Kayak Restoration Makes Headlines

Susan Malutin (far left) and Alfred Naumoff (far right) are examining an Alutiiq kayak in the collections of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. With Sven Haakanson, they are helping a team of conservators restore the boat. Photo and caption courtesy of Sven Haakanson/Alutiiq Museum

The effort to restore a 19^th century Alutiiq warrior kayak by Kodiak residents is gaining national attention. Alutiiq Museum Director Sven Haakanson traveled to Boston last week with Alfred Naumoff, an Alutiiq kayak maker, and Susie Malutin, an Alutiiq skin sewer to the Peabody Museum at Harvard where the rare kayak is currently housed. The group is working on a plan to restore the kayak and eventually bring it home to Kodiak. In this Boston Globe article Haakanson says, “We have lots of models of single-man kayaks, but no full-size ones, so what we can learn from that in terms of size and design is extremely important.”

Read the entire article here. You can find previous KMXT reports on the kayak here and here.