Alaska Native Collections – Sharing Knowledge

2001

Anna Etageak: Sun glasses.

Theresa Nanouk: A long time ago people used to go blind from the sun being bright, so they make their own glasses like that. So they won’t get snow blind.(1)

Anna Etageak: My poppa used to get snow blind. He said, “Araaah!” Really hurt. So he used to wear this kind [snow goggles].

Frances Charles: [Used in the] springtime. So they won’t get snow blind.

Art Ivanoff: The glare [to protect eyes against the sunlight reflected from snow and ice].

Oscar Koutchak: I got snow blind once, and I had to stay in the house for three days. If you get snow blindness, you’re worthless. It’s painful. Achapak used to use those too.

Theresa Nanouk: I think most all the seal hunters did a long time ago.

Oscar Koutchak: Yes.

Stephen Loring: Did your father make his own pairs?

Theresa Nanouk: He was always making them.

Anna Etageak: Out of wood. But they were never neat like this. He made them himself any old way.

Oscar Koutchak: It’s good work. Wooden snow goggles.

Frances Charles: Yukłuktaak. Yukłuktaaŋik ipkua pisuugait.

(Snow glasses/snow goggles. They called them yukłuktaak long ago.)

[From discussion with Frances Charles, Anna Etageak, Art Ivanoff (Native Village of Unalakleet), Oscar Koutchak, Theresa Nanouk and Branson Tungiyan (Kawerak, Inc.) at the National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian, 5/07/2001-5/11/2001. Also participating: Aron Crowell, Bill Fitzhugh and Stephen Loring (NMNH) and Suzi Jones (AMHA).]

1. According to Frances Charles, snow goggles were used when out in the snow and on the ice.

As the amount of sunshine increased in late winter and spring, people wore goggles to protect their eyes from snow blindness. This painful, debilitating condition occurs when strong ultraviolet light reflects from snow and ice, burning the retinas. Snow goggles have narrow slits that reduce the amount of glare that can reach the wearer’s eyes, while still providing a wide range of vision.(1)

Snow goggles came in a number of shapes and styles. Examples from the Norton Sound area—collected by Edward Nelson in the late 1800s—have two long, narrow slits for the eyes, a visor-like ridge above the eye slits (as on this pair) that gave additional shade, a notch for the nose, and a strap made of sealskin or braided sinew. Another Norton Sound type had separate eye pieces—somewhat oval, with narrow eye slits—connected by sinew string.(2)

1. Birket-Smith 1936:121; Bockstoce 1977:65; Fitzhugh and Kaplan 1982:100; Murdoch 1892:260-61; Nelson 1899:169-70

2. Nelson 1899:170