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Reviving the design of a vessel used by Unangax people more than 200 years ago meant working from historical photos and fragments of old boats.

And if you can get access to those, that's where the secrets get revealed.

That's where you can you can decipher what the master builders were thinking.

Now, boat builders are using an ancient design to bring back this culturally significant vessel.

Why are revivals like this important, and what can we learn from them to help solve future problems?

We'll find out.

Right now on Alaska.

INSIGHT.

Good evening.

The skill and craftsmanship of Unangax boat builders is often recognized in the design of sea going kayaks.

The people of the Aleutian Islands had to be vessel experts in order to successfully harvest and travel the marine routes between their communities.

But as you'll see tonight, one ancient design was so important it was seen as a threat by outsiders.

But before we get to that discussion, here are some of the top stories of the week from Alaska Public Media's collaborative statewide news Network.

Anchorage police say they will begin outfitting officers with body cameras in mid-November.

This comes two and a half years after Anchorage voters approved a $1.8 million tax increase to purchase the cameras.

One of the reasons for the delay was that the department and police union couldn't agree on a camera policy.

The cameras will be connected to APD vehicles.

Chief Michael Kearl says they hope to have 30 in use by the end of November.

In total, the department plans to use 350 cameras.

Opponents of the Donlin Gold mine are challenging the state's decision to issue water permits for the huge project in southwest Alaska.

The most recent challenge came Monday, when two tribal governments appealed to the state Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision upholding state permits to withdraw water from the surrounding area.

Other legal challenges target regulations and plans around the mine.

The Donlin Gold project is about 145 miles northeast of Bethel because native corporations own the land and mineral rights, they would have to share revenues with other Alaska native corporations around the state.

Opponents argue the mine would damage the ecosystem of the Kuskokwim River.

Scammers are targeting Juneau homeowners as they deal with property damage from the record glacial outburst flood along the Mendenhall River in August.

One person in the Marion Drive neighborhood lost more than $50,000 by paying fraudulent bills sent by someone posing as a local contractor, according to documents shared with Cato.

Others in the neighborhood have reported similar scam attempts.

Juneau Police Department confirms it's received several reports of fake invoices that were sent to homeowners dealing with flood damage.

One common element among these, and many online scams is a sense of urgency from the scammer with a push for quick payment.

You can find the full versions of these and many more stories on our website.

Alaska Public dot org or by downloading the Alaska Public Media app on your phone.

Now on to our discussion for this evening.

It's been about 200 years since Russian colonizers demolished the last remaining examples of large Unangax boats called a Niilax .

The wooden frame boats were used in the Aleutian Islands to transport goods and people.

Destroying the boats was a way to control the Unangax people.

Now a group of boat builders have resurrected the Niilax KUCBs Theo Greenlee has the story at Cook Inlet Native Head Start in Anchorage.

Mark Daniels is building a Niilax It's going to be that part won't be as obvious why it is this one.

I'm going to shorten it a little bit.

Unangax tribes built intricate frame boats out of driftwood that washed up along the treeless Aleutian beaches.

Waterproofing them with marine mammal skins.

The boats were key for hunting and travel, and because of that, Russian colonizers demolished the boats.

Back in the late 1700s.

They were destroyed intentionally by fur seeking companies coming through from Russia to control the Unangax people.

That's how they controlled their movements and were able to dominate them.

But Daniels and others have spent decades trying to recover the lost craft, scouring museums and sketchbooks for hints on how to build them.

They're deriving clues from boat fragments tucked away in permanent collections.

If you can get access to those, that's where the secrets get revealed.

That's where you can decipher what the master builders were thinking.

So Stern is going to go on the one block.

Daniels is arguably the leading craftsman in this style of boat making, and he spends a lot of time teaching at culture camps in the Aleutians.

Right in there somewhere.

But he's not Alaska native.

I raise that concern with someone in Elder that I respected, and this person pointed out to me said, you know, you need to quit worrying about that.

It's actually part of our story that we would lose these traditions through the coming of outsiders, but it would be an outsider that returned what had been taken.

So his goal now is to pass his knowledge back to its rightful place with the Unangax people.

From kids to elders.

And to create a new generation of builders and teachers.

We'd like to dedicate the Niilax to our past, present and future members of the Korean Tiangong and tried in Sandpoint are among those who built a Niilax with Daniels this year.

And in July, dancers, musicians and community members from Atco to Anchorage joined them to launch it.

The first time a Niilax touched these waters in 200 years.

