Alaskan artist Helen Smieonoff
© AFP/File Jim Watson

ANCHORAGE, United States (AFP) - The masks, hunting tools, beaded headdress and other objects had rested quietly in the coastal museum for more than a hundred years after French explorer Alfonse Pinart brought them home as trinkets.

It is one of the only remaining collections of Sugpiaq artifacts from the pre-colonial period, but had always been displayed merely as primitive objects of art.

Until Simeonoff walked into the Chateau Musee in Boulogne-sur-Mer and found a window to her ancestors and a way to revive a culture destroyed by colonialism.

"I had never seen my culture before. To see your whole culture laid before your eyes in one fell swoop -- it's overwhelming," she told AFP.

"Pinart was in my mother's village ... and I got to thinking which one of my ancestors made this beaded headdress?"

Simeonoff was the first Sugpiaq artist to view the museum's collection, but not the last. She came home determined to share the experience that filled her with joy at the discovery and a sense of grief and for the deep loss her people continue to experience.

In the six years since Simeonoff's visit, several other groups have made pilgrimages to Boulogne-sur-Mer, bringing back stories, photographs and the inspiration to create new works of art and to train residents of remote villages in their lost art of mask-making.

And the museum has begun working with researchers in Alaska to develop a catalogue examining the cultural and archaeological implications of the collection.

"For us, it's an eye-opening experience, because we had been blind in the face of these objects," Anne-Claire Laronde, curator of the Chateau-Musee, said in a telephone interview.

A paiting by native Alaskan artist Helen Smieonoff
© AFP Jim Watson

"In France, unfortunately, we've maintained what I see as a colonialist attitude by examining these objects only aesthetically, without asking the creators what they think and how they see these objects, which are archaeological objects and cultural objects."

A large portion of the collection will return to Alaska for the first time next May as a visiting exhibit.

It is expected to have a profound impact on the Sugpiaq people because very little of the old ways of Kodiak Island survived.

More than 90 percent of the tribe perished in the years following the Russian conquest. What remained of the old rituals and an oral history consisting of legends and songs was then abandoned as pagan under the influence of Orthodox priests, said ethno-archaeologist Sven Haakansan.

Those Sugpiaq (also known as Alutiiq because of the language they speak) looking to reclaim their heritage were essentially forced to borrow from the tribes of Alaska's interior which were less severely impacted by colonialism.

That has changed profoundly now that Sugpiaq artists and academics are working with the Pinart collection.

"They're very important to us because they're the only collection we've discovered of Alutiiq masks that show us the legends and songs," said Haakansan who is the director of the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak.

"To me, the most important thing is the psychological changes here. Growing up we knew about the Eskimos up north and the cowboys and Indians," he said.

Now, "we can celebrate who we are as a unique group in Alaska. Instead of borrowing from other cultures we have our own ... we have a baseline to go back to."

Simeonoff has blossomed as an artist, expanding her palette into non-traditional colors like pink and exploring new ways to depict the old work. In one canvass, she drew a precise replica of one of the Pinart masks before smearing it with streaks of paint to create a lively and modern mood. In another, a cartoon-like blue figure dances with a traditional mask.

When she first started painting, Simeonoff felt insecure as an artist, borrowing from other native tribes and afraid to stray from traditional forms and colors.

She recalled a time that a critic came up to her and asked her why she didn't paint her own culture. She was too ashamed to admit she did not know it.

"I don't have to be ashamed anymore, and it's thanks to Mr. Pinart," she said. "I'm complete. I'm not borrowed anymore. I know who I am and we were good!"

©AFP