Crafted from Bone and Ivory: An Interview with Susie Silook
This prominent Yupik/Iñupiaq carver’s works have electrified audiences for over three decades. In this interview, she discusses her community’s influence on her art, her vision of a more compassionate society and how bans on materials are affecting Alaska Natives.
For over 30 years, sculptor Susie Silook has produced a body of thought-provoking and politically charged work, cementing her position as one of Alaska’s leading artists. Silook was raised in the small hamlet of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Strait, 58 kilometres from the Russian Chukchi Peninsula. Of Siberian Yupik, Iñupiaq and Irish descent, Silook skillfully draws on traditional Indigenous stories and iconography to create her unique and sinuous forms. This past winter, Inuit Art Quarterly Assistant Editor John Geoghegan spoke with Silook, now based in Washington State, to discuss her life, art and politics.
JOHN GEOGHEGAN: I understand that you began carving about 32 or 33 years ago. Can you tell me how you got started?
SUSIE SILOOK: My father was a carver all his life and a hunter. Both of my parents did the whole subsistence thing—then they created artwork and craft from the skins, bones and ivories they hunted. So I grew up with it. I am from a culture where, in the not-too-distant past, everything was handmade. In my childhood, in the village, the men would work outside with their anvils and a piece of ivory. In those days they were using files to shape the ivory the way they wanted. I was in middle school when I tried carving. There was an arts and crafts class where we learned skin sewing from my aunt Penaapak and ivory carving from Bill Soonagrook, both of whom have passed on. My parents encouraged me to continue carving because they thought I had potential.
I had just gotten out of the military in the 1980s when I got really serious about it. My brother-in-law, Archie Henry, taught me some more basics. Then I left Gambell to work in Nome and then moved to Anchorage with my son. In Anchorage I wasn’t sure how I was going to make a living to support us, so I tried carving; my mother had given me bits of ivory and a tool to carve with “just in case.” I was in a relationship with a person buying and selling Native artwork, and he was able to sell my pieces right away. They weren’t that great! It took many years to get my technique to where I wanted it. But it was encouraging to be able to make a small living immediately, so that’s how I kind of accidentally started carving. It allowed me to be a single mother with a flexible schedule. There were so many benefits to being an artist.
JG: Growing up in such a creative environment seems to have had a tremendous effect on you. Do you see your artmaking as part of a longer familial and cultural tradition?
SS: Yes. In my family carving was mostly done by men. But there was no discrimination against me doing it, and three women were already doing so on the island—quite well, actually. So it seemed only natural. Now I’m at a point where I’m looking more at the work of my sisters and my mother and wishing I had more of those skills, so maybe I’ll branch out into something in that area eventually. Once I’m back in Alaska, I’d like to work with sealskin, sinew and gut and try my hand at sewing. I was one of those women who were politely referred to as not owning a thimble, because I didn’t sew.
JG: Do you travel home often?
SS: It’s so expensive to go to St. Lawrence Island. I go back as much as I can. We hope to move to Alaska. Right now I’m in Puyallup, Washington. This move was never intended to be permanent, but it’s been good, despite the unbelievable traffic. It’s given me a broader perspective on things.
JG: How do you acquire whalebone and ivory when you’re living in the South?
SS: Sometimes my friends and relatives back home will give me ivory. That’s happened throughout my career—people share. Or I can order from the store and just have them send it to me COD. Sometimes I’ll have my family members go and pick out what I want. Sometimes they have a good supply; other times they don’t. Some years there’s hardly any ivory. In fact, the numbers for the walrus that are being harvested are going down because of climate change.
JG: I can see that you are inspired by the wooden and ivory Okvik figures that have been excavated on St. Lawrence Island and the Punuk Islands, dating back over 2,000 years. I can feel their influence in how you model the faces of your carvings as well as your use of incised detail. Have you encountered many of these objects firsthand in your community or in museums and books?