Such a moving can make me cry.

Ethan Petticrew grew up in southeast Alaska after his family was relocated from the Aleutians during World War Two.

He's been working on revitalization projects for decades, and he was instrumental in the Sandpoint launch.

Our people have been doing this since 1800s, and this is such a spiritual moving moment that I feel so connected to my great grandparents, I said, walking with him, but actually think I feel like I'm paddling with my great grandparents.

Five communities have built Nicola this year.

Four have been launched.

The fifth in Unalaska is expected to touch water next summer in Sandpoint.

I'm Phil Greenly, joining me tonight to discuss how and why the Niilax design was revived is Ethan Petticrew.

Ethan is a Unangax dance instructor, a teacher, and the executive director of Cook Inlet Head Start at Anchorage.

Also joining us is Mark Daniels.

Mark is a skilled woodworker and the skin boat revival facilitator currently joining us remotely from Atka.

Welcome, both of you.

Thank you.

Yeah, Thanks for being here.

And Mark, you from such a great distance.

So this beautiful story that we just saw, Ethan, you said in an earlier interview that you felt the feeling of being in the boat in Sandpoint after hundreds of years of not having access.

Felt like you hadn't gotten out of them.

Tell us about that feeling and what it means after the myriad attempts at cultural erasure.

And I say attempts because your culture has not been erased.

It's been tough.

But what does this boat revival mean for the future?

It brings tears to my eyes again, like in the interview.

I think, first of all, the feeling, just the immense feeling.

Once we were in that boat and definitely didn't want to get out of it, but it felt like we had never been taken away from it.

I don't know how to even explain that in words, but it felt like we were sitting in our rightful place and we hadn't lost generations in between that didn't get to participate in those boats.

I think it's a huge meaning for us in that these boats were were targeted by the Russian American fur companies to destroy the ability for us to move our women and children from island to island.

For instance, if you're trying to save them and move them around.

But it also was a way for us to transport large numbers of warriors in armor.

That's kind of difficult in an Niilax kayak to be all dressed up for war and traveling in a small one person or two person boat.

These boats hold as many as 2040 warriors at times and you could move large numbers of people around with that.

I think spiritually today what this means is that we are now able to connect our elders, our women and our children in this whole boat movement we've had it is in kayaks going for a while, and that's typically been the young men and who who operate those boats.

And there have been some females in it.

But traditionally it's a young man's boat that never left or is lucky.

In the Western dialect is a boat meant for all of our people.

And so it brings us full circle and it includes all of our generations in one and one boat where we can all move in the same direction.

That's just a beautiful, beautiful way of portraying this.

You mentioned this a bit.

These boats have slightly different names depending on the community.

Tell us about those regional distinctions.

Is it mainly just the name or are there design differences?

Also the design difference?

You're going to have to ask Mark.

He's the one who would be able to and knows more detail about that than I do.

I that's as far as I know, there's just a dialectical difference between Niilax and then in Attica it's pronounced itself.

So the end is not used in the beginning.

But Mark could probably tell us more about design from parts of the Aleutians in different regions, perhaps?

Absolutely.

Mark To start that off, the historical photos we saw in the story were not of actual Niilax because they were all destroyed.

How did these photos of similar boats help the work of recreating a Niilax ?

Yeah.

First of all, I want to apologize If the audio and the video are of poor quality.

I'm calling.

I'm on the island of Atka right now, and I'm in there and that's the top school and the school's culture room.

And so, you know, I don't know.

The Internet is not the best out here.

So far, so good.

So.

So yeah, what we had to go off of when we started this pursuit of building the Niilax up is a very limited there.

There is there's only just work collected and brought back to museums and like the way the kayaks have been over over time.

So there aren't any examples in museums to look at and you know, they're big so they're hard to bring back to the to the museums.

And as Ethan was saying, they were actually destroyed purposely.

So that made them, you know, that took away that ability to actually look at them.

And I've actually only touched two pieces of an actual three contact Niilax.

And it was in a museum trying to get down in the archive room.

It was a there were two ribs in the Unalaska Museum that survived that whole period because they were in a burial cave and out of sight.

And so they are still available to look at such a measure.

Aside from that, there were a few journal entries in ship's logs where sketches were made and drawings made and measurements taken.

But that's all we really have to go on.

And until this summer, as we noted, this design hasn't been on the water since the 1800s.

What is the difference?

What is different about this design from other Unangax boats?

The bow has a very unique look.

It's bifurcated.

