ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Some 200 Alaska Native knitters last year earned between a low of $31 and a high of $4,600 making garments from a cashmere-like fiber called qiviut to be sold out of the retail store of Oomingmak, the Musk Ox Producers Co-Operative, on a busy downtown street.
Although not a traditional activity of the mostly Western Alaska women (and two men), the turning of qiviut yarn (made from musk ox underwool) into lace-pattern caps, scarves, headbands and hoods has been going on since 1969, bidding fair to become its own tradition. The money earned from tourists visiting Anchorage is a welcome supplement to subsistence lifestyles.
According to office manager Marie Texter, Yup’ik, the women use traditional patterns on the handknits. Those from Mekoryuk, Nunivak Island developed a pattern from a 1,200 year old ivory harpoon head, while those on Nelson Island and Bethel have used traditional parka patterns.
Most of the knitters are from western Alaska, she said, with a few from the Interior and one from Gambell on St. Lawrence Island. More than a dozen villages are currently involved. A person wanting to join the Co-operative is given a test, and if the garment produced is up to par, they are accepted. Membership dues are a very reasonable $2 per year.
Traditionally, she said, Natives used musk ox skins for clothing with the qiviut on them as insulation.
The musk ox, still on a protected list after being hunted nearly to extinction in the 1800s, now numbers between 2-3,000 and ranges on the Northern Slope and western coastal regions, said Texter. Surviving Alaska animals have been supplemented with some from Greenland to make today’s herds. The Co-operative obtains the qiviut mostly from two captive herds, one the Palmer Musk Ox Farm and the other the University of Alaska’s Large Animal Research Center.
Occasionally the group obtains qiviut from animals combed after being killed in lottery hunts, Texter said.
The fiber is combed from the oxen during shedding season each spring and is purchased and made into ash-brown yarn by the Co-operative, which then mails it to the knitters.
There is no quota, and no time limit on when pieces need to be produced, she said. Productivity ranges from a knitter that turned in just one piece last year, to one who knitted 90 items.
Texter, a knitter herself, said it took her a month to produce a nachaq in her spare time. But she said another knitter, Joyce Whitman, who has been producing the items for 20 years, could turn one out in an eight-hour day. Whitman was in the store that day, “blocking” a garment for sale with pins.
Knitters get paid per piece (not by consignment), and then earn a dividend at the end of the year. Texter said the knitter will be paid by the amount of stitches produced and the amount of yarn used. In a recent year the Co-operative paid out $160,000 to members, representing 27.5 percent of income.
Oomingmak, whose executive director is Sigrun Robertson, employs five people in the winter and eight to 10 in the summertime.
Some years, Oomingmak sells out its entire production of 2,000 to 3,000 items produced, said Texter. Besides its store in a brown house at 604 H Street (corner of Sixth), distinctive for a mural of musk oxen painted on it by Carol Strom, Oomingmak wholesales items to places in Palmer, Fairbanks and Juneau, along with the Alaska Native Heritage Center. It has a mail order distributor in the Pacific Northwest and plans to sell online in the very near future (its Web site is www.qiviut.com).
Prices range from $175 for the babushka-like nachaqs (also called “smoke rings”) to $595 for a full tunic. A newer line of products, called “Tundra & Snow,” is made from 80 percent qiviut and 20 percent silk, and these caps and headbands retail for between $120 and $180. Tourists from as far away as South America, Australia and China have come into the store to buy items, Texter said, and celebrity customers have included Alex Trebek, Lauren Hutton and Frankie Avalon.
The wearables are soft, light (some weigh as little as one ounce) and yet up to eight times warmer than sheep’s wool. They will not shrink on washing, nor felt up, according to the Co-operative. A qiviut knit is “a wearable piece of art,” according to the office manager.
The Co-operative was started in 1969 by John J. Teal, an anthropologist, who wanted to help people in disadvantaged villages supplement their incomes. The Mekyorak group, about 25 women, was the initial knitting team. The Kellogg Foundation made a grant for initial funding.
The group has also received a grant from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development to expand the scope of its knitters to more Native Alaska villages.
It has enumerated for itself a list of nine business principles intended to help it fulfill its mission of buying qiviut, processing it into garments, and distributing profits back to the members.
