“I was always fascinated with how the fish skins glimmer in the sun and how shiny and pretty they were and I told myself, one day I'm going to work with fish skins,” Mary Jane Nigiyok recalls. She is from Ulukhaktok and she works with arctic char fish skins. Growing up, she would help her mom at their summer camp drying fish. Her mom would filet the fish and she would wash and hang them to dry.

Nigiyok got her start making beaded earrings in 2012 when her daughter was sick and she stayed home from holiday games in the gymnasium. She went through her sewing supplies and found some beads. She looked up seed bead earring instructions online and got started with making some new creations to pass the time. She had originally learned some beading at school and did it as a hobby when she was out of school.

Later, in 2019, Nigiyok wondered if anyone was making jewelry out of fish skin. She came across someone who was tanning salmon skin with acetone and alcohol and she took her class online. Other than the one class, she is self-taught. The colours she uses come from her mom who was an artist who did print work. She often watched her with the shapes she created and the ways she put her colours together in her artistic creations. She doesn’t have signature colours, she just makes a circle, gets beads and starts sewing.

Nigiyok makes earrings with fish skins backed with moose hides, bringing the two skills together. The moose hide she uses comes from sewing bags that were distributed during the pandemic. Her sister gave her the moose hide she received to make earrings from and her mom had some moose hide in her sewing supplies to contribute when she went into long term care. She also uses scraps from bigger projects and buys them to make her earrings.

If a young Inuk or a young Inuvialuit person wanted to start beading, her advice would be, "Challenge yourself, enjoy what you do. If you have any questions or if you need any help, there's a lot of tutorials on YouTube.They can reach out to me as well if they need any assistance, if they're stuck on how to go forward. Also, if you're frustrated with something or not feeling something, put it aside and try to start on something else… then you can go back to it. That's what I do."

One of the obstacles Nigiyok faces is that sometimes she doesn’t have fish skins to tan. In 2023, she was gifted 20 skins but in 2024 she didn’t have very many given there weren’t as many fish in the ocean. Local hunters gift her fish skins when they are making fish soup or stir fry, removing just the meat and giving her the skins.

Whitefish, salmon and arctic char are the fish Nigiyok mostly works with, but never trout given her daughter in law has an allergy. Community members know she works with fish skins and will save them and gift them to her. Hunters have fish skins for her year round given they have winter supply. She keeps them preserved in her freezer.

While there are a couple of other ladies in town who make fish skins, they process theirs differently than she does. Because her daughter has allergies and asthma, Nigiyok doesn’t join many gatherings and doesn’t have beading nights. She taught her daughter and granddaughter how to bead but they aren’t interested in fish skin tanning.

If Nigiyok could tell her younger self a message when she was just starting out it would be, “you'll do amazing things with fish. You'll be amazed with what you do with the fish.” Beading has been beneficial to her mental health. “I find that beading calms me down. It's my trade, my solitude to keep myself grounded,” she reflects. Sometimes she listens to music, watches tv or a video while she beads but often she does it to occupy herself when she’s alone or with one of her granddaughters.

When it comes to inspiration, Nigiyok sees different shapes outside and thinks they would make a nice earring or piece of jewelry. Circles or teardrops are the shapes she uses for her creations. Her advice to other beaders would be, “Challenge yourself; I like to challenge myself with different beading mediums. If there’s something that you think you can accomplish, then give it a try."

She saw fish skins glimmer in the sun and Mary Jane Nigiyok told herself one day she would work with them… and now she does. Making art out of arctic char, she combines beadwork and fish skin tanning to create something beautiful. Repurposing moosehide scraps, she makes sure nothing goes to waste as she challenges herself.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.