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aesthetics is readily obvious in everything made by Unangan craftspeople, from the intricately painted steam-bent wooden hats, the kayaks, spears, clothing, waterproof garments, tattoos, and ceremonial and hunting masks, to bone and ivory carvings. These items, in museum collections around the world, demonstrate that Unangan built beauty and utility into everything they crafted, with a keen sense of spirituality and connectedness with everything in Creation.
    The nature of Unangan spirituality can be gleaned from the art and paintings on the wooden hats used in rituals and ceremonies or worn during the hunt or wars. Unangan men believed that the hunted animal is to be honored, so the hunter comes in his finest. The Unangan bent-wood hat frequently includes four- or eight-petal rosettes, indicating the use of the “sacred four” known in many Indigenous traditions around the world, and the famous Flower of Life, which has been found, for example, in Egyptian and Mayan glyphs. It contains the patterns ofcreation as they emerged from the “Great Void.”
    The wings of the hat, called volutes, are made of ivory and display a spiritual worldview in their design that includes the “third eye,” balance of the masculine and feminine, one’s spiritual center, and the center of all Creation. The volutes were all carved differently, depending on where one was from and what station the person had as a hunter. However, all volutes contain a “hidden” message of Unangan spirituality.
    The volute itself, when turned on its side, is shaped like a bird or bird’s beak, signifying the Thunderbird. The Thunderbird was known to our people as a bird with the power of death—a reminder that we must die the “small deaths” if we are to live. These small deaths may be loss of a loved one, a home, a friend, death of someone you cared about, death of the old “you” and birth of the new, etc. The piece, ranging from six to eight inches in length, would be carved with a curve on its length, ending in a spiral. The spiral represented Agox, the Maker of all Creation, which never ends—our people knew that life was a circle, but a changing circle. In the center of the spiral was the third eye, our center, and the center of the universe. The stem of the volute conveys the understanding that male and female aspects in all creation must be balanced in order to live as a real human being. Even the land, I found out, has a male and female aspect. A phallic symbol appears on the stem along with circles with dots in the center to indicate the “sacred circle” and the center; designs of three circles attached to one “originating” circle denote the sacred feminine number three, and the place from which we originated.
    Intricate designs on the hat may depict a hunting story, or animals and birds. The hat, like all other Unangan objects, had a practical use. The beautiful hunting hat, with its elongated visor, was made specifically for the volatile Bering Sea; to prevent being blinded by oncoming waves, the hunter would simply look down whenever a wave broke across the bow of the craft.
    Unangan culture, for its time, was advanced in its treatment and value of men and women. Unangan society was egalitarian in that the roles of men and women were equally honored, and both men and womencould have more than one spouse if circumstances dictated. Use of a moon calendar demonstrated a reverence for the sacred feminine and its connection to water and thus all life. The sacred and great power of women was acknowledged in practice, in which a man would not hunt during his spouse’s moon-time. Because the moon-time was sacred and a time when women, at their greatest power, could disrupt normal, everyday living and hunting, women were separated from the community in what some may call a “moon lodge.” It was also the women who initiated the “shamans” because they have a