My great-grandparents on my mother’s side of the family were Bering Sea Alaskan shamans. They came from Nunivak Island and Nelson Island. My great-grandmother was called Kagun; she had as her spirit helper an underground serpent or dragon in the Asiatic tradition. This sculpture done in whale bone vertebrae represents their tie to whaling in the Western Arctic during the late 1800s.My grandparents were hired to navigate a Yankee whaling ship from the Bering Sea to Hershel Island and the Yukon Territories.
