Who benefits from the Silver Hand?

The totem poll is a common and easily recognized symbol of Alaska Native culture, but there is much more to know.
The totem poll is a common and easily recognized symbol of Alaska Native culture, but there is much more to know.

Travel companies market Alaska as the “last frontier,” a land of unimaginable vastness and untrodden wilderness. Native people are likewise cast as authentic and untarnished. As Mark Nuttall writes in his 1997 book chapter Packaging the Wild: Tourism Development in Alaska, indigenous tourism in Alaska gives tourists a glossy view of Native life where any evidence of modernity is downplayed and problems with alcoholism or poverty remain hidden.

But is the Silver Hand program complicit in the commodification of Alaska, or is it merely a way of ensuring that Alaska Natives get credit for the work they produce?

It seems that the program does both at once.

The Silver Hand program was started by the AKSCA in 1972, eight years prior to the founding of the Traditional Native Arts Program (TNAP), whose mission is to aid rural Native artists with technical training and grants. The fact that the Silver Hand program predates TNAP suggests that the welfare of Native artists was not a driving factor in its creation, or at least that the Silver Hand program was not sufficient in ensuring Native artists’ viability.

A tapestry of Alaska's shoreline made by an artist featured on AKSCA's website.
A tapestry of Alaska’s shoreline made by an unidentified artist featured on AKSCA’s website.

Emily Moore, Assistant Professor of Art History at Colorado State University believes the Silver Hand program is a form of commodification of Native Alaskan culture that is particularly focused on native bodies. Despite the loosening of the blood quantum regulations as a prerequisite for participation in the Silver Hand program in 2008, there is still a widespread understanding, both by natives and non-natives in the authority of the program to ascribe nativeness. As Moore writes,

“Even Alaska Natives draw on the Silver Hand’s verification of ethnic authenticity to enhance their own.”

Moreover, the Silver Hand functions as a guide to shoppers seeking the real and original native handcraft. Tourists are shopping for more than a trinket to bring home, however, says Moore.

“The Silver Hand stands as a surrogate to the Native body that is the consumer’s real desire.”

Though this may seem like an extreme view, there are specific rules in the Silver Hand program that limit any use of mass production or reproduction of objects. Each object must be made by an individual Native Alaskan. The fact that native hands have touched each of the objects is of central importance to the program, and to shoppers, Moore argues.

Because the Silver Hand program places  limits on manufacturing, collective entrepreneurship by Native Alaskan artists is impossible if they want to participate in the program. Though the Silver Hand program appears to be a boon for Native artists, it seems that it is consumers who are benefiting most from the deal.

A souvenir and gift shop selling rustic goods in Talkeetna, Alaska.
A souvenir and gift shop selling rustic goods in Talkeetna, Alaska.