Juneau resident explores endangered art of skin-on-frame qayak building at Alaska State Museum

Monday is Indigenous Peoples Day, and a great resource for learning about the Indigenous people of Alaska is the Alaska State Museum in Juneau.

Qayak builder-in-residence Lou Logan is in the process of building a skin-on-frame qayak inside the museum, based on a frame that is over a century old and using designs that may go back thousands of years.

Logan is recreating a part of the past which was integral to how the Iñupiaq people of Alaska’s Northwest coastal region lived for millennia. But that area of Alaska is above tree-line, so the material needed for the frame of the skin-on-frame qayak had to be collected.

“I went around Juneau and looked for the right pieces and most of it or a lot of it is made out of driftwood,” Logan explained. “It’s basically a fancy dog walk and I look around and find these pieces and people stare at me when I’m bringing big stumps back to my truck and they’re wondering, what is he doing?

For Logan, building this qayak doesn’t just satisfy his interest in dog walking, driftwood hunting and wood working. It also provides him with a connection to family and heritage which he is still in the process of discovering.

“I’ve always liked kayaking and woodworking. This one has a family connection because this style was a type that was used by my grandmother’s people up in the village of Wales. So it combined all three things,” he said. “I don’t know a whole lot about that side of my family, so this is a way to learn.”

That connection runs deep in the building of this qayak. Each vessel is produced for the individual that is going to use it through body-measurements. Logan used a qayak acquired on King Island nearly 100 years ago that’s now in the museum’s collection as a reference.

“They’re made to fit, so you make one using anthropometric measurements, meaning you use your own arm span or fist width and so on, to come up with a size that fits you specifically,” Logan said. “I did the measurements for mine using my arm span for the gunnels, two and a half arm spans, and then I measured the one in the museum here, and it came down within an inch. So the guy that built his is about the same height as me.”

Exploring the history of the various styles of qayaks of Alaska also speaks to the often tragic history of Alaska Native people as they made contact with the earliest European explorers and traders.

“Especially towards the Aleutians, the Unangan people,” Logan explains. “The speculation is that theirs changed after contact because the Russians forced them to do so much sea otter hunting and so the qayaks got longer and skinnier to get faster so they could harvest faster and harvest more and more, because essentially their families were held hostage in return for these pelts.”

Logan has also built specialized tools for the project, like an adz for precision chopping and a shave horse for shaping wood.

Another connection Logan is making with the original builders of these qayaks is understanding that even with our modern advances, there is no replacing thousands of years of knowledge.

“I did try splitting it lengthwise but I failed miserably so I don’t have the skill that the old masters did, and they passed down this knowledge generation over generation and there’s been a couple generation breaks at least now,” he said. “So a lot of that info might be lost and so I’m here trying to reclaim some of that.”

Logan has a few more months work on this qayak, then he’d like to think about how to pass on what he is learning to the people of the area that these boats came from – his grandmother’s place of origin on the far western tip of the Seward Peninsula.

“Someday I would love to kind of bring this back to the the village or that area because I don’t know a lot of people building this type, but I need to get a few more done before I feel comfortable teaching others,” he said.

The final step of the qayak build will be fitting on the skin, something Logan will adapt using modern materials versus a traditional skin.

“Traditionally it was a walrus hide, split walrus hide for the style with maybe a bearded seal or an ugruk for the front, but it doesn’t last forever, it just lasts maybe two years and then you got to redo it,” he said. “I can’t really afford to do that and it’s hard to find. I want this to be a working example so I’m using nylon or polyester.”

He’s keeping it a working example, in hopes that this piece of Alaska Native history can continue to teach new generations of paddlers, woodworkers and driftwood hunters.

Logan will give a presentation at the Alaska State Museum at noon Monday about his qayak building process. It’s also the last chance to see the museum’s “Protection, Adaptation and Resistance” exhibit.