Killer Whale Tunic

Keet aya yaat (This is the Killer Whale)

Dancing tunic replication. 2023. Wool and Cedar.

Started in the December 2022, and completed in October 2023, this was my first full size piece of Chilkat regalia.

I was initially drawn to the construction of the woven tunic, as it was a foreign process to me. As someone who loves to learn, I knew this was the next step in my weaving career. While visiting the Anchorage museum in the fall of 2022, I noticed the Killer Whale tunic on display and fell in love with it, instantly knowing that I must replicate it to fine tune my skills as a Chilkat weaver.

The warp construction alone was a huge hurdle for me to overcome, the hundreds of hours I spent spinning with a cold leg, was made a little easier with the books I listened to and the inevitable weaving in my future.

The shoulder construction took quite a few attempts of weaving, taking out, reworking my process, and weaving again to finally have the result I was after. The front on the other hand went smoothly, a process I felt confident with because of my previous experience. I studied photographs I took of the original tunic, as well as a strikingly similar tunic housed at the Burke Museum, to hone in on techniques to build shapes. I began applying some of these findings to this tunic and found my weaving began to lay flatter, my points sharper, and my shapes mimicking my pattern board as I’d hoped for. I gained a great deal of confidence and knowledge in the process of creating this tunic.

A huge thank you to the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation LIFT grant for making this project possible. To the Burke Museum, and Bill Holm Center for supporting my research, and giving me space to weave this tunic, and to Kay Parker, for guiding me through the shoulder construction and giving advice whenever I was desperate.