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Qayanek
Qayaq Preservation Center
P.
O. Box
27- Kwigillingok, Alaska 99622
1-907-588-8129 - 1-907-588-8529 -
Fax-
1-907-588-8419
email
/ web:
www.qayanek.com
"Builders of the
most authentic Native
American seal skin qayat (kayaks) in the world"
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| Qayanek is
passionately dedicated to antiquity
research, documentation,
preservation, and construction of the traditional Native American
Yup'ik
Caninermiut Qayaq. Qayanek builds kayaks as close as
possible to how
they were designed in traditional mud houses. Of
the two basic Yup'ik kayak
designs, the less documented eastern version, built in Kwigillingok,
Alaska,
may be the more elegantly engineered. The Caninermiut Qayaq has 2 bow,
4 stern,
and 5 cross members that are tediously extracted from the bends
of driftwood
spruce
stumps. All
measurements are custom anthropomorphic body
measurements.
Qayanek's real seal skin on frame kayak is caulked using seal oil and
moss,
with
grass strands backing the inner seams.
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Frank Andrew's son and student, Qayanek
master traditional qayaq builder Noah Andrew
Sr., sits next to
the Qayanek built Loon qayaq adorned with one of his father's two
traditional deck design. 2006
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| Smiling and frowning
carved
loon heads adorn
two inner supports.Additionally,
the crushed red ocher rock
rubbed
frame is pegged together with special traditional spruce pegs. Some of
the larger
pegs have ivory wedged locking heads. The Pai, or cockpit you sit
in, is pegged
and tied together with white spruce root. The
rest of the entire frame is lashed together
with seal skin cured in urine. The seal skin deck is predominantly
pigmented
with one of Yup’ik elder Frank Andrew’s ancestral loon designs. The
traditional
detail
in this qayaq far exceeds the well documented contemporary construction
level found in the
famous 1976 western Cup’ik kayak of Hooper Bay observed by David W.
Zimmerely, which used
string,
bolts, nails, canvas, and lamination. Someday, if Qayanek finds the
correct traditional
white
rock used for deck design pigmentation,
and sews the skins together with braided caribou sinew, we will have
remarkably
matched the
ancient mud house qayaq construction technique. |
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