A faint smell of smoke-tanned moose hide wafted through a workroom at the Anchorage Museum as pots of dyes simmered on heaters. Small piles of porcupine quills, small handmade looms, pieces of moose ...

Head bent toward her work, Carolyn Simon uses tweezers to carefully pull a porcupine quill through a tiny hole in a piece of birch bark. She folds the quill with her fingers and then guides it through ...