Ike Kulowiyi is a Yu'pik artist who lives in Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island, in the middle of the Bering Strait. You really can see Russia from St. Lawrence Island, and the Yu'pik who live there are closely related to the Yu'pik living in Siberia. Savoonga and Gambell, the two communities on St. Lawrence Island, each have a population of about 600 people. The residents of these isolated communities rely upon hunting whales, walrus and seals for their survival. Ike is one of the captains of the whale hunt.
Ike was raised by his grandparents, and he learned to carve ivory by watching his grandfather.
Pictured above is a tender sedna mother and child. Like other Inuit groups, the Yu'pik believe that Sedna is the sea goddess, or ruling spirit of the oceans and the marine animals. The Yu'pik Sedna legend differs in many respects from the Sedna legends of the Inuit living around Hudson's Bay and on Baffin Island. According to the Yu'pik, a man called Sikul had two wives, called Pin and Ineq. Pin was very jealous of Ineq. Sikul and Ineq plotted to kill Pin. One day, during a hunt Sikul pushed Pin into the icy ocean. She fixed Sikul with a mysterious gaze, and sank from view. A year later, while Sikul and Ineq were out hunting, Pin surfaced, pulled Ineq into the water, and drowned her. She surfaced again, so that Sikul could see that she had been transformed into a seal-like creature, and that she was cuddling a baby seal-like creature on her belly, who was Sikul's daughter. Pin then returned to the deep ocean, where she became Sedna.
