"How Will I Sew My Baskets?": Women Vendors, Market Art, and Incipient Political Activism in Anchorage, Alaska

Abstract

When the alarm goes off at six o'clock on a late October morning, the Anchorage sky is sullen with clouds that have already dumped a foot of early snow on the city. As I splash water on my face, I hear Flora Mark (a pseudonym), my Yup'ik Eskimo collaborator on a long-term research project in the kitchen brewing coffee:It's Starbucks! she told me proudly last night when I arrived from Fairbanks.' We are hurrying to make the 7:00 a.m. deadline for setting up Flora's table at the annual Alaska Federation of Natives craft fair, which opens today in downtown Anchorage. We gulp down the coffee, and as we pack up to leave, Flora struggles into her best flowered qaspeq, the Mother Hubbard-like garment part way between shirt and dress that is regulation wear in every Eskimo village. In the city, qaspeq wearing isn't taken for granted, however, so as Flora pokes her head out through the opening, she feels compelled to explain: They [the crafts fair organizers] want us to wear these. In this article I examine the multifaceted role of the Alaska Federation of Natives crafts fair in the lives of Alaska Native women who have left their home villages and moved into Anchorage, Alaska's largest city. At the same time, this discussion raises broader issues such as the evolving politicization of women traders and the growing role of market art in the articulation of political concepts. These themes link Alaska Natives to Native Americans generally as they move from formerly isolated smallscale groups to multiethnic entities that participate in the globalized economies and emergent political institutions characterizing Fourth World peoples of the twenty-first century.2 I argue that across Alaska, institutions such as the Alaska Native Federation crafts fairs help the increasing number of urban-based Native women in a variety of ways to