Artist Jennie Wheeler has early memories of walking the three miles into Yakutat with her mother to deliver moccasins and other skin-sewn creations. People were happy to receive what they’d ordered, and that made Wheeler happy in turn.
Her mother, Jennie Pavlik, sewed seal skin moccasins, hats, baby booties, and other garments. Wheeler grew up sewing along with her.
“She always had such good care in making her things,” Wheeler said. “Whatever she made, she always told me ‘You’ve got to have good thoughts whenever you work.’”
She and her siblings spent many of their younger years on Knight Island, where her parents had a place. Her mother never had many supplies, and Wheeler remembers having to sharpen two rusty needles. Pavlik would buy one seal skin at a time, and use whatever she could.
“It kind of makes me smile and laugh whenever I’m sewing,” Wheeler said. “Now I have more needles than I know what to do with, but I still appreciate everything I have. I never take anything for granted.”
It was from Sitka weaver Teri Rofkar that Wheeler learned spruce root weaving. Rofkar came up to Yakutat and showed Wheeler how to gather the roots, burn them, and prepare them for weaving. At first, Wheeler wasn’t so excited about it.
Then Rofkar came back to check on her progress.
“I said ‘Here’s what I did… she didn’t say she was disappointed, but the look on her face told me she was disappointed. I thought to myself right then, next time she comes I’m going to learn how to weave, and if it takes me all winter, that’s what I’ll do,” she said.
So that’s what she did — and it turns out once she knew what she was doing, she enjoyed it.
Some of the baskets she weaves are tiny Christmas ornaments, others are much bigger. She also loves coming up with her own ideas. She weaves spruce root teacups, purses, coin purses. The roots are much stronger than people might think; her daughters have been using their coin purses for years.
She rises early, starting her work at six and sewing and weaving off and on all day.
“It’s just something I really enjoy, and I get excited when I come up with something new and I’ve got to keep working on it until I get done,” she said. “I look for different ideas all the time.”
Jennie’s Gift Shop, her store, is full of one-of-a-kind gifts made by hand.
The shop has also led to some unexpected creations.
A few years ago, a Swiss couple came into the shop asking for something she’d never heard of — a pain catcher.
She thought they might mean a dream catcher, but they were clear — they wanted a pain catcher. They told her they’d be back in a week.
“I said ‘Lord, you’ve got to help me,’” she said.
She looked at her plant book and began thinking about what people use for medicine. Devils club, or the inside bark of alder trees, which people once peeled and boiled in tea if they had a cold.
“I started to come up with all kinds of healing things on the pain catcher,” she said.
When the couple came back, she told them about the devil’s club beads she’d used, and all the other ingredients. A month later, she got a long distance phone call — they loved their pain catcher and wanted 30 more by Christmas, just a few months away.
Every time she makes one, she prays for the person she’s making it for.
“I’m a Catholic, and I love to pray,” she said. “It kind of made me laugh. I said ‘You know, Lord, you must really want me to pray this month, because I’m making 30.”
Now, she carries pain catchers in her shop.
For every hour she spends digging for and finding roots, it takes between eight and ten hours to prepare them for weaving, she said.
But her art is part of a larger lifestyle, as well.
“I kind of live off the land a lot,” she said. “I pick all the berries I can. We’ll pick seaweed… and different plants to harvest for teas.”
She also gets most of her hides from family members — brother Rudy Pavlik, nephew Jeremiah Pavlik, and son Lucas Wheeler, another things for which she’s grateful, she said.
Wheeler has been teaching skin sewing, which she always does by hand, for more than 30 years. After she learned spruce root collecting, processing and weaving, she began teaching that as well, she said.
She goes into the school, and teaches people one on one, and in group classes — teenagers and adults, people who have never sewed before and people who have. Many classes since the 1990s have been funded by the Alaska State Council on the Arts, she said.
“They (students) are so excited when the class is over and they have a pair of moccasins to wear,” she said.
A while ago, her craft, and her teaching, came full circle.
Her mother, Jennie Pavlik, whose maiden name was Warren, grew up in Klukwan. Wheeler is Eagle-Bear.
“The tribe called me a year after my mom passed away,” she said. “They said ‘Would you be willing to come to Klukwan… nobody knows how to make moccasins here anymore, and we really need to get the younger generation (learning.)”
She had never been to Klukwan before.
She taught a class, and has been back several times, getting to know aunts, uncles and relatives she’d never met.
“I was just overwhelmed by that,” she said. “That was just so powerful to me.”
She’s also traveled to Sitka, demonstrating basket weaving and skin sewing at the Sheldon Jackson Museum through the museum’s Native Artist Demonstrator Program.
Her work hasn’t gone unrecognized. Wheeler was recently named one of seven recipients of the First Peoples Fund’s 2016 Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Award, which recognizes artists’ “exceptional passion, wisdom and dedication to passing on ancestral knowledge in their tribal communities,” Lori Pourier, the president of the fund, said in a release announcing the award.
“They called me and I didn’t even know what to say,” Wheeler said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
Wheeler’s daughter, Sitka artist Mary Goddard, nominated her for the award, for which Wheeler thanked her.
“I just thank all the people that I learned from throughout the years, starting off with my parents,” Wheeler said. “They encouraged me to do the best that I can, and then pass it on.”
Wheeler’s website is http://www.jenniesgiftshop.com/.
Contact Capital City Weekly staff writer Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com.
