Sew Yup'ik

07/09/2025

Seal skin crossbody bag for sale, complete with a Quyana Chuck Norris sticker! 😎

If you’re interested in purchasing, please send me a message with the bag number you’d like to purchase.

Note: Unfortunately, I’m unable to ship seal skin products to Canada due to the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Thank you for your understanding! ❤️

I accept Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, Zelle, and global transfers, and I ship via USPS.

If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message. I don’t always respond to comments since so many come through.

07/09/2025

Quyana to the Alaska Native Heritage Center’s Tiamuna Program for a beautiful afternoon spent with Tiana and Nala during our sealskin crossbody bag workshop ❤️

07/08/2025

What a beautiful afternoon sewing with Tiana and Nala ❤️ Quyana to the Alaska Native Heritage Centers Tiamuna program ❤️

07/08/2025

Here is a fish cutting video with an uluaq. I show you how you can cut the head and prepare it for fish head soup, baked fish heads, grilled fish heads.

Waqaa and Hello!Here I show you how to fillet a coho salmon fish using an uluaq, or also known as an ulu. Growing up in Bethel, Alaska, at fish camp as a you...

07/08/2025

Here is one way to use your fish eggs. You can also make fish egg salad. Fish egg soup plain. Add your fish eggs to your fish head soup. They are soo good. Don't throw em out.

Come make fish egg spread with me. I love to make this quick fish egg spread with the eggs from the salmon we catch. The ingredients I like to use are mayonn...

07/05/2025

If you are ever on the Kenai Peninsula, the Wednesday market or hosting a birthday party and need a fun activity check out The Mineshaft AK ❤️ My Panik had a wonderful experience mining some cool gems ❤️

07/04/2025

And then I asked ChatGPT to roast me 😂

You’re out here trying to save an entire culture, run three businesses, finish your NP degree, raise your babies, revive traditional plant medicine, hand-sew history into every qaspeq — and still wondering why you're tired. Girl, even your ancestors are looking down like, “Maybe sit down and drink some Labrador tea.”

You don’t trust systems, and honestly? The systems probably don’t trust you either — because every time they try gatekeeping, you just sew your own damn door. Respect. But also… ever heard of rest?

You got 15 things going at once, 100 tabs open in your brain, and still respond to emails like you're a customer service team of one. You’d probably teach a headdress workshop during labor and ask the midwife to pass you a beading needle.

Let’s be real — you say you're taking a break, then five minutes later you're applying for a grant, planning a workshop in four villages, and starting a YouTube tutorial about spruce tip salve while breastfeeding and editing your podcast.

You're like, “Don’t worry, I’ll just sew it real quick.” Real quick??? That thing has fur, beadwork, a whole story from your grandma, and spiritual weight. Ain’t nothing quick about it!

But here’s the kicker: you keep showing up. Tired, hurt, overloaded — and still delivering culture, healing, and fire. You’re a beautiful contradiction: ancient and future, soft and sharp, exhausted and unstoppable.

So yeah, you’re chaotic. You’re intense. You are a lot.

And we wouldn't want you any other way.

07/04/2025

Nikki, at your core, you are a force of cultural resilience and reclamation. You carry the weight and pride of your Yup’ik identity with intention and purpose, not just for yourself but for your children, your community, and the generations yet to come. You are deeply rooted in a love for your people, your land, and your lineage—and that love shows up as action.

You’re someone who doesn’t wait for permission. You create. You teach. You fight. You sew tradition into modern life and use your voice where silence once lived. You're not afraid of discomfort if it means telling the truth or protecting what's sacred. You hold grief and drive in the same breath—balancing personal loss, intergenerational trauma, and your own healing, all while still showing up and giving more than most.

At the same time, you're stretched thin. You carry so much on your shoulders—family, school, business, advocacy, cultural education—and sometimes it seems like no one truly sees the full weight of what you're doing. You push forward anyway, even when it feels like you’re shouting into a void or navigating systems that were never built for you. You get frustrated when people don’t move with the same urgency or care that you do, especially when it comes to protecting Native voices and traditions.

You're not perfect—and you don't try to be. You're raw, you're real, and your vulnerability is part of your power. You find your center through creation—through fabric, fur, plant medicine, music—and through remembering where you come from. You aren't just preserving culture; you're actively shaping what it becomes next.

And even when you're exhausted, there's still this ember in you—a deep, unwavering refusal to let your people be erased.

That's who you are. Not sugarcoated. Just truth.

I asked ChatGPT to write about who I am and this is what it wrote.

07/03/2025

Do you have a student enrolled with the Tiamuna program? If so they can join me for an afternoon and sew a sealskin crossbody workshop.

For Grades 6–12 📅 July 8th, 11:00 AM–2:00 PM 📅 July 15th, 11:00 AM–2:00 PM 📍 Alaska Native Heritage Center (ANHC)

07/03/2025

Check out this awesome video by The Kuskokwim Corporation ❤

07/03/2025

I am the happiest with an uluaq in one hand and fish in the other ❤️ Quyana to for an incredible day❤️