Why is that right?

The Yeah.

You may be familiar with the large open skin boats.

They call it a Vidar up in the purple off violins.

They have really large open skin boats that date back to the Russian period built by the Unangax people.

But they don't have the bifurcating valve, these ones.

And there's only there's only really one of those left in existence, but not for the lot.

But these have the bifurcated shell, which the purpose behind the bifurcated bow is that the lower portion is very sharp and narrow.

And so it creates a sharp cut water at the waterline for speed.

And then above that split the skin, then layers outward up to the gunnels and creates a sort of a cleaning surface.

So if you get in rough water rather than the valve plunging under the wave and taking water into the vessel, this upper layer portion keeps it as buoyancy and a playing surface and keeps the front of the vessel above the water.

You said in an earlier interview, Mark, that the design is brilliant and efficient and that every part is needed.

Nothing is extraneous as a builder.

Talk about how you think about this design and how people did this at a time when there weren't any computer design programs or modern tools and technology available.

Yeah, I'm glad you asked that.

Yeah, I kind of live in a state of amazement for what the Unangax people were able to accomplish.

This is one of the most brilliant inventions that humankind has ever come up with, and I consider it one of the perfect inventions.

And it really is amazing.

The more you look, the more perfection there, isn't it?

And like I was saying earlier, there, there there's nothing in one of these vessels that's that's superfluous.

There's nothing that there's nothing in there just for decoration.

Everything that's needed is there.

And nothing that nothing that is there isn't needed.

And yeah, and the fact that they did this level of woodworking is without any steel tools.

They did it all with ivory wedges, pumice stones for braiding and like tools for shaping the wood.

It actually just sort of boggles my mind.

I honestly don't know how they were able to do that.

Are you?

And I think it might be I think that they are do like you were talking about the computer generated designs and so on.

I think that the human mind, the Unangax mind from spending so much intimate time on the water in the weather as part of the ocean for thousands of years, that that's the computer that things are you in Atka now as part of this ongoing project.

I am actually I'm here for other purposes.

But but I'm sure I've got some good ideas.

I'm going to work.

Okay.

Ethan, I really appreciated something you said earlier when we were in the lead up to this about resilience and Unangax people surviving internment during World War Two and other oppressions.

You said reconnecting with things like this boat design gives you nourishment.

Talk about that.

I think.

Yeah, as a people, Unangax people we've been through a tremendous amount since contact with Westerners in the beginning years we were in control.

And then over a period of time through disease and warfare, the Russians gained control over us and we suffered pretty drastically towards the end of that period.

Then in the American period, it was World War Two.

That was that really or it was a death sentence for us in these death camps.

We were put in internment camps where in some of our villages, when the one mark is in right now, Atika, in four years lost a third of its population in the internment camp in southeast.

So we came our parents and grandparents came out of those camps, very broken, very hurt people.

At that point, you see our language going into remission or being hidden.

You see our cultural practices going to sleep, anything that was practiced at that point.

People a lot of times were becoming ashamed.

Oh, we can't we have to hide it in different communities, Different communities reacted differently.

Different families depending on your exposure and where you were at.

But this was a terrible time for us.

And since then it was there were periods of time where are we going to even recover?

I'm glad to see in my lifetime in 63, I'm glad to see in my lifetime that our language is coming back.

Our dance is coming back, our boat building is coming back.

And this to me, this means us rebuilding ourselves as indigenous people, which is tremendously important for our young people.

We just need to look at where young people are at indigenous young people Day and the difficulties, high rate of suicide, all of the dysfunction that exists.

These are ways for us to keep our young people on track and healthy.

And what I mean is that we tend to be so colonized, we think that mental health is going to a mental health clinician where I go to get help.

Yes, that is part of it.

But the we have our own mental health activities.

Boatbuilding is one of them.

Paddling is one of them with the feeling, the power of so many people in one boat just with no motor and no gas, but just by human powered feeling the energy.

And I got to be a little cupcake in the back.

And so when it came time to slow that thing down, you could feel the energy that all of those people had created in that boat.

It was tremendously hard to slow it down.

Just one person and one paddle.

That's the way I was so impressed with that feeling that this is our people and our energy and those things are our mental health activities.

And I think that we need to recognize that we have tradition, traditional mental health activities that will help us in this day and age.

Not everything we did in the past should be thrown away.

These things can help us and our young people navigate society today.

Well, thank you.

That is most important, the most important point of this entire discussion this evening.

Thank you.

