The Alaska State Council on the Arts submitted a resolution in November 2016 urging Alaska’s Congressional Delegation to take any and all steps necessary to ensure that Alaska Native artists’ use of domestic walrus, mammoth, and mastodon ivory as a primary creative medium or an incorporated material into artwork remains protected under already established state and federal law.
The legal rights of Alaska Native people to subsistence harvest marine mammals and Alaska Native artists’ rights to legally acquire and utilize byproducts of legal subsistence procured domestic walrus, mammoth, and mastodon ivory to create tools, handicrafts, jewelry, and artwork is a longstanding cultural tradition explicitly protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The recent passage of Lower 48 state domestic ivory bans negatively impacts Alaska Native artists who depend on the sale of their art as an important cash income source to support their economic autonomy and therefore their families and communities in a cash-limited economy.
