Lou Logan is reconnecting with part of his heritage and helping to preserve an endangered craft by building a traditional qayak inside the Alaska State Museum.
Qayak builder Lou Logan shows off the qayak frame he’s been constructing using traditional methods inside the Alaska State Museum .
Logan is recreating a part of the past which was integral to how the Iñupiaq people of Alaska’s Northwest coastal region lived for millennia. But that area of Alaska is above tree-line, so the material needed for the frame of the skin-on-frame qayak had to be collected. “I’ve always liked kayaking and woodworking. This one has a family connection because this style was a type that was used by my grandmother’s people up in the village of Wales. So it combined all three things,” he said. “I don’t know a whole lot about that side of my family, so this is a way to learn.”
“Especially towards the Aleutians, the Unangan people,” Logan explains. “The speculation is that theirs changed after contact because the Russians forced them to do so much sea otter hunting and so the qayaks got longer and skinnier to get faster so they could harvest faster and harvest more and more, because essentially their families were held hostage in return for these pelts.”
“I did try splitting it lengthwise but I failed miserably so I don’t have the skill that the old masters did, and they passed down this knowledge generation over generation and there’s been a couple generation breaks at least now,” he said. “So a lot of that info might be lost and so I’m here trying to reclaim some of that.”
The final step of the qayak build will be fitting on the skin, something Logan will adapt using modern materials versus a traditional skin.
Juneau Alaska State Museum Indigenous People's Day Lou Logan
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