- You know, there's always been a desire to make things or to make jewelry, to adorn yourself,
beautify your world.
My goal is to do as good a work as I can as a craftsperson, to represent my culture and
community as a native person, and, in the process, expose the world to that culture
and that beauty that I find in the people, in the country and the objects that they make.
My mother's mother lived in a small town in Alaska.
She was a storyteller, and she sang in her native tongue and she was really a wonderful
grandmother.
When we were kids, we would go up fairly often.
We always went for hikes up in the mountains and went looking at the fish and went looking
at the eagles and everything.
I always felt a connection to our family up there as native people, although we didn't
have a lot of strong, traditional activities going on.
There was no dancing.
The language really was only spoken by my grandmother and her peers.
The whole thing was assimilation for our parents and our grandparents, to let go of your traditional
ways and your language.
And I just felt like I needed to do something that said who I was and where I was from.
It started out that we were both doing lapidary and silver smithing, and then we sort of settled
into Wally doing lapidary and I doing silver smithing.
- The normal way to design a piece of jewelry is to stake a stone or several stones and
design the piece around it.
Well, we do it the opposite.
Denise makes the piece, gives it to me, and then I fit the stone into it.
That frees her up to design it any way she wants to.
- I went to the Institute of American Indian Arts, and it happened to be in Santa Fe, New
Mexico, which I thought was really an exotic place.
In Santa Fe, where all the Indian people sell on the Palace of the Governors, that's where
we would sell.
So I sat next to people from Santa Domingo Pueblo and Santa Clara Pueblo and Navajo jewelers,
and being around these other very rooted, cultural people made me want to really go
forward and make things happen.
My grandmother was ill, and she passed away, and I had a couple of my cousins who were
really close in age to me that had committed suicide.
And so, I thought, I really need to do something.
And that's really where that whole need to express myself as a Native Alaskan person
came forth.
The first major piece we did was that killer whale belt.
The reason I wanted to do killer whales is because, as a child, when I would go to Alaska
and I would see them, I just thought it was the most magnificent thing I'd ever seen.
It's the kind of thing where you try and shut everything else out, and you just fill your
whole space with this imagery from historic pieces.
It's like you're taking a walk, and you're looking at things as you go down this trail.
The next Alaskan piece was a mask belt.
This is all based on Yupik masks.
This is the preliminary designs for the women and children belt.
So, I was trying to imagine that there would be several mother figures and then two or
three children in between.
I might look at some of the older pieces and, you know, little scenes of dancing.
The idea of doors opening up came directly from some of the older masks that would open
up.
And this is the drawings of the crossroads belt.
In this particular belt, I imagined this arc of figures, you know, from Siberia, cross
into Alaska.
The first five are Siberian and the next five are Alaskan.
- When we sell things, people ask us, you know, well, what is the background of this
piece?
What is, is it from a legend?
So, we explain that to them and everything, and the story is spread.
So, the person who owns the jewelry becomes a storyteller, like Denise is.
- When I come back to Cordova, I feel definitely like I'm home.
And having most of my siblings here and their children here makes it even better.
Hi, Mom. it's just a rich experience for me, and it's one that, every time I come back,
I can't figure out why I live somewhere else.
- And some of them are hinged.
This piece.
- [Woman] But isn't that cute?
- It looks great on the black.
Okay, but you have to tell me who you want me to sign it to.
- Jerry, last name George.
- Okay.
- [Jerry] I've seen your work before, but I just, this was too much of an opportunity
to miss.
- And you can just kind of turn it into something, shape it a little bit more, or you can leave
it like it is and polish it up a little bit more and do your scrimshaw on it.
But like, if you wanted to take it and make it into a seal shape, or.
It's important that we pass down traditions and things that we've learned so that people
know who they are and where they're from.
A jeweler's saw.
Even if you're teaching non-native people, you're still keeping it alive, and somewhere
along the line, it's going to get passed on to somebody else.
And it may not be right now, but it will happen.
The main thing is to keep things going.