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Artists collaborate on a new Selawik Refuge sign, weaving in the knowledge of seasons and subsistence

Several artists collaborated to create the new Selawik Refuge sign that highlights local subsistence practices.

The Selawik National Wildlife Refuge, located to the east of Kotzebue Sound and near Selawik, is home to musk ox, wolverines, grizzly and black bears, moose and caribou. The new entrance sign, outside the refuge headquarters in Kotzebue, centers one species particularly important to locals: sheefish.

Moreover, the sign also features traditional qupak ornament, a hint to berry picking and several local landscape references.

“In addition to being a habitat for wildlife, all the refuges in Alaska are homelands for Indigenous people too. So I wanted to have that local connection,” said Brittany Sweeney, assistant refuge manager. “We wanted it to have something that gave it a sense of place, that showed that it was part of the region, the people and the wildlife.”

The word “Selawik” comes from “siiļvik,” an Iñupiaq word for “place of sheefish.” The fish is one of the main foods for the residents of the village.

So when the national redesign effort for wildlife refuges started, it was only logical that Alaska artist Sara Wolman created the base illustration of the sheefish (as well as animal ambassador illustrations used in new refuge signs across the nation.)

The former refuge educator and artist Christina Nelson took Wolman’s illustration and adjusted it to make it more dynamic and realistic.

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“The ask for me was to bring the sheefish alive and just give it more personality,” Nelson said.

Nelson said she modified the image and illustrated certain details, for example around the fish’s mouth. She said she created a few different designs and, to ensure accuracy, ran them by the biologists and the rest of the refuge team.

Nelson also tried adding a few different types of feeder fish to the image and picked the smaller sheefish that fit the picture visually, she said.

Sheefish, she explained, “go after any smaller fish that they can fit into their mouth, so it can be young sheefish.”

For the next part of the sign — the qupak design on the bottom — Nelson traveled to Selawik to collaborate with Iñupiaq artist Norma Ballot.

Inspired by the work of Iñupiaq seamstresses and parkas made by her daughter, Ballot had several ideas for qupak ornament, which is essentially a fancy trim design on the bottom of the parka. Ballot shared a few pictures of her designs with Nelson, and when the two met, they looked at those pictures together and brainstormed ways to put them together.

“We just talked about different ways that we could incorporate — weave in — things about the land, the seasons, Alaska Native art,” Nelson said. “It was just a really nice time back in Selawik sitting in her house. ... And she always fed me!”

Throughout the qupak design on the sign, in each diamond, the artists included colors of berries that grow in different seasons: orange cloudberries, blue blueberries, black crowberries and red cranberries.

Behind the design, they depicted a sunset, specifically the pattern of the setting sun above the village in fall, Nelson said.

The top of the sign also represents a place. Instead of using a straight rectangular edge, the artists decided to trace the silhouette of the mountains residents in Selawik see when they look toward Kiana.

Reflecting on the symbolism of the sign, Nelson said that including the qupak design was an important addition.

“A lot of refuges focus on the land and the wildlife,” she said. “But here ... the Inuit, and humans in general, (are) being a part of the land. ... That’s the part that really connects the whole sign back to the people and the land that the refuge is located on.”

To present the new sign, Selawik Refuge staff hosted a First Friday-style event in Kotzebue on Dec. 6, with snacks, an art exhibit from artists in residence who had come to the refuge, and craft stations.

“They had different stations where you could color in a picture,” Nelson said. “It was just really nice conversations among staff and members of the community who came in and just celebrated all together.”

The new sign is now located at the headquarters of the refuge in Kotzebue, instead of the old one that used to be a typical rectangle with a brown background.

The Selawik Refuge staff plan to replace another sign at the cabin within the heart of the refuge and potentially install one in the village of Selawik, “if we find a good spot that the community feels good about,” Sweeney said.

Alena Naiden

Alena Naiden writes about communities in the North Slope and Northwest Arctic regions for the Arctic Sounder and ADN. Previously, she worked at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.