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Paper short abstract:

The use of fish skin for garments and accessories is an ancient tradition shared by coastal Arctic societies. This paper proposes a vision of sustainability as an anthropological study of the resourcefulness of Arctic Indigenous Peoples, their subsistence lifestyles, and fish skin practices.

Paper long abstract:

To obtain the warmth needed from their clothing, Arctic and Subarctic Peoples have used for millennia fish skins, transforming them through highly specialized processes into garments, shoes and containers. They maintained a subsistence lifestyle linked with their natural surroundings, in one of the most demanding climates in the world. The specific groups with historical evidence of fish skin production are the Inuit, Yup’ik, Alutiiq and Athabascan of Alaska; the Nivkh and Nanai Siberian Peoples; the Ainu from Hokkaido Island in Japan and Sakhalin Island in Russia; the Hezhe from northeast China and the Saami of northern Scandinavia.

Arctic fish skin practices have historical connection with nature, from sustainable salmon fishing to lower consumption in the Arctic where resources were scarce and precious, respecting the relationship between all things on earth, in stark contrast to our contemporary vision destroying in the name of commerce. Colonisation has negatively impacted traditional Arctic fish skin heritage. Denying Indigenous fishing rights also damaged their relationships with the environment and their own sense of identity. For many Indigenous communities, colonialism has been a history of myriad dispossessions, of their land, water, traditional knowledge and practices both material and spiritual. This research explores fish skin craft produced by the Indigenous groups mentioned above, providing broader understandings of their linked past and heritage. This craft is embedded in their own environments and within a global environmental that is in crisis, a crisis that disproportionally endangers Indigenous communities, who had no part in causing it.