SS: I grew up seeing the ancestral dolls and the pictures of them. I’ve also researched them at the Smithsonian Institutions in Washington, DC, and New York City, including the collection at the Museum of Natural History in New York. They are beautiful. To me they represent a deep, deep connection, because the facial characteristics—you can still see them in people today. They look like people that I know and love.
I want to preserve our ancient art forms. In the past, missionaries demonized our—for lack of a better word—religion and our symbols. There are stories about how people burned their ivory or whalebone items that were used in types of spiritual ceremonies and practices. I wanted to de-demonize them. They’re not evil! They represent a completely different perception of this world, one that is worth preserving.
JG: A lot of your work comments on issues that are specifically facing Alaska Native women. Could you talk about any particular works that really exemplify that, and how you’ve been able to use your art to advocate on behalf of Alaska Natives?
SS: If you grow up a Native woman, or even a Native person— I know this happens in Canada, too—you’re constantly seeing news reports of our women being raped, women being murdered. I read in my friend Timothy Kennedy’s book, Where the River Meets the Sky (2008), that the old hospital even had a name for it; it was called the “Native Harvest.” That really broke my heart when I read that. People knew what was going on, so why hadn’t it become more of an issue much sooner?
Back in 2001, after the murders of five women in the Anchorage area went unsolved, a talented group of Alaska Native women artists and I organized an exhibition called The Ceremony of Healing. The show was about the violence against Native women. We curated it— did everything. A first. We made an impact, you know—we hit the front page and were discussed on television broadcasts. That work was very important to me. That was my first act of activism, and I wasn’t planning on doing that again.
I want to preserve our ancient art forms. In the past, missionaries demonized our—for lack of a better word—religion and our symbols. There are stories about how people burned their ivory or whalebone items that were used in types of spiritual ceremonies and practices. I wanted to de-demonize them.
JG: What Does It Take for You to See My Heart (2001) was included in that exhibition and later purchased by the Anchorage Museum. I think the work, showing a nude woman holding up a small heart made from walrus stomach, is commanding and powerful. Can you speak about what inspired it and how it was received?
SS: It’s a signature piece for me, and it was received well enough, though I did receive some criticism for the work being too raw. I thought the situation called for that. Sometimes art can be too subtle. I thought I had to make an emphatic statement about how violence like this makes us feel unsafe. It’s hard to feel safe as a Native woman in America sometimes—as a woman, period. I mean, the recent #MeToo revelations should be an eye-opener for everybody. So, What Does It Take for You to See My Heart—I love that piece. Perennials (2001)—I don’t know if you’ve seen that. It’s cottonwood bark. It was in the same show. And All the Rage (2001) was the drum made for the show. I don’t pull out that image too often. It kind of speaks to my deep, innermost rage. That rage—unidentified, unresolved—can harm you. I had to become very familiar with that energy, and now I try to channel it into constructive action.
Since that exhibition you have become vocal about other issues facing Alaska Natives, particularly bans on the materials you use to make artwork. Can you speak about these bans?
SS: Recently, I’ve been helping to draw attention to the growing number of bans on our cultural, sustainable and subsistence resources. This stems from former President Obama’s issuance of Executive Order 13648: Combating Wildlife Trafficking, intended to curb illegal wildlife trafficking—specifically of elephant ivory, in our case—and the USFWS’s [US Fish and Wildlife Service] revision of section 4(d) of the Endangered Species Act rule for the African elephant. As states have or will be passing laws in compliance with this legislation, our use of the inedible products of our food sources, legally allowed under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), are being conflated with illegal trafficking, and some of the species we harvest are being listed in these bans, including walruses. This has already damaged our vital market, including the confusion over the legality of any ivory.
A draft of a bill called the Allowing Alaska IVORY Act, sponsored by Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan from Alaska, is intended to exempt mammoth and walrus ivory and whalebone from these bans.
JG: What are some of the ways that people can help and see that these bans are lifted or amended?
