contest. I remember beaming with all the other contestants, glued to my Aaka Mildred's side. Today, that same parka that won my mom that contest is sitting in a tub outside, to keep it cool for storage. When I am ready to construct my own parka, I will meticulously study that parka and make a pattern from it. I will also rely heavily on my cousin Emily for help as she has experience with this kind of ruff and has been preparing to make her own squirrel skin fancy parka .
Emily Naŋinaaq Caldwell Sunburst Ruff (bleached sealskin, wolf fur) (2024) COURTESY THE ARTIST
Emily is in the process of making her own squirrel-skin fancy parka. She had inherited 111 tanned squirrel skins when her Aaka passed. The skins were all hunted and tanned by her Aaka, and she estimates she will need about 70 squirrel skins to make her own fancy parka. In our family, with the exception of kids parkas, squirrel skin parkas have always had a sunshine ruff, yet we have also put sunshine ruffs on fabric parkas. Sunshine ruffs are constructed using nalauq, a stiff, naturally bleached, dehaired seal hide, extra-long wolf skin patches of hair and wolverine. She recounted her first experience wearing squirrel skins, a kids' parka with a red fox ruff. "I remember my mom making me and my sister squirrel skin parkas when we were really young. She made them reversible, using the skins on the inside and a regular fabric cover on the outside. It was pretty cool."
Emily told me about the mechanism of how the sunshine ruff stays upright, and I happened to have a sample of the material used that keeps the ruff up. It is stiff, yet the texture is soft. She showed me process photos of the last sunshine ruff she constructed to help me understand how the nalauq works as the stiff backbone for the wolf fur that is then attached to give the dramatic sunshine ruff effect. Wolverine is also added to frame the face. Emily has made fancy parkas before, but not with squirrel skins. She described to me how she has started thinking about the approach for her first squirrel-skin fancy parka. "I began the process by laying out the squirrel skins by size and colour. Then I pieced together the ones I wanted for the front and then the back, mixing and matching the skins to my liking. Always making sure the fur goes the same way (fur direction going down). I made a universal pattern so I can cut all the skins the same way. There are gray skins and red skins and peppered colours, and they all need to blend as seamlessly as possible."
Materials that she has ready for the construction include: calfskin of different colours, skin sewing needles, wolverine, wolf-skin with really long fur (the heart of the sunshine ruff), squirrel hides, nalauq, and jacket lining material. She has already started working on the kupaq design, and our aunt says it looks Victorian in detail, classic and elegant, dubbing Emily “the Victorian Eskimo”, which she now uses as her Instagram handle (@theVictorianEskimo).
"I love the Victorian era, I love how elegant they were, and I think it comes out in my work. I believe that is what Auntie Theresa saw. It's a very classic and elegant style. The traditional way of designing kupaks was using only black and white calfskin, but I like to incorporate colours together to make my crafts look beautiful and fabulous. As a teenager, I dreamed of creating for fashion shows in New York or Paris. I was just bursting with ideas! I've already honed my skills, and I learned I could teach myself anything. I always felt that's how our ancestors grew up. Adaptable and resourceful. To me, this is just the beginning!"
Emily is still bursting with ideas. Her knowledge and creations have informed my own artistic practice, as I recently sewed two atikłuks for two of my nieces, a pair of sisters, 12 and 8 years old. While sewing the mini atikłuks over the holidays, I had missed a message from Emily, saying that she was sewing for her kids and wanted to see if I would want to video-chat with her while we sewed together. When I finally saw her message, I shared with her that we were both sewing at the same time, and told her that I was making patterns for my nieces from scratch, as part of my first time sewing for kids, as I do not have any myself. "We are connected!" We exclaimed, and plan to sew together at some point, carrying on the love that our grandmothers had for not only us, but for one another, expressing ourselves and our Iñupiaq heritage through skill, creativity and sheer determination to finish . It really is just the beginning.
Aisa Warden is an Iñupiaq Eskimo interdisciplinary artist and a tribal member of the Native Village of Kaktovik. In 2024 she was a MacDowell Fellow in Interdisciplinary Arts and a Literature Fellow at Djerassi as part of their Winter Residency program. She is currently living in Texas.