I just want to add two things to I think we often look at those big ships now and they're big before cated vessels that they have.

And we want we always want to say, oh, see, there's another contribution of indigenous America towards the modern world, that we've made a contribution on.

And as far as Mark goes, I know he said something about being the outsider.

We just tend to think that he was X, that God is accidently gave him to the wrong family and that he should have been born in our region with our family.

So, Mark, we think of you as one of us.

That is fantastic.

So is it is it all made from salvaged wood?

Driftwood.

There's no trees that are dropped.

It's just what you can find on the beaches.

Sounds like that's a question for me.

Yes.

I'm sorry.

So sorry, Mark.

Yes.

Yeah.

No, we we start by combing the beaches for the driftwood, and we need to find certain shaped crooks for the different the crook being a curved root section.

The roots of trees are the strongest part.

They've been resisting, you know, the tree being pushed by the wind for their entire removal, 500 years of life.

And so that's a very strong part of the boat.

It's got the right curve.

The green runs through the curb.

And so when you carve a curve ball out of it and say it's a very strong right piece of wood.

So we do we start by combing the beaches for all these different curves that we need.

We actually secure some of the longer pieces that we need from a friend of ours that we work with who has a wood mill in a portable mill in Seward, and he does a lot of beach salvaging.

So technically I've got some things with wood, but emails it up for us into the long, into the long pieces that we need.

Beautiful, tight old growth Sitka spruce that washes up down there.

Very strong light and springy wood.

Anyway, answer your question.

Well, how how long does it take once you find the right wood to put one together in?

Is it all are you going for as traditional materials, as possible?

Are there any additions of like modern metal hardware or anything like that that you're using?

Oh, there's absolutely no metal fasteners used.

We do try to you know, we try to we try to stay as close to what we would have, what we think would have been the tradition.

Of course, like I said earlier, there aren't any examples of these vessels just sitting there to look at the elders who, you know, are from that tradition that we can ask.

But so we try to be as far as the framework goes, we do try to stay as traditional as possible where we use modern times hard, same time, for example, for some of the lashings it would have been a animal sinew in the past would have been some of these sea lion use, sometimes soft and baling would have been used for some of the bindings and the beauty of those is, you know, the sinew and the baling is that when they dry up, you soften them and dry your lashes, they actually tighten.

So that's actually a superior material.

But we don't have a lot of access to that.

And then as far as the covering of the vessel that would have been covered with stellar sea lion skins and a lot of them, and it probably would have been replaced every every couple of seasons, you know, as they wore out.

And, you know, we don't have access to enough of that.

So we use that's where the departure happened, where we're trying to make these vessels relevant.

We're not trying to make artifacts to hang up and look at.

We're trying to make vessels to use those.

Like you said, that's where the wellness comes from and the meaning of it on the water.

So we use a nylon fabric heavy fabric that we are able to stretch over the frame while it's wet.

We see a lot.

Great.

Thank you.

So there's a departure.

Yeah.

I want to get one more question where the time goes by way too fast.

Ethan, I want to get one more question in to you before we have to wrap up.

You have ambitious goals for the future, much larger vessels, a 40 foot version, a boat in every coastal village.

Give us a little cue about the the future vision that you have here.

Oh, it's is vision of my own personal vision, I guess.

Which, I mean, I don't know if it's shared by the region or not.

I know Mark would love to see it to him.

And I've talked a lot.

I know there's another young man, Dustin Newman, in that region who'd love to see the same thing, but we would love to see all of our villages take these boats up and become such a common thing.

And yes, even get the big 40 footer going when Mark is ready to do that.

When Mark, let's do it.

That next one.

Ready.

I think I would love to see all of our communities take this up as as just like I said before, as a real way to connect with our ancestors, but also is providing that really wonderful, soul nourishing mental health that we need.

And then I would like to see us combined with maybe super region people hosting some journeys, doing some paddling journeys.

I would love to see us do that with our cousins, so I think you would love it.

Thank you so much.

Thanks to both of you.

Learning how earlier generations built sturdy, dependable craft who safely travel for hunting and other needs can help young people appreciate the lives and skills of their ancestors.

This can deepen their sense of connection and pride in their heritage as they develop their own skills to innovate and thrive into the future.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

Visit our website, Alaska Public dot org for breaking news and reports from our partner stations across the state.

While you're there, sign up for our free daily Digest so you won't miss any of Alaska's top stories of the day.

Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Laurie Townsend.

Good night.

You it's the last thing I.