With a $74,000 contract from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Alutiiq Museum and the Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak will partner on the Pinguat (Beads) Project—a two-year effort to study and teach Alutiiq beading. The project, which begins this month, will center around the study and replication of historic, beaded regalia currently on display in the museum’s gallery.
In 1872, French anthropologist Alphonse Pinart collected three sets of rare beaded garments from the Kodiak region—coordinated headdr