SS: Well, President Obama’s executive order essentially eliminating the elephant ivory market in America exempts us already. It states that items permitted under existing federal legislation are exempted from this ban, which is us, because the MMPA allows Indigenous people to continue to hunt those sea mammals that are our historic food and then to use the by-products to have a small economy. And in some villages, like those on St. Lawrence Island, this is really important. Absent of any other economy, subsistence resources are all we have.
Hunting provides upwards of 80% of the food in my village and in other places throughout Alaska. On my island it is predominantly walrus that feeds us, along with the bowhead whale and seals. Items made from their inedible parts provide for a moderate income and allow us to continue to live in harmony with the land and sea, as we have for centuries upon centuries. This is not cheap. Gasoline prices are close to $6 a gallon out there, and food in the store is also too
That rage—unidentified, unresolved—can harm you. I had to become very familiar with that energy, and now I try to channel it into constructive action.
expensive to survive on, so it’s costly but necessary to live off the land. Our own food is preferred, anyway. It’s truly free-range and organic, though the ocean is polluted and PCBs make their way into our diet.
The sales from arts and crafts—well, this doesn’t affect only the artists. Not every hunter is an artist. The local store back home buys walrus ivory from the hunters, many of whom buy it back when it’s properly cured and the spring and summer harvests are over. This part of the subsistence economy also supplies ivory to Alaska Natives beyond, in Anchorage and other towns. There are a lot of people involved in this particular market. Part of the problem is we don’t have any numbers. We need a market impact study to see how many people are engaged in this sustainable use market.
I care about what this means for us collectively—not just on my island, but also for Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia. We need to fight the encouraged negative perception that all hunting is evil.
The walruses are not the elephants. There are no organized criminal syndicates poaching and trafficking in walrus ivory, only ancient cultures continuing a sustainable, harmonious way of life with the sea. It’s going to take a lot of public sensitivity and awareness building.
Right now I’m working mainly with Kawerak, the regional nonprofit that represents all the tribes in the Bering Strait. I think they’ve done the most work in this matter. So, here we are with the proposed draft to the bill, and this needs further discussion, because while it’s great that they’re working to exempt the ivories and bones that we use from inclusion in the wildlife bans, this bill should exempt everything that’s covered in the MMPA, because that already covers those mammals. They’re co-managed by Fish and Wildlife and Native organizations. They’re already under protection and monitored. Everything is tagged—all the ivory is tagged. The walrus population in particular is stable—according to the latest research—and may even be a little beyond capacity. JG: Is there anything else you’d like to talk about? Any work that you’re doing or things that you think our readers should know about?
SS: One thing I’d like to see happen is that we become a stronger, more unified culture in the Arctic on these issues. I wasn’t paying attention for a long time, and this ivory ban movement really woke me up. I’m a fan of the entire circumpolar peoples of the Arctic— Sámi, Inuit, everybody—so I’m hoping that, with the challenges of a melting landscape and the rush for the extraction of resources, as well as heavy-handed conservation efforts, collectively we stand up and we have a say in how that’s carried out. And that has to include the preservation of our rights and our culture and the sea—everything.
My island is 38 miles from Russia, and the little opening waterway between St. Lawrence Island and Russia is predicted to increase considerably with ship traffic, because it makes things easier. The new Suez Canal, they’re calling it—the Northern Sea Route. But those same waters are where the whales migrate and the walruses live. There’s a whole ecosystem that’s important to my culture, and there’s a need to take care of our environment while there’s a mad dash for resource extraction.
Oh, and the one thing I’d like to say that I think is important— I know that Inuit in other nations have a problem with the MMPA because it limits an already limited market. We are possibly the most regulated artists on the face of the planet. But what I want people to understand is that for Alaska Native people living in coastal regions, our hunting is allowed to continue only because of the provisions in the MMPA. We lost our hunting and fishing rights during the creation of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which blows. But the MMPA is all we have, currently, and we still need to hunt to survive.
Thank you for inviting me into your publication, which I’ve admired for years.