Indigenous Arctic Fish Skin Heritage: Sustainability, Craft and Material Innovation

The use of fish skin(1) for the construction of garments and accessories is an ancient tradition shared by coastal Arctic societies as a subsistence lifestyle(2) depending on aquatic resources for food and clothing. Arctic Indigenous(3) Peoples(4) need formidable resourcefulness to thrive in inhospitable ecosystems; fish skins provide them physical and spiritual protection(5). During the last century, they resisted not only colonisation and repression by humans but also dramatic ecological changes in seafood security. Fish skin craft became a way to communicate traditional knowledge where practical benefits combined cultural resilience(6). As market goods have replaced traditional fish skin clothing, the need for the skills required to create these items have diminished. The decrease of local natural resources also threatens the craft.

The focus of this research is primarily to propose a vision of sustainability as an anthropological study of the resourcefulness and resilience of the Arctic Indigenous Peoples, their lifestyles, and fish skin practices. Secondarily it identifies the historical, cultural, environmental, and socioeconomic importance of fish skin as an innovative sustainable material, explored through the study of materials, processes and artefact analysis. Thirdly, the application of fish skin materials and craft practices has been tested through participatory workshops to explore how this material and the skill transmissions can contribute to sustainability practices in fashion.

The contribution to knowledge is firstly the mapping of fish skin craft participatory practices with Artic Indigenous communities as this is the first time that such a survey has been undertaken. The material study of fish skin and its contribution to fashion sustainability forms a secondary contribution.

1 Within this thesis, the terms fish skin and fish leather are used to indicate different processes of the same material. Fish skin. Skin indicates the superficial dermis of an animal. In the thesis fish skin is referred as the historical raw material tanned following traditional methods: mechanical, oiling, smoking, bark, brain, urine, fish eggs and corn flour tanning. Fish Leather is used to indicate that the fish skin has passed one or more stages of industrial vegetable or chrome tanning production and is ready to be used to produce leather goods.

2 Subsistence activities of hunting, herding, fishing and gathering continue to be of major significance to the Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic in providing food, social relationships and cultural identity.

3 Indigenous Peoples are descent from the populations which inhabited a geographical region at the time of colonisation and who retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions. In this thesis, I use the terms ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Native’ interchangeably. In some countries, one of these terms may be favoured over the other.

4 The specific Arctic Indigenous groups with historical evidence of fish leather production are the Inuit, Yup’ik and Athabascan of Alaska and Canada; the various Siberian peoples, such as the Nivkh and Nanai; the Ainu from the Hokkaido Island in Japan and Sakhalin Island, Russia; the Hezhe from northeast China and the Saami of northern Scandinavia.

5 Arctic Indigenous Peoples believed that humans, animals and nature shared spiritual qualities. Arctic seamstresses decorated hunters’ fish skin clothing with motifs imbued with spirits, which gave protection from danger.

6 Arctic Indigenous Peoples have become a symbol of cultural resilience, actively adapting to colonisation, place dislocation due to land dispossession and resettlement, challenging the persistence of Indigenous knowledge systems.